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Alberta

Flames get hot in second period for 7-2 win over Sabres

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By Mark Lukwiczak in Buffalo

The Calgary Flames scored four times in just over five minutes in their 7-2 win over the Buffalo Sabres on Saturday.

Dillon Dube had a goal and three assists for Calgary and Tyler Toffoli had two goals and an assist. Jakob Pelletier, Mikael Backlund, Nazem Kadri and Dennis Gilbert also scored, while Jacob Markstrom made 21 saves.

Tage Thompson and Casey Mittelstadt scored for the Sabres, and goalie Ukko-Pekka Luukkonen made 33 saves.

After falling behind 2-0, the Flames took control with a dominant second-period surge that saw them score four times between 2:17 and 7:39.

“It just felt like everything kind of kept coming in waves and we did a really good job,” Toffoli said. “We could tell that they were getting frustrated and we just capitalized on our opportunities.”

Pelletier, the 26th overall pick in the 2019 draft, began Calgary’s comeback with his first career goal. Backlund evened the score 20 seconds later from the right circle on a poor moment by Luukkonen.

Gilbert, a Buffalo native, scored his first goal of the season and the second of his career 4:04 into the second by collecting a drop pass and beating Luukkonen with a low slap shot.

“We maybe started a little bit slower than we would’ve liked, but we had a good response in between periods,” Gilbert said. “We had a good second and third.”

Luukkonen made one of his best saves of the season on a two-man rush 7:09 into the second, robbing Dube. But the Flames quickly struck again, making it 4-2 20 seconds later on Kadri’s shot through traffic for his 20th goal of the season.

Calgary outshot Buffalo 34-8 through two periods.

“We never found a rhythm even though we had some good energy in the first, and then we died,” Sabres coach Don Granato said. “We looked fatigued. We looked like we hadn’t played in a while.”

Toffoli made it 5-2 1:57 into the third on a tap-in and scored his second of the game to make it 6-2 with 6:55 remaining. Dube scored with 2:49 left in the game for the final margin.

Thompson opened the scoring on the power play 7:56 into the game on his 35th goal of the season. He has a career-high 69 points through 51 games.

ANDERSSON OUT AGAIN

Calgary defenseman Rasmus Andersson was held out after he was struck by a vehicle while riding a scooter in Detroit on Wednesday. Andersson has been considered day to day and isn’t expected to miss a significant amount of time. Andersson is one of Calgary’s top defensemen and has 34 points on the season.

UP NEXT

Flames: Travel to Ottawa to play the Senators on Monday.

Sabres: Begin a three-game trip against the Los Angeles Kings on Monday.

___

AP NHL: https://apnews.com/hub/nhl and https://twitter.com/AP_Sports

After 15 years as a TV reporter with Global and CBC and as news director of RDTV in Red Deer, Duane set out on his own 2008 as a visual storyteller. During this period, he became fascinated with a burgeoning online world and how it could better serve local communities. This fascination led to Todayville, launched in 2016.

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Alberta

Low oil prices could have big consequences for Alberta’s finances

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From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill

Amid the tariff war, the price of West Texas Intermediate oil—a common benchmark—recently dropped below US$60 per barrel. Given every $1 drop in oil prices is an estimated $750 million hit to provincial revenues, if oil prices remain low for long, there could be big implications for Alberta’s budget.

The Smith government already projects a $5.2 billion budget deficit in 2025/26 with continued deficits over the following two years. This year’s deficit is based on oil prices averaging US$68.00 per barrel. While the budget does include a $4 billion “contingency” for unforeseen events, given the economic and fiscal impact of Trump’s tariffs, it could quickly be eaten up.

Budget deficits come with costs for Albertans, who will already pay a projected $600 each in provincial government debt interest in 2025/26. That’s money that could have gone towards health care and education, or even tax relief.

Unfortunately, this is all part of the resource revenue rollercoaster that’s are all too familiar to Albertans.

Resource revenue (including oil and gas royalties) is inherently volatile. In the last 10 years alone, it has been as high as $25.2 billion in 2022/23 and as low as $2.8 billion in 2015/16. The provincial government typically enjoys budget surpluses—and increases government spending—when oil prices and resource revenue is relatively high, but is thrown into deficits when resource revenues inevitably fall.

