‘We gave them goals’: Shortie turns the tide

The Calgary Flames had already tallied twice on the power play and were back on the man advantage, a golden opportunity to pad a onegoal lead.

Then, suddenly, the game was tied. The momentum was turned.

The Flames’ three-game winning streak ended with Tuesday’s 5-3 loss to the Vancouver Canucks at the Saddledome, and there’s little doubt the turning point was a short-handed strike by gritty winger Derek Dorsett late in the middle stanza.

“You’re up 3-2, two minutes to go in the second period … I’ve repeated a thousand times here what it means to go into a third with a lead,” Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan said with a grimace. “We get a power play and we give up a shortie. That’s a tough one to give up.”

With the Flames’ top unit on the ice, the Canucks’ penalty killers cleared the zone and speedster Brandon Sutter beat Flames blue-liner T.J. Brodie — arguably the most fleet-footed of the locals but apparently a bit unsure of the whereabouts of the puck — in a race to the prize.

Pestered by Brodie, Sutter wasn’t able to unload a shot as he cut toward the home net, but he had pulled starting goalie Mike Smith away from his crease and lifted a feed out front, bouncing the pass off the boot of the hard-charging Dorsett.

Gulutzan has repeated over and over and over again that winning the special-teams battle is imperative to winning the game, and on a night that both squads struck twice while up a body, Dorsett’s shortie was the difference in that category.

“Obviously having the lead coming out of the second is big, (but) we were still tied after two,” Brodie said. “We have to find a way to close those games out.”

They didn’t. Instead, they surrendered a pair — Bo Horvat’s would-be winner and then a key piece of insurance courtesy of the Sedin twins — in a 38-second span.

“I thought the goals we gave were just exactly that … We gave them goals,” Flames captain Mark Giordano said. “Unnecessary mistakes and turnovers, and they made us pay — you’re not going to win many when you give up five. We have to clean it up.”

Dougie Hamilton, Johnny Gaudreau and Micheal Ferland did the lamp-lighting in a losing effort for the Flames (8-7-0).

Sam Gagner would stake Vancouver to a 1-0 lead, scoring on a second effort on the power play, but Hamilton evened just 11 seconds left before the break, finishing off a pretty passing play with a short-side snipe.

It was Mikael Backlund who dished to Hamilton.

It was Matthew Tkachuk who earned the other official helper.

And who spied Tkachuk? None other than snake-bitten Sam Bennett, who is still seeking his first point.

Gaudreau, running third among all NHLers with 15 setups, scored one of his own just past the midway point of the second, wiring a wrister through traffic for the first of four goals in a wild seven-minute stretch.

Vancouver’s Thomas Vanek soon tied it up with a top-shelf rocket.

Ferland, who’d provided the screen on Gaudreau’s goal, muscled his way to the net and cashed in a wraparound.

When Alex Biega was whistled for tripping, the hosts must have been licking their chops, anxious to add to their lead. The opposite happened.

“We have to find a way to get it done,” Gulutzan said, refusing to take the out after he was asked if the Flames deserved a better fate Tuesday.

“You’d like to get some points out of a game that you played decently in, but we didn’t. That’s the league — it’s never easy.”