The Calgary Flames will face the Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday, with both teams looking to build on recent close wins.
The Flames are coming off a 3-2 win against the Seattle Kraken on Sunday, while the Maple Leafs started their four-game road trip with a 4-3 victory over the Edmonton Oilers on Saturday.
Toronto took a 4-1 lead against Edmonton in the third period but needed 45 saves from Joseph Woll to hold off a late Oilers push.
“I’m not critiquing the wins, because a win’s a win, but I think we could have pushed a little bit more on them,” said Maple Leafs coach Craig Berube. “Woll was great, guys battled, it was a battle, playoff-type game.”
Before this win, Toronto had struggled, scoring just one goal in each of their last three losses. However, they managed to match that total within the first half of Saturday’s game.
“I was looking to get that jump back, get in a rhythm, and this was (a) step in the right direction,” said forward Matthew Knies, who returned from an upper-body injury to score Toronto’s second goal against the Oilers.
Toronto’s three-game losing streak had allowed teams behind them in the standings to close the gap for second place in the Atlantic Division. As of Monday, they were four points ahead of the third-place Ottawa Senators.
The Maple Leafs could be without defenseman Oliver Ekman-Larsson, who missed Monday’s practice due to a lower-body injury and is considered day-to-day.
For Calgary, the win over Seattle came after a tough turnaround. The Flames had lost 3-1 at home to the Detroit Red Wings on Saturday night and didn’t arrive in Seattle until 3 a.m. local time on Sunday.
“That was a tough back-to-back, a tough turnaround,” said Morgan Frost, who scored his first goal for Calgary after being traded from the Philadelphia Flyers. “Obviously, I’m really new here, but it kind of shows the resiliency that this group has. Everybody was confident all day and in between periods, and just a great attitude in the room. It felt like we were going to win all day.”
Frost scored the first goal against Seattle just over 14 minutes into the game, and the Flames added two power-play goals in the first period. They then managed to hold on despite Seattle controlling the play in the final two periods.
“There were a lot of things that we did well, the power play, the penalty kill, and I thought we were skating early,” said Calgary coach Ryan Huska. “Of course, we took water on as it went on, but we’ve had a tough stretch of games as well, with some travel issues (Saturday) night, so I’m really, really pleased.”
The Flames currently hold the Western Conference’s second wild-card spot and are just one point behind the Los Angeles Kings for third in the Pacific Division—impressive for a team that many expected to be near the bottom of the standings.
A big reason for Calgary’s playoff push is the strong play of forward Jonathan Huberdeau, who scored his 20th goal of the season on Sunday.
“Been around the net more this year, so been fortunate to get some bounces, and score some goals there,” Huberdeau said. “Hopefully can keep going, can have some more.”
