Canucks’ winning streak comes to crashing halt in Calgary

CALGARY (CP) — Matt Stajan’s first goal in 14 games ended up as the game winner Saturday night as the Calgary Flames built up an early lead and hung on for a 3-1 victory over the Vancouver Canucks.

Calgary opened the scoring at 14:26 of the first period when Alex Chiasson deflected Sean Monahan’s shot past Jacob Markstrom out of mid-air.

Just 1:03 later, the Flames scored again. Darted down the wing, Garnet Hathaway zipped a hard pass in front that was neatly steered in by Stajan as he bowled his way to the net.

Michael Frolik also scored for Calgary (2218-2), which salvages a split of the home-andhome series. Vancouver won 4-2 on Friday night despite being outshot 46-13.

Setting up Frolik’s insurance goal at 18:10 of the third was rookie Matthew Tkachuk, who extends his point streak to nine games (one goal, nine assists). It is the longest point streak for a rookie this season.

Bo Horvat scored for Vancouver (20-19-3), which sees its six-game winning streak come to an end.

The Canucks were forced to dress just five defencemen due to upper-body injuries to Ben Hutton and Chris Tanev.

Vancouver got a great chance to tie it, getting a power-play chance with five minutes remaining in the third. But despite peppering Chad Johnson with four shots — double what they had for shots in the period up until that point — they could not tie it. Sven Baertschi and Henrik Sedin had two of the best chances.

Johnson had 28 saves to win for the first time since Dec. 10 and improve to 14-8-1. He had lost his last four starts while seeing Brian Elliott get most of the playing time.

Johnson was at his best when Vancouver peppered him with 13 shots in the second period, beating him only once.