Vegas fails to gain any traction, drop 4-1 decision to Flames Coleman leads four-goal outburst with a double

In Calgary, the Flames had very little to show for a tight contest with the visiting Vegas Golden Knights on Thursday evening. The Flames trailed 1-0 entering the third period on a second period strike by Vegas’ Anthony Mantha at 17:56.

Behind a double by Blake Coleman in the third period, the Flames rallied with four goals in the third to take a 4-1 win.

Dustin Wolf made 28 saves in the win.

“It feels good, obviously,” Wolf said. “That’s the game of hockey, right? You get the save at one end and the goal at the other. That kind of happens more often than you think. Pretty pivotal moment in the game where I was just trying to stay as dialed in as I could, and things just worked out perfectly.”

The Flames moved to 32-29-5, snapping an ugly three-game skid.

“Just a good response,” Coleman said. “I thought everybody, for whatever reason, the trade deadline, the travel, whatever it was, loomed heavy on our group a little bit. We were all pretty disappointed with the way the last few games went. We’ve had some good look-in-the-mirror meetings here in the last 24 hours, and I thought everybody to a man responded really well. All around it was a good team game.”

In the third period, the Flames came out with a marker by  Yegor Sharangovich  at 4:00  to tie the game, 1-1.

Coleman picked up his first of the period midway through the third for a 2-1 lead to the Flames.

Vegas dropped to 35-24-7, ending a brief two-game streak.

“I’d like to see them have some urgency and realize it’s not automatic that we’re going to get a chance to repeat,” Golden Knights coach Bruce Cassidy said. “You have to earn your way in. We’re not playing well enough right now to assure that. If you’re losing playing well, you say, ‘OK that’s just hockey some nights.’ There has to be recognition at some point. The clock is ticking. We’re OK today, but who knows next week if this sort of attitude doesn’t change.”

Calgary’s Matt Coronato  padded the lead at 14:45, scoring form the left side for a 3-1 advantage.

Coleman collected his double at at 17:02 when he hit an empty net for the 4-1 final count on the scoreboard. .

“It was an embarrassing 72 hours for our team,” Coleman said. “We maybe didn’t handle our response to losing some guys and some friends (at the deadline) … and we got slapped pretty hard for not showing up and being our best. At the end of the day, if you’ve got pride and you get beat up like that, you better respond or you don’t really belong in this league. We had a lot of guys that were not happy with the last few games, and everybody stepped up and was much better and was who we expect them to be.”

Adin Hill made 33 saves in the loss.

“We’re fighting for the playoffs right now, and the fight isn’t there,” Vegas’ Brayden McNabb said. “We need to reset and get back to it.”