Flames lose ground after loss to Oilers

In Edmonton, Connor McDavid scored once and had three points for the Oilers in a 4-1 win over the Calgary Flames on Saturday.

“Personally, I want to continue to play good hockey, our group wants to continue to play good hockey,” McDavid said. “We want to go into the [Stanley Cup] Playoffs on a good note. Personally, it’s a number and it’d be different to be able to do it in a shortened season, but I’m not going to change anything. I’m going to keep playing my game, and if I get there, I get there.”

Mike Smith made 29 saves in the win.

“I thought we came out with a lot of jump tonight,” Smith said. “The last game wasn’t ideal, a back-to-back for us, and you could tell our energy level was as low as I’ve seen it for a long time. And tonight was the opposite. We were jumping. The first period was real solid, and I don’t know if we thought they were just going to go away, but they kept coming at us and we sat back a little bit and didn’t do anything to push the game along.”

Johnny Gaudreau  scored the lone Flames goal.

“We came back in the second period and we just couldn’t get the tying goal,” Calgary head coach Darryl Sutter said. “Connor’s got 18 or 19 goals in this rink this year, so you best start the game right up the middle or that gets you in trouble. So you’re chasing the lead and don’t score enough goals. When you get down two, it’s tough in this building.”

Leon Draisaitl assisted on all four Oilers goals.

“I like the way we started the game. We started really well and then we took two penalties, which took the momentum away from us,” Oilers head coach Dave Tippett said. “Give Calgary credit, they pushed hard the whole game, but we hung in there and we were able to get the win.

Josh Archibald and Darnell Nurse scored empty-net goals for the 4-1 final.

“I didn’t love our second period, even though we had that power play and I had a chance to put the game away and a couple of guys had chances,” McDavid said. “To put them down 3-0 would have been huge, but we kind of gave them life and I thought they took over the second period. The third period, I thought we did a good job holding the lead.”

Jacob Markstrom made 25 saves in the loss.