Sean Monahan’s OT Winner Sends Flames To 5th Straight Victory

Calgary Flames 5 – Colorado Avalanche 4 (OT)

Complete Stats

Scoring

Calgary Flames

1st: None

2nd: 9:32- Ryan (5) (Kylington/Dube), PPG 16:04- Tkachuk (12) (Giordano/Lindholm)

3rd: 00:12- Mangiapane (6) (Tkachuk/Lindholm), 1:39- Frolik (2) (Rieder/Jankowski)

OT: 2:09- Monahan (9) (Dube/Giordano)

Colorado Avalanche

1st: 4:32- Graves (5) (Donskoi/Compher)

2nd: 10:04- Nichushkin (5) (Graves/Nieto)

3rd: 3:59- MacKinnon (19) (Calvert/Cole), 10:45- Donskoi (13) (MacKinnon/Burakovsky)

OT: None

Recap

That’s about what you’d expect for two teams playing as well as they are right now. The Calgary Flames and Colorado Avalanche played an extremely entertaining 82 minutes of hockey Monday night with the Flames coming away with a 5-4 victory in overtime.

This one started off like it was going to be a long night for the Flames when Ryan Graves scored this 5th of the season a mere 4:32 into the first period. Colorado was much faster than the Flames all night long and a goal that early, from a team with that much depth looked like it could have sent the Flames to their third loss of the season to the Avalanche. Not this time.

The Flames were resilient all night long, even after they tied the game at 1-1 on Derek Ryan’s 5th of the season, only to give it right back to the Avs 32 seconds later. Calgary kept grinding away and were able to answer Colorado’s second goal of the game with a PP marker off the stick of Matthew Tkachuk to send the game to the second intermission tied 2-2.

Calgary must have jumped into the rejuvenation machine between periods because they came out hot in the third period. Only 12 seconds had ticked off the clock after the opening face off when Andrew Mangiapane would beat Pavel Francouz to put the Flames up 3-2. Not to be outdone, Michael Frolik would snap a scoring drought, depositing his second of the season on a nice feed from Tobias Rieder and just like that the Flames had a commanding 4-2 lead. The only issue was there was still 18:21 left in the final period and the Avs would not waste it.

Colorado would turn on the jets and really start to push hard after Calgary’s 4th goal. Nathan MacKinnon would strike first, scoring his 19th of the season barely two minutes after the Flames took a two goal lead to close the gap to 4-3. Then at the 10:45 mark of the third Jonas Donskoi would sneak down the left side and beat a slightly out of position David Rittich to tie the game at 4-4.

Each team had chances as the period would wind down, but nothing would come of it so it was off to overtime. In the extra session some nifty skating and stick work by Dillon Dube would allow the Flames to enter the Colorado zone where Sean Monahan would beat Francouz for his 9th of the season and give the Flames their 5th straight victory.

Final Thoughts

There wasn’t much more you could ask for from a game between two teams plating as well as the Flames and Avalanche. You almost felt it would have been a shame for this contest to NOT go to overtime.

You could see why the Avalanche had won six in a row coming into this game as they are just so fast with the puck and their depth is off the charts. Remember the old “all the Avs have is Rantanen, MacKinnon and Landeskog” talk from early last season? You can bury that talk because Colorado is incredibly deep and talented.

The Flames depth was on full display tonight as well. Derek Ryan had a goal. Andrew Mangiapane had a goal. Dillon Dube had a two point night. Michael Frolik scored and Mark Jankowski finally made the score sheet.

David Rittich was solid tonight for the Flames, stopping 28 of the 32 shots that came his way and he’d probably only put one of those on himself. He wasn’t very busy when the Flames were a man down as Colorado only had one shot on their two power plays and Rittich stopped it with ease.

Flame Of The Game

Dillon Dube (C): Dube had a two point night with two assists and won 65% of his face offs. The biggest play of his night was his zone entry in OT that led to Sean Monahan’s GWG.

What’s Next?

12/10: Calgary Flames @ Arizona Coyotes, 7 PM MT

by Mark Parkinson