{"id":384628,"date":"2026-01-01T11:52:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T11:52:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/384628\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T11:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T11:52:09","slug":"flames-thump-flyers-to-win-fifth-straight-home-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/384628\/","title":{"rendered":"Flames thump Flyers to win fifth straight home game"},"content":{"rendered":"

CALGARY \u2014 Mikael Backlund<\/a> stayed hot notching his 10th goal on Wednesday to lead the Calgary Flames<\/a> to a 5-1 victory over the Philadelphia Flyers<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Morgan Frost<\/a>, Jonathan Huberdeau<\/a>, Rasmus Andersson<\/a> and Connor Zary<\/a> also scored for Calgary (18-18-4), while MacKenzie Weegar<\/a> and Matt Coronato<\/a> each chipped in a pair of assists.<\/p>\n

The Flames continued to sizzle at the Scotiabank Saddledome where they\u2019ve won five straight and are 10-1-1 in their last 12.<\/p>\n

Travis Konecny<\/a> scored for Philadelphia (20-12-7).<\/p>\n

Making 25 saves for his eighth straight win at home was Dustin Wolf<\/a>, who evened his record at 14-14-2.<\/p>\n

Sam Ersson, who had 20 saves, fell to 6-5-4.<\/p>\n

Backlund got the scoring started at 13:30 of the first period when he took a drop pass from Coronato and blasted a slap shot into the top corner to extend his point streak to six games (five goals, four assists).<\/p>\n

Down 2-0, Konecny got the Flyers on the scoreboard at 8:49, but before the second period was over, Calgary blew the game open a pair of power play goals \u2013 Andersson on a two-man advantage at 12:03 and Sharangovich at 17:52.<\/p>\n

Takeaways<\/p>\n

Flyers: Philadelphia entered the night a perfect 10-for-10 on the penalty kill over its previous four games and sporting the league\u2019s sixth-best penalty kill, but ran into problems against the Flames last-place power play, surrendering multiple goals for the first time since Dec. 1 and just the third time on the season.<\/p>\n

Flames: Winners of nine of its last 12, Calgary continued to climbing back into the playoff race after a miserable start to the season. Last in the NHL on Nov. 12 with a 4-12-2 record, Calgary has the league\u2019s fifth-best record since at 14-6-2 (.687 point percentage), only trailing Colorado (.905), Minnesota (.804), Dallas (.739), and Buffalo (.696). It has them within one point of the Los Angeles Kings<\/a>, who occupy the second wild-card spot in the Western Conference.<\/p>\n

Key moment<\/p>\n

Up 2-1, Calgary got a two-man advantage midway through the second period. Zary set up Andersson for a one-timer that found the back of the net with 18 seconds left in the power play.<\/p>\n

Key stat<\/p>\n

Backlund\u2019s opening goal came on just the third slap shot he\u2019s taken this season and was his first goal on a slap shot in nearly a year, dating back to Jan. 4, 2025. In 17 NHL seasons, it was just the sixth time he has scored on a slap shot.<\/p>\n

Up next<\/p>\n

Flyers: Travel to Edmonton to take on the Oilers on Saturday.<\/p>\n

Flames: Host the Nashville Predators<\/a> on Saturday.<\/p>\n

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 31, 2025.<\/p>\n

Darren Haynes, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"CALGARY \u2014 Mikael Backlund stayed hot notching his 10th goal on Wednesday to lead the Calgary Flames to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":384629,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-384628","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\/384628","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=384628"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/384628\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/384629"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=384628"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=384628"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=384628"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}