Five players scored a goal apiece Saturday night for the host Calgary Flames, who defeated the New York Islanders 5-2 for their sixth straight win.
Adam Ruzicka and Christopher Tanev scored in the first, Andrew Mangiapane collected the game-winner in the second and Erik Gudbranson and Elias Lindholm added goals in the third for the Flames, who matched their six-game winning streak from Oct. 21-30.
Goalie Jacob Markstrom made 19 saves.
Noah Dobson and Jean-Gabriel Pageau scored for the Islanders, who have lost the middle two games of a four-game road trip.
Goalie Ilya Sorokin, pressed into duty when scheduled starter Semyon Varlamov was placed in the COVID-19 protocol just before faceoff, recorded 24 saves.
An impressive effort by defenseman Rasmus Andersson generated the Flames’ first goal just before the midway point of the first period.
Andersson skated from one end of the Islanders’ zone to the other and clipped the blue line before he headed for the right faceoff circle and shed New York right winger Cal Clutterbuck. After going behind the net, Andersson dished a perfect pass through Dobson to Ruzicka, who fired a shot into the upper left corner of the net at the 9:58 mark.
Dobson tied the game by scoring on the power play with 2:53 left. But the Flames went ahead for good 61 seconds later when Tanev’s shot clipped off the stick of the Islanders’ Zach Parise and fluttered past Sorokin.
Some nifty passing by the Flames helped them extend the lead to 3-1 with 4:28 left in the second. Blake Coleman passed across the ice to Nikita Zadorov, who immediately sent a no-look dish to Ruzicka. The center then fired into the crease, where the puck glanced off Mangiapane’s stick and into the net.
Pageau pulled the Islanders within a goal again just 1:18 later when he took a pass from Parise, who was behind the Flames’ net, ands buried a shot over Markstrom’s right shoulder.
–Field Level Media
