Eichel the overtime hero for the Sabres
This is the sort of loss that can haunt a playoff hopeful.
This should have been a nodoubter for the Calgary Flames — a home-ice date with one of the NHL’s cellar-dwellers.
Instead, they were fortunate to even claim a point in Monday’s 2-1 overtime loss to the Buffalo Sabres at the Saddledome.
“I think everybody in there is smart enough to know that any given team can beat you on any given night,” said sophomore leftwinger Matthew Tkachuk, the lone marksman for the home side. “I don’t think we took them lightly or sat back or thought it was going to be an easy game at all.
“I just think that they played better than us.” No argument here. You shouldn’t need your goalie to steal a game against a squad sharing the basement suite in the NHL standings. Still, Flames stalwart Mike Smith did his darnedest.
Both teams fired 33 shots on goal, but Smith seemed to face most of the Grade-A chances. He’s the biggest reason a sudden-death session was required and certainly can’t be blamed on Jack Eichel’s game-winner.
Flames centre Mikael Backlund was busted for holding-the-stick with just 32.5 ticks remaining in regulation and, just as he was being freed from the sin bin, the Sabres’ star centre ripped a onetimer from the top of the left circle to end it.
The good news is the locals extended their point streak to nine games — seven straight wins followed by a couple of close-call points.
The Flames weren’t pleased with their execution or offensive zone time, but insisted the Sabres deserved credit, too, for their bounceback effort after Saturday’s lopsided loss to the Dallas Stars.
“If you were at ice level, it was hard-fought,” said Flames head coach Glen Gulutzan. “They were battling hard. We just were a little out of sync and the game was a little choppy. I could tell, even after we scored early, it was going to be a hard-fought, low-scoring game because they were in the trenches.
“We told that to our guys after the first — ‘This is going to get into the bowels.’ And it did.”
Scott Wilson had Monday’s regulation tally for the Sabres, who arrived with just one win in their past eight games, while former Flame Chad Johnson finished with 32 saves.
The Sabres and Arizona Coyotes both won Monday and continue to share the bottom peg in the NHL’s overall standings.
Tkachuk opened Monday’s scoring with a dandy deflection, rerouting Johnny Gaudreau’s wrist-shot just inside the right post on a firstperiod power play. The 20-yearold Tkachuk has scored 14 times, one better than his total during his rookie campaign.
The out-of-towners evened things up only 24 seconds later, even before in-house announcer Beesley could spit out the details of Tkachuk’s man-advantage marker.
Next up is Wednesday’s clash with the Los Angeles Kings at the Saddledome (8 p.m., Sportsnet 360/Sportsnet 960 The Fan).