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<\/p>\nKucherov was the only one to hit the score sheet as Tampa Bay\u2019s three-game road winning streak ended. The NHL\u2019s scoring leader picked up his 119th point assisting on Darren Raddysh\u2019s second-period goal. Hagel (two goals, six assists) and Cirelli (four goals, four assists) were blanked, ending their three-game streaks.<\/p>\n
\t<\/p>\n
\u201c(Tampa Bay coach Jon Cooper) does a really good job of changing them on the fly and getting them against the right matchups,\u201d said Flames coach Ryan Huska. \u201cSo it really is five guys that have to try to be at their best, and you have to manage the puck the right way, and I thought the few times against them we didn\u2019t, in those situations (Devin) Cooley bailed us out, and that was a big factor.\u201d<\/p>\n
Their best chance came in the waning seconds of the first period. With Calgary up 2-1, a turnover inside their blue line almost turned deadly, but on the three-on-one that went Cirelli to Kucherov and then across the slot to Hagel, Cooley stretched across the crease to make a spectacular blocker save.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Kucherov) is so smart, and he gets it on his backhand and I\u2019m like, \u2018oh, he\u2019s passing,\u2019\u201d said Cooley, who made 32 stops. \u201cSo as he creeps in, I cheated a little bit and backed up and I went a little bit flatter, so when he passed, I was able to get across, which helped me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fast forward to overtime and at the same end of the ice where Tampa Bay\u2019s talented Russian was thwarted on his setup attempt, Calgary\u2019s impressive young Russian, 20-year-old rookie Matvei Gridin, made an excellent pass to Strome to end it.<\/p>\n
\u201c(Mikael Backlund) won a faceoff, did his job, and Grids just put it on a platter for me,\u201d said Strome, second on the team with six points (two goals, four assists) in nine games since the NHL trade deadline.<\/p>\n
Huska spoke highly about Gridin post-game.<\/p>\n
\u201cPoise and strength. He held a check off, and he was still able to make that play to Strommer in the slot,\u201d said the Flames bench boss. \u201cWe\u2019ve talked a lot about him. He\u2019s not your typical 19 or 20-year-old physique-wise, and he\u2019s got a lot of confidence with the puck. Made a great play there that allowed us to win.\u201d<\/p>\n
Without MacKenzie Weegar and Nazem Kadri, who were traded, the Flames are 5-4-0 since that point including three straight wins to begin their current homestand.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s been some good energy around our team lately. We talked about losing players, but we brought some good players in that are quality people,\u201d said Huska. \u201cThere\u2019s nothing better than winning. At the end of the day, even the nights where your team doesn\u2019t play well, and you win, everybody goes home feeling much better about themselves. So winning is the elixir of most things.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Calgary may be the hottest team in the lisping Pacific Division, it\u2019s coming too late as playoff hopes were dashed long ago. Sunday\u2019s win moved the Flames up two spots to 29th in the overall standings.<\/p>\n
Now it\u2019s about establishing good habits.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been through this before, and it\u2019s really, really hard to snap your fingers and just become a winning hockey team,\u201d said Strome.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you throw these games away, you don\u2019t compete, you don\u2019t play hard, those habits leak into next year, then all of a sudden you have a group that\u2019s like, OK, we\u2019ve got to start winning, and you don\u2019t have the characteristics, you don\u2019t have those qualities and the leadership and all those things that it takes.\u201d<\/p>\n
Next up is the desperate Los Angeles Kings on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of guys in here, I think, playing for jobs and playing for their life, and that\u2019s important and the team is trying to build a culture and confidence moving forward,\u201d continued Strome.<\/p>\n
This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 23, 2026.<\/p>\n
Darren Haynes, The Canadian Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kucherov was the only one to hit the score sheet as Tampa Bay\u2019s three-game road winning streak ended.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":555087,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[194293],"tags":[49,2798,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-555086","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-calgary","10":"tag-canada"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555086","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=555086"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/555086\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/555087"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=555086"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=555086"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=555086"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}