In Calgary, the disappointing season for the Flames continued on Friday night in a 5-2 loss to the St Louis Blues.
The Blues scored three times in the third period to take control.
Thomas Greiss made 41 saves in the Blues win.
St Louis moved to 15-15-1 with their third straight win.
The Blues took a 1-0 lead in the first period on a goal from Ivan Barbashev.
“That’s huge, right? It’s a nice little streak we’ve got going right now,” Barbashev said. “Hopefully we keep winning. I think we’re just playing for each other.”
The Flames, who kept it close through two periods, tied it, 1-1, Connor Mackey‘s first of two in the game.
Early in n the middle frame, Jordan Kyrou scored the first of his double on the night for a 2-1 lead, his strike came off the power play.
It stayed that way until early in the third period when Pavel Buchnevich hit for a marker for St Louis to give them a 3-1 lead.
Mackey replied in the eighth minute of the third to trim the lead to 3-2, but Brandon Saad scored 78 seconds later to make it 4-2.
“I’ve got to be smart with the puck,” Mackey said. “I feel like I let the guys down there. I mean, I can’t be doing that right after we score to get right back in it, and we’re right back out of it.”
Just 61 seconds after that, Kyrou hit for his double for the 5-2 final score.
“We know we have some tough opponents and a tough stretch going into Christmas,” Blues defenseman Colton Parayko said. “We’re just trying to make up a little bit for kind of where we are right now in the standings. We have a really good team and things are starting to come together. It’s looking good.”
Calgary has now lost five straight.
“No, it’s not getting away from us,” Calgary forward Mikael Backlund said. “We know we can still do a really good thing here. But we’ve got to pull together here and be a lot better. Execution wasn’t good enough tonight. Secondary efforts, digging in to score.
“Never gave up, gave up some goals. But we haven’t given up here. We know we’re chasing it, for sure. We’re behind in the standings. We know we’ve got to play better, win more games, and we’re going to do it.”
They dropped to 13-12-6.
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Jacob Markstrom made 19 saves in the loss.
“We have a good team here, but we’ve got to show it too,” Backlund said. “We’re far from where we’re starting to doubt ourselves. We know we can win games.
“But, at the same time, we know we’re a team that’s going to win by keeping it low, not giving up goals. We know we’ll be [in] tight scoring and once in a while we get a big win.”
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