A hair-raising third period was not enough for the Calgary Flames after posting two goals in the frame.
All it did was make the loss, 3-2, to the Montreal Canadiens a little more respectable.
Carey Price made 21 saves for the Habs to blunt the Flames’ rally from a 3-0 deficit and 
preserve the win.
Byron Froese, Nicolas Deslauriers and Brendan Gallagher scored for Montreal as they had a 3-0 lead through the early minutes of the final frame.
“We’re not satisfied, and now we’ve got guys coming back from injury,” Froese said. “We’ve got a healthy club now, so it’s creating a lot of in-house competition. That’s really going to motivate our guys and our club. Anytime you win a hockey game it’s a good feeling, and you’re going to be feeling good the next day too.”
Gallagher scored early in the third to get the game-winner.
“I was really starting to feel bad for my linemates,” Gallagher said. “They deserved a little better. They created a lot of chances for me, so it was nice to put one in at the end.”
The Habs moved to 16-15-4 with the win.
Micheal Ferland and Matthew Tkachuk scored in the third period to make the last 90 seconds of the game a little mor4 intense.
“You never want to go into the break with a loss like this,” Tkachuk said. “It [stinks]. I think it should be easy for me going home being distracted with all the family Christmas festivities, but when we get back we’ve got to remember this one. This shouldn’t be the staple of our team, the way we played tonight. I don’t want it to be.”
The Flames dropped to 18-15-3 with the loss.
“We had a push at the end of the game, but it’s too late,” Flames forward Sam Bennett said. “If we got that push in the first 10 (minutes), I think it would have been a different game.”
[WATCH: All Canadiens vs. Flames highlights]
Mike Smith made 32 saves in the loss.
“I feel like we just didn’t have the puck all night long. They played a good game, and I think they came out with that mentality. When we got pucks into their end, it was easy for them to get out and it was hard for us to get out of our zone, so I don’t know. I think it just had to do with us getting outworked, every single player on our team,” Tkachuk said after the loss.
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