Fortunately, the Smith government can mitigate this volatility.

The key is limiting the level of resource revenue included in the budget to a set stable amount. Any resource revenue above that stable amount is automatically saved in a rainy-day fund to be withdrawn to maintain that stable amount in the budget during years of relatively low resource revenue. The logic is simple: save during the good times so you can weather the storm during bad times.

Indeed, if the Smith government had created a rainy-day account in 2023, for example, it could have already built up a sizeable fund to help stabilize the budget when resource revenue declines. While the Smith government has deposited some money in the Heritage Fund in recent years, it has not created a dedicated rainy-day account or introduced a similar mechanism to help stabilize provincial finances.

Limiting the amount of resource revenue in the budget, particularly during times of relatively high resource revenue, also tempers demand for higher spending, which is only fiscally sustainable with permanently high resource revenues. In other words, if the government creates a rainy-day account, spending would become more closely align with stable ongoing levels of revenue.

And it’s not too late. To end the boom-bust cycle and finally help stabilize provincial finances, the Smith government should create a rainy-day account.

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Alberta

Governments in Alberta should spur homebuilding amid population explosion

Published on

From the Fraser Institute

By Tegan Hill and Austin Thompson

In 2024, construction started on 47,827 housing units—the most since 48,336 units in 2007 when population growth was less than half of what it was in 2024.

Alberta has long been viewed as an oasis in Canada’s overheated housing market—a refuge for Canadians priced out of high-cost centres such as Vancouver and Toronto. But the oasis is starting to dry up. House prices and rents in the province have spiked by about one-third since the start of the pandemic. According to a recent Maru poll, more than 70 per cent of Calgarians and Edmontonians doubt they will ever be able to afford a home in their city. Which raises the question: how much longer can this go on?

Alberta’s housing affordability problem reflects a simple reality—not enough homes have been built to accommodate the province’s growing population. The result? More Albertans competing for the same homes and rental units, pushing prices higher.

Population growth has always been volatile in Alberta, but the recent surge, fuelled by record levels of immigration, is unprecedented. Alberta has set new population growth records every year since 2022, culminating in the largest-ever increase of 186,704 new residents in 2024—nearly 70 per cent more than the largest pre-pandemic increase in 2013.

Homebuilding has increased, but not enough to keep pace with the rise in population. In 2024, construction started on 47,827 housing units—the most since 48,336 units in 2007 when population growth was less than half of what it was in 2024.

Moreover, from 1972 to 2019, Alberta added 2.1 new residents (on average) for every housing unit started compared to 3.9 new residents for every housing unit started in 2024. Put differently, today nearly twice as many new residents are potentially competing for each new home compared to historical norms.

While Alberta attracts more Canadians from other provinces than any other province, federal immigration and residency policies drive Alberta’s population growth. So while the provincial government has little control over its population growth, provincial and municipal governments can affect the pace of homebuilding.

For example, recent provincial amendments to the city charters in Calgary and Edmonton have helped standardize building codes, which should minimize cost and complexity for builders who operate across different jurisdictions. Municipal zoning reforms in CalgaryEdmonton and Red Deer have made it easier to build higher-density housing, and Lethbridge and Medicine Hat may soon follow suit. These changes should make it easier and faster to build homes, helping Alberta maintain some of the least restrictive building rules and quickest approval timelines in Canada.

There is, however, room for improvement. Policymakers at both the provincial and municipal level should streamline rules for building, reduce regulatory uncertainty and development costs, and shorten timelines for permit approvals. Calgary, for instance, imposes fees on developers to fund a wide array of public infrastructure—including roads, sewers, libraries, even buses—while Edmonton currently only imposes fees to fund the construction of new firehalls.

It’s difficult to say how long Alberta’s housing affordability woes will endure, but the situation is unlikely to improve unless homebuilding increases, spurred by government policies that facilitate more development.

Tegan Hill

Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute

Austin Thompson

Senior Policy Analyst, Fraser Institute
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