Two goals in the first period and two more in the third propelled the visiting Calgary Flames to a 4-1 win over the Boston Bruins on Tuesday night.
Jonathan Huberdeau (goal, two assists) and Nazem Kadri (three assists) paced the Flames, who have now won back-to-back games bridging the All-Star break. The victories followed a four-game skid.
Andrei Kuzmenko opened the scoring in his Calgary debut, while Noah Hanifin and Connor Zary also lit the lamp.
The Flames had a 29-22 shot advantage and went 2-for-4 on the power play. Jacob Markstrom posted 21 saves.
Pavel Zacha scored and Jeremy Swayman made 25 stops for Boston, which was 8-1-3 in its previous 12 games.
The Flames benefited from a quick early swing on the power play, scoring the opening goal just 4:20 into the first. After Markstrom stopped Charlie Coyle on a short-handed break, Kuzmenko rushed up ice and sniped home Huberdeau’s pass. Kuzmenko was acquired from the Vancouver Canucks last week.
Zary doubled Calgary’s lead at 13:01 when he rushed up the left wing and took a Kadri feed into the slot, where he tucked a backhand shot past Swayman at the end of a 3-on-2 rush.
After being held scoreless on three minutes of man-up time resulting from Martin Pospisil’s cross-checking major early in the first, Boston was held to only five shots in the second period and had a near 12-minute stretch without one.
A MacKenzie Weegar double minor for high-sticking set the Bruins up with 1:09 of 5-on-3 time at the 3:40 mark, and Zacha needed only 34 seconds to one-time home a David Pastrnak pass from the right dot.
A too-many-men-on-the-ice penalty cut Boston’s power play 1:45 short. Not 30 seconds later, at 6:23, Huberdeau took the puck away from defenseman Charlie McAvoy and fired an insurance goal upstairs to extend the Flames’ lead to 3-1.
Hanifin slipped a backhand shot through Swayman for another power-play tally at 9:44, padding the lead to 4-1.
–Field Level Media
