In Calgary, William Carrier and Brett Howden scored to give the visiting Vegas Golden Knights a 2-0 lead on Tuesday night. Like most other leads in the NHL on Tuesday, this was squandered.
The Flames rallied back with three unanswered goals in a 3-2 win.
Mikael Backlund scored the game-winner with 4:29 left in the third period.
“I had a feeling he was going to wrap it, take it to the net,” Backlund said. “I think I was going to drive far post. That’s usually where it ends up when somebody wraps it. I was happy to see it came onto my stick and I was just happy to put it in.”
Jacob Markstrom made 19 saves in the Flames win.
“It’s a good start. You can’t start any better statistically,” Calgary’s Blake Coleman said. “But every guy in this room thinks they’ve got another level to get to and more to add to this team if we really want to push to be a contender. These are nice little measuring stick games now, they’re going to be irrelevant come Game 60. We’ve just got to continue to focus on ourselves and keep getting better and better.”
Calgary’s Elias Lindholm and Tyler Toffoli (power play) scored to get the Flames even at 2-2.
“When we’re on we’re a really good team,” Backlund said. “We still haven’t played a full 60. You can tell this is a really good team, but we’ve got to put it together for 60 minutes now.”
Logan Thompson made 37 saves in the loss.
“We’ll definitely respond. It’s a veteran group here,” said Thompson, who is from Calgary. “We know what we’ve got to do and we’ll be better. Get back to practice and get back to work.”
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