In Calgary, the visiting Vancouver Canucks had a tall order before them, beat the Flames and keep their playoffs hopes alive.
Dillon Dube hit for a pair of goals for the Flames in a 6-3 win over the Canucks.
Vancouver is not eliminated, yet, but their chances are bleak.
“We pushed from Dec. 5 until now, and I expect us for the next three games to keep pushing again,” Canucks coach Bruce Boudreau said. “But we know that our ultimate goal is probably not going to be reached.”
Dan Vladar made 30 saves in the Calgary win.
Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson had goals for the Canucks.
Calgary’s Elias Lindholm hit for his 40th of the season.
“We want to keep going here and have a good feeling before the playoffs,” Lindholm said. “My first year here (in 2018-19) where we clinched early, it felt like we kind of slowed down a little bit before the playoffs started and it’s hard to turn it on again just like that. We’ve got to keep going and keep building our game and just create the good feeling before the playoffs.”
The Flames improved to 49-20-10.
“It’s obviously a good number,” Lindholm said. “Coming in, you always want to improve. Thirty has been a goal and a good number to reach and obviously I got that, so just had to keep going.”
Conor Garland also scored for the Canucks, his goal tied the 2-2.
“When we tied it up, I thought, ‘Okay, let’s get through the next five minutes’ and even if it was a game where you take it to overtime, we don’t care if they get an extra point or not,” Boudreau said. “But they score on the next shift and that sort of let go for the next four, five minutes after that. It was just a real big sock in the head type thing.”
Brett Ritchie restored the Flames lead to 3-2.
Dillon Dube, who had two goals on the night, and Nikita Zadorov pushed the Calgary advantage to 5-2.
“I think I just needed to be a lot better for this team going into the final stretch,” Dube said. “I think to elevate my game to get ready for playoffs and try to get into that spot. I needed to be a lot better. It’s going better of late.”
Johnny Gaudreau hit an empty-net goal for Calgary and the 6-3 final.
Thatcher Demko made 26 saves in the Canucks loss.
“We’ve been doing this all year, so that’s what we’re going to keep doing,” the Canucks’ Oliver Ekman-Larsson said. “There’s no quitting in that room. We’ve showed it so many times this year. Take it one game at a time and see where it takes us.”
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