In Edmonton, the Calgary Flames’ Cam Talbot made 35 saves to shut out the Dallas Stars, 2-0, in Friday night.
The Game 3 win gives the Flames a 2-1 series lead.
“He was outstanding,” Calgary head coach Geoff Ward said. “He’s the reason why we won the hockey game. He’s been real good for us. I had no qualms at all. There wasn’t even a question of changing goalies going into this game today (following a 5-4 loss in Game 2 on Thursday). He’s been so solid for us. We knew he had confidence, (that) he would come out today and battle for us hard and give us a chance to win. He certainly did that. He was the difference in the hockey game.”
Mikael Backlund and TJ Brodie struck for the Flames.
“We all know we can be better,” Backlund said. “I don’t think we played our best game yet in the series yet. I think it shows a strength, too, to find a way to win games. You need that in the playoffs. You need a really good goalie, which we’ve had all along, and you also need to find ways to win. It doesn’t matter how you play as long as you win in playoffs.”
It was the second game in two nights for the two clubs, Game 4 is Sunday.
“We probably played better tonight than we did last night,” Dallas head coach Rick Bowness said. “We really did. The scoring opportunities were unreal. Talbot was great, so give him a lot of credit. … Some of our best scoring chances were missing the net. It’s hard to explain that one. We hit goalposts, we missed open nets so offensively, we played better than we did last night, and five goals go in last night and none go in tonight. That’s hockey.”
Backlund put the Flames up 1-0 in the middle frame with a shorthanded goal.
“I think we’ve been really aggressive this whole [playoffs] on our PK, especially on our blue line, standing up well,” Backlund said. “When the chances are there, we’ve gone after them aggressively. We haven’t been cheating, we’ve just been playing within our system and when the chances are there, we’ve been going for it and we’ve been successful.”
Brodie scored in the third period to ice the game.
“I felt pretty good from the get-go,” Talbot said. “They had some chances early on. I was able to feel the puck and make some saves and gain confidence from there. It was nice to get some shots early and feel the puck, especially after last night. I felt pretty good about my game tonight.”
[WATCH: All Stars vs. Flames highlights]
Anton Khudobin made 21 saves in the loss.
“I just think we’ve got leave this game behind, look at the next game,” Dallas’ Mattias Janmark said. “You can’t get too high after a win and you definitely can’t get too low after a loss. So you’ve just to keep working and then focus on the next game because we lost this one and then we’re going to go out and win the next game.”
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