Calgary Flames 3 Dallas Stars 4 OT

Complete Stats

Recap

You can take a million things away from this game, but the Flames lost this game in the first period when the Stars gifted Calgary 3 PPO and they came up empty on each and every chance they had. The Flames didn’t fail for trying, but when the visiting team gives you the man advantage in the first period, 3 times, IN YOUR OWN BUILDING, you need to make them pay. Calgary didn’t.

The Flames did what they do best: gave up the opening goal and then roared back in the 3rd period. David Rittich played very well tonight and truth be told, you could probably only pin one of the 4 goals on the Flames keeper. Dallas’ first goal came on broken coverage, the second he had no chance and the third there was a ton of traffic in front of him. The OT goal? That’s all Rittich. The Flames keeper tried to clear a puck in overtime and the Dallas forecheck made Rittich pay, despite the Calgary goalie clamoring for goaltender interference. The on ice officials reviewed the play and ruled Tyler Seguin’s OT marker a good goal and that’s all she wrote.

The Flames once again handled their business for the most part in the 3rd period as both Johnny Gaudreau (PPG) and Mark Giordano scored to give the Flames a brief lead. Gio’s goal at 10:51 put Calgary ahead.....for all of 3 minutes. Gavin Bayreuther would collect an errant pass and deposit a wrister from the top of the left face off circle for the game tying goal for the Stars, sending us to OT.

The extra session didn’t last very long as Dallas would bury the game winner in under a minute, despite a protesting David Rittich. Jaime Benn would clip Rittich as he came through the crease, but Rittich had plenty of time to set himself and when he did, Tyler Seguin was waiting. The former #2 overall pick rarely misses with the puck on his stick and this was one of those times. Stick.Puck.Back of the net. 2 points for Dallas, 1 for Calgary.

Scoring

Calgary Flames

1st: 16:39- Hathaway (3) (Jankowski/Dube)

2nd: None

3rd: 9:41- PPG - Gaudreau (9) (Lindholm/Giordano), 10:51- Giordano (3) (Brodie/Backlund)

OT: None

Dallas Stars

1st: :41- Spezza (5) (Faksa/Heiskanen)

2nd: 18:02- PPG- Benn (10) (Seguin/Bayreuther)

3rd: 13:15- Bayreuther (2) (Unassisted)

OT: :24- Seguin (10) (Benn)

Final Thoughts

The Flames looked good at times tonight, but it certainly was not a complete effort by Calgary. The Flames out shot Dallas 33/28, but their special teams failed spectacularly tonight. The PK was 50% on the night, giving up a PPG to Jaime Benn and the PP was non-existent, minus Johnny Gaudreau. Calgary was 1-5 with the man advantage and part of that was the play of Anton Khudobin. Khudobin stopped 5 of the 6 shots he saw while playing man down and he shut the Flames down when they were pushing late in the game. The hard part to swallow for Calgary will be that Khudobin has surrendered 14 goals in his previous 5 games coming into tonight.

Flame Of The Game

Photo by Derek Leung/Getty Images

Mark Giordano: The Captain pretty much did it all tonight. He scored. He fed Gaudreau on his PPG and he had a HUGE blocked shot as regulation was winding down to help keep Dallas off the board.

What’s Next?

11/30: Calgary Flames vs LA Kings, 7 PM MT