Flames’ streak ends in loss to Nashville

In Calgary, the Flames Express was stalled in the station on Tuesday night.

Matt Duchene scored in extra time for the Nashville Predators to give them a 3-2 win over the Flames.

“I was probably top-five most tired I’ve ever been during a shift,” Duchene said. “I was a bit of a tripod in the D-zone there. The boys out there, ‘Granny’ and [Mattias Ekholm], did a good job picking up my slack because I couldn’t move. I was going to go off. I thought ‘Granny’ and ‘Ekky’ were going to go 2-on-1 but ‘Ekky’ fell. I’m like, ‘Oh, I’ll hang in it’ and ‘Granny’ put a great pass on my stick and I was just able to get a shot off.”

It was the fourth straight win for the Predators.

Nashville’s Juuse Saros made 38 saves in the victory.

“We got unbelievable goaltending,” Nashville’s Mikael Granlund said. “I do not think we were even close to our best tonight. It’s tough to win in this league, and you don’t apologize if you win a game. We know we were not at our best but we found a way, and we got super good goaltending. We got these big two points.”

Calgary dropped to 6-1-2.

“It’s still a step for us,” Calgary head coach Darryl Sutter said. “It’s a battle-back point. You come from behind in the third, it’s still a good point. That point’s a big point for you.”

Matthew Tkachuk and Oliver Kylington were the Calgary strikers.

“I thought we showed good resilience and got back into the game,” Kylington said. “We created a lot of chances and maybe should’ve scored on some of them, but he’s a good goalie too.”

Luke Kunin and Filip Forsberg scored  in regulation for the Predators.

“It wasn’t our best game, but we had games earlier in the year where we played really well and didn’t get the result we probably deserved,” Duchene said. “[Saros] was our best player tonight and stole it for us. We did enough to win. We had some big kills when we needed it and some timely scoring, especially in the first. We got dominated in the first. It was probably our worst first period in a while, even going back to last year. ‘Juice’ was great for us.”

Jacob Markstrom made 19 saves in the Flames loss.

“I just thought we were all over them,” Tkachuk said. “Just got to bear down and bury our chances. Should’ve been up 4-1 or 4-2. We could’ve had four or five after the first period. Just have to bear down.”