Flames lose ground in West Jets add distance in wild card race

In Vancouver, the Calgary Flames’ playoff chances were flickering on dim into the third period on Saturday night, until Elias Lindholm and Nazem Kadri scored to knot their match with the Canucks at 2-2, and force extra time.The extra session solved nothing.

Andrei Kuzmenko was the lone striker on penalties to give the Canucks a 3-2 win.

“A sour taste from this one,” Lindholm said. “It’s going to sting a little bit.”

Thatcher Demko made 41 saves in the Vancouver win.

“We know where they are, so we know they were going to come out hard and we wanted to match that, and I think we did a really good job,” Vancouver forward Elias Pettersson said. “I think we let our foot off the gas, but other than that I’m happy with our team.”

The Canucks improved to 36-36-7.

Cole McWard staked the Canucks to a 1-0 lead off his first career NHL goal, in front of his family.

“Happy I got to score in front of them,” McWard said. “I got the puck up top, thought maybe I could walk to the middle and get the shot and they took that away, so went back outside and got it through and just saw it go in. It was awesome.”

His goal came midway through the first.

“It’s not really winning hockey for me,” Vancouver coach Rick Tocchet said. “When Calgary put pushes on us, I just saw some backup. We’ve got to get that out of here. You’ve got to lock it down and you can’t just rely on [Demko]. He played great.”

Pettersson scored on a shorthanded breakaway in the first to push the advantage to 2-0.

“I had a lot of thinking to do before I shot it, so I just tried to shoot it quick and beat him,” Pettersson said.

Jacob Markstrom made 31 saves in the loss.