The Calgary Flames scored four goals.
Yeah, really.
Yeah, finally.
The Flames notched more than three goals for the first time since mid-October — they had failed to hit that mark in their previous 25 consecutive contests — and they needed all of ’em to secure Thursday’s 4-3 victory over the Nashville Predators at Bridgestone Arena.
Jonathan Huberdeau buried a rebound on the power-play for the would-be game-winner as the Flames also busted out of an eight-game road losing skid.
Nazem Kadri, Brayden Pachal and Kevin Rooney also tickled twine for the Flames. Huberdeau and Rooney picked up two points apiece.
The Flames allowed only 20 shots on net, although there were some nervous moments as the hosts clanked the post in the final minute.
Jonathan Marchessault potted a pair for the Predators, who have now lost eight in a row and played the final two periods Tuesday without captain Roman Josi. The star defenceman made an early exit due to a lower-body injury.
Here are three takeaways from Tuesday’s tango on Nashville’s Honky Tonk Highway …
HUBERDEAU’S HOT STREAK
Huberdeau continued his recent roll with a goal and assist against the Predators. He is now riding a five-game point streak, with three tallies and four helpers over that span.
This marks the longest offensive tear by any Flames player so far this fall. It also equals Huberdeau’s longest heater since he arrived in Calgary in the summer of 2022. (He also had a five-game rip at the tail-end of the 2023-24 campaign.)
Huberdeau currently leads the Flames with 10 goals and 19 points on the season. Since he is collecting an annual cap-hit of US$10.5 million, we realize some readers will be right now spitting out their morning coffee to bellow, ’Still not good enough!’ but the 31-year-old left-winger has done a whole lot of good of late and deserves credit for that.
Consider this … The Flames have totalled 14 tallies over their past five dates, and Huberdeau has factored on half of those.
As long as he is clicking with Kadri and Martin Pospisil, there will be no debate about what should be considered Calgary’s top forward trio.
“His game, I think, has been good over the last little while and I do think the line has found a little bit of chemistry,” said Flames head coach Ryan Huska when asked about Huberdeau’s point streak. “I really like the way Marty is playing, and I think the pace that Marty plays with allows Naz and Huby to do their thing with the puck. Hopefully, it’s a sign of some good things to come.”
RAH, RAH ROONEY
If a Gordie Howe Hat-Trick is a goal, an assist and a fight, what would you call this?
Rooney scored in Nashville, hustling to finish off a sequence that was made possible by Walker Duehr’s wicked straight-line speed.
The fourth-line centre then earned an apple — his first setup of the season — on Pachal’s top-shelf snipe.
And instead of dropping his mitts, Rooney dropped to the ice on a third-period penalty-kill, blocking Luke Evangelista’s shot from the slot. That puck could have done serious damage, and the 31-year-old initially feared that it did.
“It was a little scary,” said Rooney, who skated his five-on-five shifts with a pair of recent call-ups in Duehr and Jakob Pelletier, during a post-game interview with Flames TV. “I think it got me in the chest and then the chin. So I kind of sat there for a second and then I was like, ‘Oh, I’m all good,’ and able to get back up.
“I’m just trying to do anything I can to help us get wins.”
On this night, he did a lot.
As Huska told reporters in Nashville, it’s a bigtime bonus when your fourth line connects for a pair of goals.
“But as a coach, I’m always more pleased with the thing Kevin did late in the game for us,” he added.
The Flames were credited with 21 blocked shots in Nashville. MacKenzie Weegar led the way with four.
“For our team, that’s the difference,” Huska stressed. “The margins are so slim for us on usually a nightly basis that in-a-shot-lane or out-of-a-shot-lane can often be the difference for us. And tonight, because of the way the guys were there, it was.”
ROAD RELIEF
The Flames hadn’t celebrated a road victory since Nov. 5.
You’d have to go even further back, to Oct. 13, for their last regulation triumph in their white jerseys. That was also the last time they popped for four goals.
“We got one off our backs, for sure,” said Flames netminder Dan Vladar, who made some clutch stops in the late stages. “It was probably a heavy storm that hit this locker-room after the game when everyone just went, ‘Phewwww.’ ”
Prior to Tuesday’s slump-buster, the Flames had posted an 0-5-3 record during a string of eight straight losses in enemy rinks.
They started this two-game sojourn Sunday in Dallas, where they allowed four unanswered during a third-period fall-apart.
“We’ve been talking about it for quite some time now about being better on the road and it felt really good to be able to finally get one,” Rooney told reporters in Nashville. “In the Dallas game, we thought we played two really good periods and then it snowballed on us in the third period. We just tried to stay positive coming into tonight, and we were able to get one.”
The Flames are now home until the holidays. Starting with Thursday’s showdown against the Tampa Bay Lightning, they will play five in a row at the Saddledome.
“For us, we wanted to get that win real bad,” Huberdeau said before the return flight from Tennessee. “Now, we have a big stretch coming up at home so we have to take advantage of that.”