Calgary left winger Johnny Gaudreau capped a three-point night on Saturday by scoring in overtime to give the Calgary Flames a 3-2 come-from-behind win over the Vancouver Canucks at Rogers Arena.
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Gaudreau had the puck on his stick in the Vancouver zone seconds before the victor, but lost it to Vancouver forward Brandon Sutter, who was poised to send Daniel Sedin in on a breakaway.
“I thought we shut it down in the third period and didn’t play as well as we have in the past and I think that is what hurt us tonight”, Horvat said. “With so much time and space and ice, one costly turnover or mistake and that’s the game. You have to be strategic about it, but it’s fun”. They will square off a total of five times this season – February 6th in Vancouver and February 19th and April 7th in Calgary.
“We’ve had many talks and Raymond knows what he needs to bring to the table to be a regular member of this club”, said Hartley.
You’d tell the players, they’d nod in agreement, put anything anyone has ever said about them out of their heads, and play it like a road game.
Miller started the season very strong and was especially good in the opening ten minutes of Wednesday’s 5-1 win. “But I thought it was a really close game”. But they had a poor effort in the opener – which included a deflection into their own net in the third period. “You take somebody out and it’s hard for them as well, “I’m not playing that good” or whatever”.
Calgary was set to open its 2015-16 campaign with three goaltenders and just six defencemen.
The top line of Gaudreau, Monahan, and Hudler combined for the tying goal in the third period. Just the experience every day, every game I get is going to be huge for me in the long run.
The other key point-if the Canucks do choose to keep McCann and/or Virtanen with the team beyond nine games, they’ll still have the option of returning the players to junior later in the season (or lending them to Canada’s World Junior team) if they choose. “They came at us hard, but that was disappointing”.
Gaudreau had a great chance from the slot with just over 90 seconds to play in regulation, but Miller stood tall in the Vancouver crease.
Hiller made a couple of big saves in the extra period before Gaudreau’s victor, including a glove stop on Sedin.
None of these was as dramatic as the Toronto Blue Jays’ collapse in Game 1 of their American League Division Series, since exacerbated by Thursday’s 14-inning Game 2 heartbreaker, but then no team was as lavishly and endlessly hyped going in as the Jays, albeit for a whole bunch of pretty good reasons. If you don’t know what that means, you’ll get it soon enough.
“Most of us went through it so many times already, so you know what the deal’s going to be before the game”, said Radim Vrbata.
Impressive in the win, above just the Sedins and the almost-perfect Ryan Miller, were rookies Jared McCann and Ben Hutton. “It was a great feeling, but obviously it would have been nice to end the way we all wanted”.
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The Flames 1-0 lead only held up for 2:02 of the middle frame when Bo Horvat, a one-man wrecking crew, connected on a Vancouver power-play and tied it as Dennis Wideman sat off for high-sticking.
