In Chicago, Mike Smith made 22 saves to help the Calgary Flames defeat the visiting Blackhawks, 3-2.
“Probably not our best game, to be honest with you,” Travis Hamonic said. “But we found a way to get through it, found a way to win and come up with some big saves and some big plays at the end.”
Sean Monahan (15th), Elias Lindholm and Derek Ryan scored for the Flames who improved to 16-9-2.
Sean Monahan scored his 15th of teh season in win over Chicago – file photo by Lewis Bleiman
“It’s always hard to play [in Chicago]. I’ve played enough games in this building to know it’s not an easy building to come into and snag two points, so I think any time you can do that, no matter where in the standings, it’s always difficult. It was nice to get the two points,” Smith said. “I don’t think we feel it was our best effort, but the good thing about that is we got two points and we know we can be better, so that’s exciting.”
Jonathan Toews and Dylan Stromescored for the Hawks.
“We’re seeing improvement in parts of our game at times,” Toews said. “And then it just seems we make other mistakes and all the good things that we’re doing is never good enough. Yeah, it’s frustrating when you don’t get the results.
“When you see pucks go in and you get wins, it’s just a lot easier mentally to reinforce what you want to do as a team. It’s just not happening right now. We can’t sit around and sulk and expect things to turn around that way. All you do is you keep working and you stick with it.”
Chicago has 15 of its last 18 games and a head coaching change has little impact on the team’s fortunes or intensity.
“We’ve just got to find a way to break out of it,” Strome said. “Thought we played a pretty good game tonight, actually. [We] didn’t have the best first period, but we held in there and Corey was unreal for us in the beginning and throughout the whole game, obviously. But in the beginning, I think he made 15, 16 saves in the first period so that was obviously important for us to get out of there with a 1-1 tie.
“We were the better team for the last two periods, but they got the two points. [We’ve] got to find a way to break out of it and get the win here.”
[WATCH: All Flames vs. Blackhawks highlights]
Corey Crawford made 38 saves in taking the loss.
“I thought tonight was better, so we have to tell the truth about that. Regardless of the results, we don’t control the results, we control our performance, so let’s start playing better and then those things will take care of [themselves]. So that’s what we’ll deal with and we’ll give the guys some feedback and we’ll go from there,” Blackhawks head coach Jeremy Colliton said after another loss.
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