Fans had best be prepared to remain in their seats until the final buzzer when the Calgary Flames play host to the Carolina Hurricanes on Thursday night.
Both clubs are coming off comeback overtime victories in which they erased late deficits. That is only part of the tale. The Hurricanes have won all three games when trailing after the second period this season, while the Flames also have delivered a trio of comeback victories.
Both teams feel emboldened by their resiliency early in the season.
“I know what we have in there. Whether we won or not, that really doesn’t change anything,” Hurricanes coach Rod Brind’Amour said after his team’s 3-2 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday. “It’s one of those games where nothing is going our way, even when we had chances, we couldn’t find a way to get a goal and it wasn’t looking good. But they just kept playing, and that’s all they can do. You’ve got to give the guys a lot of credit for that, digging in there, finding a way.”
Curiously, the Hurricanes have won all three games in which they surrendered the first goal and lost in regulation both games in which they opened the scoring.
“You want to get points any way you can, but this kind of win, coming back from two-zip on the road, shows a lot about our team,” said Sebastian Aho, who scored the winning goal in overtime. “Especially after it felt like we got a few bad breaks early on, it didn’t get us down. We just kept pushing forward.”
Heading into the Calgary game, Aho is riding a four-game point streak in which he has netted two goals and four assists. Shayne Gostisbehere has scored in four consecutive games, which ties the franchise record for defensemen.
The Flames, who claimed a 4-3 shootout victory over the Pittsburgh Penguins on Tuesday, continue to be one of the league’s biggest early season positive surprises. Calgary has won five of six games, with the lone blemish an overtime loss.
“Every person in this room believes in this team,” defenseman MacKenzie Weegar said. “You go down in the third period twice, it’s not easy to crawl back, but we’ve shown resiliency. I’m proud of the way we battled and came back.”
Heading into the season, the Flames were pegged to be bottom feeders, but they currently sit atop the Pacific Division and have earned points in their first six games for the first time since relocating from Atlanta to Calgary for the 1980-81 campaign. They have started the season with three home wins for the first time since the 1991-92 season.
Those preseason prognostications struck a chord with the club, and the players are using it as motivation while embracing an underdog mentality.
“If you look around the room, there’s a lot of guys who are underdogs,” Weegar said. “They’ve come up the hard way maybe, it hasn’t been easy, and now that everybody’s here, they have that same mentality. It’s been working for us.”
As positive as the feelings are for the Flames these days, some sobering thoughts are easy to find. Notably, how they been outshot in four of their last five outings, including by a 38-25 margin against the Penguins.
“I didn’t feel we played our best, but you take a win in this league, even when you’re not at your best,” defenseman Rasmus Andersson said. “It’s something to build on and we have a really good test (Thursday).”
–Field Level Media
