In Nashville Thursday night, the Calgary Flames’ Matthew Tkachuk capped a four-goal third period with a goal at 19:21 to force extra time with the Predators.
The goal tied the game 5-5 after the Flames had tied the score at 4-4 earlier in the third.
Tkachuk completed the rally with a goal at 4:58 of the extra session to give the Flames a 6-5 win.
“I try it it seems like once a game,” Tkachuk said. “I’m lucky it went in. I knew there was very little time on the clock. Very little, like a couple seconds. Where the puck was, I couldn’t get my feet or my body around to keep it on my forehand. I didn’t think I’d have the time to do that and I didn’t want to go ahead of it to try and backhand smack it, so that was kind of the last resort. And it went in, which was nice.”
David Rittich made 31 saves to get the win for Calgary who improved to 7-6-2.
“I thought we had the puck lots, and if we didn’t, it was the most we had it in a game,” Calgary coach Bill Peters said. “I thought we were dangerous, and we were looking to make plays and we were playing with confidence. You can’t play with one foot on the gas and one on the brake. So let’s take the one off the brake.”
Austin Watson scored twice in the game including one goal to give the Preds a late 5-4 lead.
“I didn’t think it was going to be possible after the first 10 minutes,” Tkachuk said. “Especially with them scoring two shorthanded goals, it kind of took the life out of us. To start the third, [Andersson] had a really big goal. Good play by [Flames forward Johnny Gaudreau]. We were all over them in that third period, and that’s the way we need to be to be at our best.”
Calle Jarnkrok scored twice on the penalty kills for Nashville.
“We stopped playing in the second, and we stopped playing even more in the third,” Jarnkrok said.
Nick Bonino opened the scoring when he gave the Preds an early 1-0 lead.
Elias Lindholm, Derek Ryan, Rasmus Andersson, and Alan Quine scored single markers for the Flames.
“I think all 24 guys in here get a lot of confidence out of a win like that,” Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson said. “Now we’ve just got to keep it going, start off better and finish off the way we did.”
[WATCH:Â All Flames vs. Predators highlights]
Pekka Rinne made 21 saves in the loss.
“When you lose a game like this, you want to get back on the ice and get out there as quick as you can,” Predators coach Peter Laviolette said. “We’ve been pretty consistent for the whole year. I think the one thing that we’ll go back and look at is that we just really stopped playing the game offensively.”
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