{"id":384250,"date":"2026-01-01T07:19:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:19:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/384250\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T07:19:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T07:19:07","slug":"backlund-scores-flames-cruise-past-flyers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/384250\/","title":{"rendered":"Backlund scores, Flames cruise past Flyers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Connor Zary<\/a> had a goal and an assist, Matt Coronato<\/a> and MacKenzie Weegar<\/a> each had two assists, and Dustin Wolf<\/a> made 26 saves for the Flames (18-18-4), who have won five of six and improved to 10-1-1 in their past 12 games at home. After a slow start that had Calgary in last place in the Western Conference on Dec. 2, the Flames have climbed back to .500.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe just been sticking to our team game,\u201d Backlund said. \u201cIt was some dark days earlier in the year with a tough stretch, but the boys have been digging in and kept believing and just been working hard and staying focused on what’s ahead and not losing sight of what we want to achieve here, so I get a lot of credit to all my teammates who worked really hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

Travis Konecny<\/a> scored and Samuel Ersson<\/a> made 20 saves for the Flyers (20-12-7), who were playing the second half of a back to back after a 6-3 win at the Vancouver Canucks on Tuesday. It was just the third regulation loss in the past 12 games (5-3-4) for Philadelphia.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes it doesn’t go your way,\u201d coach Rick Tocchet said. \u201cI will give Calgary credit, they owned the front of the nets. We didn’t box out that well, they get a couple goals in front of the net, so it’s one of those games, you could say that, and we learn from it and move on.\u201d\u2028<\/p>\n

Backlund put Calgary ahead 1-0 off the rush at 13:30 of the first period, taking a drop pass from Coronato and firing a one-time slap shot from above the left face-off circle that appeared to change direction slightly off defenseman Nick Seeler<\/a> and go past Ersson\u2019s glove. Backlund has nine points (five goals, four assists) during his six-game point streak.\u2028<\/p>\n

\u201cBest I’ve seen him play,\u201d Flames defenseman Rasmus Andersson<\/a>, who also scored, said of the Flames’ 36-year-old captain. \u201cHe’s dragging the team into the fight, and it’s every night. He’s been unbelievable lately, and really since game 10 this year, I think he’s been one of our best players. \u2026 He’s like fine wine, right? You know, older he gets, the better he gets.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Connor Zary had a goal and an assist, Matt Coronato and MacKenzie Weegar each had two assists, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384251,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-384250","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384250","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=384250"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384250\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384251"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384250"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384250"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384250"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}