The first round of ten Battle of Albertas is officially in the books. The Flames returned to the Saddledome and donned their reverse retros, the almighty Blasty for the first time this season. Saturday night doesn’t get better than that.
The game opened with a goal from Elias Lindholm before the first minute elasped. Jujhar Khaira and Connor McDavid scored for the Oilers to give them the lead after twenty. The first period was entirely dominated by the Oilers and the Flames looked in rough shape despite scoring first.
In the second, the Flames flipped the script and regained their lead with goals from Milan Lucic and Mikael Backlund. After restoring their lead, they continued to pressure. Whatever the pressure and onslaught the Oilers had on the Flames in the first, the Flames essentially returned in the second.
Heading into the third in a one-goal Battle of Alberta, things were going to get spicy. Jesse Puljujarvi scored early in the period to tie the game back up at three apiece, but the Flames answered back. Dillon Dube scored on the power play to get the Flames back ahead, and Johnny Gaudreau padded the lead with a highlight reel shot.
The Oilers didn’t go away, and Darnell Nurse brought it back to a one-goal game with a goal of his own. With a little less than half the period left, the Flames had offensive zone pressure and a perfect pass from Gaudreau from behind the net right onto Sam Bennett‘s stick would be the final dagger.
Try as they did, the Oilers didn’t score again, despite giving both McDavid and Leon Draisaitl game-ending shifts that lasted well over five minutes (check it out in the plot below). Flames take the first game of ten against the Oilers, 6-4 final score.
Check out the game story in visualisations, all below:
Game events
All situations corsi
5v5 corsi
Shifts
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