In Calgary, the Flames frittered away a two-goal lead and then had to rally to force extra time on Thursday night before finally ending the night with a shootout win over the Florida Panthers, 6-5.
Matthew Tkachuk struck twice for the Flames.
“We’re lucky,” Tkachuk said. “That’s obviously a big two points, but we don’t want to get comfortable in games like that. We’ve got a two-goal lead in the third, you have to put it away. You think back to one of those games, those are the ones that cost us last year in the playoffs.”
Mark Giordano, Sam Bennett and Austin Czarnik also scored for the Flames in the regulation.
“We know we have to clean up a lot of areas,” Giordano said. “We’ll take the two points now but definitely some things we’ll have to go over again and clean up.”
David Rittich made 18 saves to get the win.
“I think in big games [Tkachuk] is always going to be there,” Giordano said. “You always want the puck on his stick, it seems, in high-pressure situations. He makes plays under pressure. That’s what makes him so good, no different from tonight. He made a couple great plays offensively that helped us score goals.”
Jonathan Huberdeau,Josh Brown, Evgenii Dadonov, Mark Pysyk, and MacKenzie Weegar scored for the Panthers who rallied from a 2-4 deficit to take a 5-4 lead.
“We have a lot of resiliency, we’re not going to shut it down and take a loss. We battled back, we’ve got some great character players on this team,” Panthers’ Aaron Ekblad said.
Sean Monahan was credited with the winner in the skills competition.
With the shootout loss, the Panthers pushed their point streak to seven games with a 3-0-4 record.
“You want to squeeze out every point you can, and when you come back the way we did from a 4-2 deficit, you try to find the positive in that,” Ekblad said. “We’re getting points on the road, we’ve got to keep putting them in the bank and try to get a couple wins here to make it a successful road trip.”
[WATCH: All Panthers vs. Flames highlights]
Sergei Bobrovsky made 19 saves in the loss.
“It’s a high-scoring game so it’s obviously tough for goalies,” Bobrovsky said. “Lots of scoring chances, not many shots, but all of them pretty much scoring chances.”
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