In Buffalo, the Calgary Flames’ Elias Lindholm scored with 1:17 gone in extra time to defeat the Sabres, 3-2, on Wednesday night.
Win capped a successful 3-0-1 roadie for the Flames who had been mired in a funk.
“It was huge,” Lindholm said. “Obviously, the way the trip started (a 5-0 loss at the St. Louis Blues on Nov. 21) was tough. Tough to lose that one, [but] I think we battled back, and at the end there, [we] come home with a pretty good road trip.”
Calgary’s Matthew Tkachuk scored early in the third period to get the teams even at 2-2 pushing the game to an extra session.
“When they make it 2-1, it’s never fun in the third on the road, but we did a good job of getting back to our game, getting one and getting it to overtime,” Tkachuk said. “You never know what can happen in overtime or a shootout, so it was a big extra point for us.”
David Rittich made 34 saves in the win as the Flames improved to 12-12-4.
Jimmy Vesey and Victor Olofsson were the Sabres rattlers in the loss.
“We definitely had the chances to put it away after the 2-1 [goal], and the inability to do that and then have a D-zone breakdown to allow them back into the game is really, really disappointing,” Sabres coach Ralph Krueger said. “Again, it’s a painful situation that we have to manage and use in the right way.
“But if you look at the effort overall there was a lot of good hockey there from our side too, and I thought we recovered well from the first goal against, came back strong to take the lead and then, yeah, giving it up is definitely not acceptable.”
Buffalo dropped to 11-10-4.
“I don’t know what it is, but we’re finding a way to not close out games,” Vesey said. “Maybe things are snowballing just the way it’s gone. We’ve got to get back to the start of the year. When we were playing like that, there was a really good feeling in this room and we’ve played that style for stretches. It’s a results league, and right now we have to find a way to get back.”
TJ Brodie also scored for the Flames.
“I think this group has been through a lot,” Lindholm said. “The way last season ended, I think we as a group are pretty good and strong together and obviously, this thing going on right now, I think as a group we tried to stay calm and tried to do whatever we could out on the ice.”
[WATCH: All Flames vs. Sabres highlights]
Linus Ullmark made 26 saves in the loss.
“We have to finish when we get a chance,” Buffalo’s Jeff Skinner said. “Our power play’s got to get a little bit better; it seems like that sort of sucks a little momentum out of us. We work hard, we spend time in their zone, we do a good job of drawing a penalty. [It] just seems like we can’t buy one there right now. Five-on-5 too, we’ve got to do a better job of finishing our chances and closing out games.”
NOTE via NHL.com: Calgary is being coached by associate Geoff Ward while the NHL and Flames continue investigating a claim that coach Bill Peters used racial slurs in addressing a player earlier in his coaching career.
PHN will have more on this later