With the San Jose Sharks stumbling over their last three games, the Calgary Flames have taken some advantage and pushed their lead in the Pacific Division to three points.
On Tuesday night, the Flames burned the Columbus Blue Jackets, 4-2, and kept them from gaining any clearance in their race in the Eastern Conference wild card.
David Rittich got the win for Calgary on Tuesday night – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“We want to be feeling good,” Calgary defenseman Mark Giordano said. “We want to play well. If we do, we feel like we have a real good chance of winning the division. Anytime you can get a little breathing room it’s nice. They’ve been playing well. A couple losses for them and a couple wins for us changes things. You get a little gap.
“Three points is tight still. We’ve got to keep pushing forward and do our jobs. If we play the way we can and win the games we’re supposed to we’ll be in a good spot.”
The Blue Jackets are now just one point up on the Montreal Canadiens for the second wild in the east.
“You’ve got to take it one day at a time,” Columbus forward Matt Duchene said. “Today we lost some ground but we’re still in a spot.”
They may be in a spot but they are in a pickle if they don’t start winning games.
David Rittich made 31 saves to get the win for Calgary.
Zach Werenski and Oliver Bjorkstrand scored for Columbus who dropped to 40-29-4.
“We knew that tonight was going to be a tough test for us and they have a good record and a lot of good players on that team, but I thought we played a good game for the most part,” Columbus forward Josh Anderson said. “The second and third, we made a good push there.”
The Flames improved to 11-5-0 in their 16 games.
Johnny Gaudreau, Matthew Tkachuk, Michael Frolik and Andrew Mangiapane were the Flames’ strikers.
“It’s definitely big,” Frolik said. “When you score late in the period and early in the period it’s huge. It’s momentum. The game right now is all about momentum. When you come to the room and you score a late one, the momentum is on your side. We scored another one going into the second. The momentum was on our side.”
[WATCH: All Blue Jackets vs. Flames highlights]
Sergei Bobrovsky made 27 saves in the loss.
“We’re not getting the results, which is frustrating, but the process is there. The second you deviate from the process is when you start to fail and deserve to fail. We’ll keep going and stay with it,” Duchene said after the game.
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