Elias Lindholm scored once in a three-point game and Jonathan Huberdeau snapped his goal-scoring drought while adding an assist as the host Calgary Flames claimed a 5-2 victory over the Vancouver Canucks on Thursday.
MacKenzie Weegar, Dillon Dube and Noah Hanifin also scored for the Flames, who won consecutive games for just the second time this season. Calgary goaltender Jacob Markstrom made 20 saves, and Blake Coleman collected two assists.
Elias Pettersson and Nils Hoglander scored for the Canucks, who went into the night’s action atop the Western Conference and on a 10-1-1 run. Goalie Casey DeSmith stopped 34 shots.
Pettersson opened the scoring midway through the first period with a power-play tally. J.T. Miller fired a cross-ice pass to the right faceoff dot and Pettersson ripped a one-timer home for his eighth of the season.
The Flames responded with what may be their best game of the season. Weegar evened the score with 2:05 remaining in the opening frame. He jumped into a rush and, upon getting the drop pass, rifled a top-corner shot for his third goal of the campaign.
Dube put the Flames ahead just past the middle of the second period with his third of the season. Rasmus Andersson’s shot was stopped, but the puck was loose behind DeSmith and Dube swept it into the cage.
Then Hanifin extended the lead to 3-1 with 35.1 seconds remaining in the middle frame. The defenseman drove from his point position, worked around a defender and neatly chipped the puck into the net for his third of the season.
Huberdeau, the club’s highest-paid player who was benched for all of the third period in the last home game, notched his first goal in 12 games at 5:53 of the third period to make it 4-1. After gaining the puck in the left circle, he calmly lifted the close-in chance for his third of the campaign.
Hoglander’s deflection tally at 10:06 of the third period, his fourth goal of the season, pulled the Canucks to within a pair of goals, but Huberdeau set up Lindholm’s empty-net goal to round out the scoring.
Vancouver’s Filip Hronek had his franchise-record-tying point streak among defensemen snapped at 11 games.
–Field Level Media
