FERLAND ON FIRE

Flames get best of Capitals

Johnny Gaudreau continues to be red-hot for the month of October.

The 24-year-old set up Sean Monahan for Sunday’s game winner in a 2-1 decision over the visiting Washington Capitals at the Scotiabank Saddledome.

Including that assist — a beauty, by the way, which came after he’d mishandled the puck and continued cruising around to find Monahan waiting at the side of Philipp Grubauer’s net — and an assist on Micheal Ferland’s second-period marker, Gaudreau equalled Alex Tanguay’s 12 assists back in 2007 for the most by a Flames player in the month of October.

And, frankly, the team needed him on this night.

Playing an excellent home game and protecting a 1-0 lead, the Flames ran into some extremely bad luck in the third period when a pass/clearing attempt by TJ Brodie ended up in the skate of Matthew Tkachuk and, also, linesman Kiel Murchison.

The puck stayed in Calgary’s zone and eventually landed on the stick of Jakub Vrana who fired a shot from the hashmarks. It trickled through Smith’s legs to knot the score 1-1 with 4:19 elapsed in the final frame.

If that wasn’t bad enough, after that the Flames had a four-on-one (!) opportunity as Mark Giordano jumped into the rush and had a pretty passing sequence going on with Gaudreau. But Grubauer was able to track Giordano’s eventual shot and stop it.

It all had been disappointing, considering the Flames had been playing an excellent home game for the previous 45 minutes.

And, Micheal Ferland, was one of the best players of the night.

The 25-year-old first-line winger hit the scoresheet 2:08 into the second period after making a heckuva play to set up Brett Kulak who was walking the blueline.

Kulak found an outlet, shot, and Ferland was able to get a piece of the blast as it sailed past the glove of Capitals netminder Grubauer.

Grubauer, of course, was filling in for Vezina finalist Braden Holtby.

Meanwhile, the Flames had lost four of their past five games.

More on Ferland who finished the second period with a goal, four shots on net and three hits.

After the puck squirted loose after a board-battle in the Capitals zone and the visitors emerged, Ferland pickpocketed Oshie in the neutral zone to send the play back into enemy territory.

This, of course, came after another prime scoring opportunity with Gaudreau.

He also wheeled on a makeshift line with Matt Stajan and Troy Brouwer which was thrown together midway through the second period.

The Flames were finally able to escape a game with their penalty kill in tact, something that seemed impossible to accomplish after allowing two power-play markers from the opposition on three opportunities — in three straight games.

On this night, they killed off both penalties — tripping infractions (Ferland and Kris Versteeg) that looked equally suspect — and came up short on two power-plays (Kulak had drawn a slashing penalty from Lars Eller while Chandler Stephenson sat off for too many men in the final two minutes of the game).

But the entire night started promising, in fact.

The Flames opened with two high quality scoring chances from Monahan and Gaudreau, who fired a shot that nearly went in via Ferland when Grubauer bobbled it.

Shortly after, Ferland had a redirect but it hit the post.

At that point, shots were 8-3 for Calgary.

As for Smith, the 35-year-old was near-perfect facing 31 shots and received the biggest cheers of the night when he was behind his net to play the puck and Alex Ovechkin cruised into the Flames netminder’s wheelhouse. You can guess what happens next. Smith leans into Ovechkin, which is sort of what Capitals head coach Barry Trotz had predicted prior to Sunday’s contest.

With the victory, the Flames improved to 6-6-0.

Now to find their secondary scoring. Their bottom eight forwards still only have two goals all season (both from Versteeg).