In Ottawa, Calgary’s Dan Vladar made 27 saves in a 4-0 win for the Flames over the Senators on Sunday afternoon.
The Flames took a 1-0 lead in the opening stanza off a goal from Andrew Mangiapane.
“First off, they’re tough starts,” Calgary head coach Darryl Sutter said of Vladar’s workload. “[Being] that No. 2 guy or the classic backup guy, they’re tough starts. That’s part of it. That’s part of maturing as an NHL player. He’s showing that as we go. We’re still learning lots about him, but he’s learning how we want him to play, too.”
Elias Lindholm doubled the count early in the second period.
The Flames moved to 8-3-4.
“You know what the difference is in this league? Goaltending, star power, depth,” Sutter said. “So if you go over there to their team and ask their coaches, they’d wish they had their goalie, they have their stars and they’re testing their depth. [COVID-19] has run through teams lots. It did it last year, too.”
Matthew Tkachuk scored midway through the second period for a 3-0 lead to Calgary.
“They worked hard tonight, but I thought we worked smarter,” Calgary’s Matthew Tkachuk said. “We had the puck more, we played in their zone more, played solid defensively in front of Dan and he was there to bail us out when we had issues.”
The win snapped a four-game winless skid by Calgary.
“I think physically we were really, really engaged,” Sutter said. “Those [previous] two games in Montreal and Toronto are hard games. They take a lot out of your team. Besides the travel, they’re hard games to play. So this is a really good gut check for our team. They did a really good job. Mentally, they’re probably not as sharp as they need to be, but physically they were really good.”
Ottawa dropped to 4-10-1.
“We weren’t our sharpest, especially our top guys, and that’s understandable,” Ottawa head coach D.J. Smith said. “I thought we did have some good efforts, but at the end of the day, they just overwhelmed us with their four lines and six [defensemen].”
Nikita Zadorov ended any suspense when he scored with under two minutes gone in the third frame, for the 4-0 final score.
“Quite frankly we just weren’t good enough tonight, just everybody,” Ottawa’s Brady Tkachuk said. “We didn’t play the game we wanted to tonight, so we have to learn from this.”
Anton Forsberg made 29 saves in the Senators loss.
The Senators have 10 players in COVID-19 protocol including Drake Batherson, Austin Watson, Alex Formenton, Dylan Gambrell and Connor Brown, Nick Holden, Victor Mete, Nikita Zaitsev and Josh Brown, and Matt Murray.
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