In Calgary, Dominik Kubalik and Tyler Bertuzzi scored late in the second period to give the Detroit Red Wings a 4-2 lead over the Flames on Thursday night.
Pius Suter scored in the third to seal a 5-2 win for Detroit.
“It’s a great feeling. We’ve been looking for something like this for a while now, quite honestly,” Detroit forward David Perron said. “All year we’ve been talking about if we want to be in this [Stanley Cup] Playoff picture, eventually you have to make up points on other teams. I think we’ve done that recently.”
For Kubalik, it was his second goal of the game.
Magnus Hellberg made 33 saves for the Detroit win.
“Obviously, it’s a great feeling,” Hellberg said. “You feel the team has some good confidence. It feels like we just keep grinding. We trust each other and everybody works hard for each other. A lot of smiles in this locker room after this win for sure.”
Detroit improved to 26-20-8.
“We’ve got to keep going,” Perron said. “Any night you don’t gather points, other teams you’re chasing or around [you] are all winning, it seems like. That’s just the way the League goes. It’s a good feeling to be a part of that right now.”
Elias Lindholm scored at 13:22 in the first period to give the Flames a 1-0 lead.
Kubalik scored his first of the match about two and half minutes later to tie the game, 1-1 headed to the middle frame.
Calgary dropped to 25-19-11.
“We’ve been a roller coaster all year,” Calgary defenseman Chris Tanev said. “Good one game, [stink] the next. Good one game, [stink] the next. That’s on the leaders in here. That’s me. My fault.
“It’s a must-win game. We needed to win the game, and we lost to the same team twice in a week. We need to be better everywhere.”
Robby Fabbri scored off the power play at 2:27 of the second to give Detroit a 2-1 lead.
“We finally kind of have the lines the way we kind of want them,” Perron said. “Everything’s starting to click, everyone’s starting to find their role. It’s a good feeling to string wins together right now. I think the challenge as we go here is to keep pushing. We don’t want to stop here.”
The Flames replied with a marker form Dillon Dube for a 2-2 tie ahead of the Red Wings’ later period outburst.
“It’s the best time of the year,” Calgary’s Mikael Backlund. said. “You want to be in a playoff spot. You want to play meaningful games like we are. You want to battle. And we should be coming out with more energy. We should play better. It’s tough. If I had the answers, we would have fixed it.”
Dan Vladar made 19 saves in the Flames loss.
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