The Calgary Flames staved off an Edmonton Oilers comeback attempt for a 9-6 win in Game 1 of their best-of-seven series.
“We fought back and made it a game, but we can’t feel good about that in anyway because you scored six goals in a game and found a way to not win it,” Oilers head coach Jay Woodcroft said after the game. “So, there’s a lot of things for us to clean up and well go through the tape and give our team some.”
The Flames jumped out to a 2-0 lead with two goals in the first 51 seconds.
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“Strange game,” Flames head coach Darryl Sutter said. “We scored on our first two shots and there were probably six different games out there. Take the win. Move on.”
Elias Lindholm beat Mike Smith with a long wrist shot, then Andrew Mangiapane put a shot from close range in off the post. Brett Ritchie scored off a turnover 6:05 into the game, chasing Smith from the game after allowing three goals on 10 shots.
Connor McDavid slid a puck under Jacob Markstrom, but the Oilers were badly outplayed in the first.
The Flames were up 3-1 after the first period and had a 19-7 advantage in shots.
The onslaught continued in the second with Blake Coleman flipping in a rebound to make it 4-1 just 45 seconds into the session.
Coleman made it 5-1 before Evan Bouchard finished off a feed from McDavid.
It became 6-2 when Matthew Tkachuk batted a puck out of the air on the power play. Zach Hyman fooled Markstrom from a sharp angle as the teams combined for nine goals before the game was 30 minutes old.
Hyman scored again with 5:54 left in the second, then Leon Draisaitl struck on a partial breakaway in the final minute to pull Edmonton within a goal.
Kailer Yamamoto stuffed in a rebound early in the third, but Rasmus Andersson came right back for the Flames to make it 7-6 Calgary.
Tkachuk took advantage of an Oilers turnover to score on a breakaway with 11:05 to go. He added an empty netter to complete the hat trick.
“Not good. Not good at all,” Tkachuk said. “Probably our worst game of the playoffs so far. We got super-lucky.
“That’s just not the recipe for success. Maybe we win this one, but we’re not going to win many more if we’re going to play like that.”
McDavid finished with four points. Koskinen stopped 32 of 37 shots.
“Obviously you’re not going to win any games if you get scored on nine times, there’s no secret to that,” Draisaitl said. “And I think we can all be a lot better away from the puck and that obviously starts with myself.”
Game two is Friday (630 CHED, Face-off Show begins at 6 p.m., the game starts at 8:30 p.m.)
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