The Calgary Flames finally found the combination to the win column Tuesday night in Anaheim.
It required one rookie starting the scoring, another rookie dragging them level, Martin Pospisil providing the late muscle and Dustin Wolf making sure the whole thing did not wobble apart.
Calgary beat the Ducks 4-2 at Honda Center, ending the first 0-5-0 start in franchise history and giving a restless club its first reason to smile this season.
About time.
Pospisil broke a 2-2 tie with 4:22 remaining, taking a pass from Aydar Suniev and snapping the puck past Lukas Dostal from the left faceoff circle. Yegor Sharangovich added the empty-netter with 1:22 left, allowing the Flames to exhale instead of enduring another frantic finish.
This was not a stolen win or a lucky bounce dressed up as progress. Calgary outshot Anaheim 36-25, controlled long stretches and responded after turning an early lead into a first-period deficit.
Captain Mikael Backlund called it Calgary’s best complete effort so far.
“It was great to win. I thought the guys played really well,” Backlund said to reporters. “Right from puck drop, I thought we were the better team and played with a lot of energy and pace.”
That last part mattered. Calgary had produced useful periods during its five losses. The problem was attaching three of them together before something caught fire.
Tuesday looked different.
Adam Klapka opened the scoring at 8:32 of the first period after Maxim Tsyplakov intercepted an Anaheim outlet and fed him in the slot. Klapka snapped home his second goal of the season, making him the first Flames rookie to score in consecutive games since Andrew Mangiapane in 2018-19.
Then came the familiar danger.
Beckett Sennecke stole the puck from Simon Nemec and scored on a four-on-four breakaway at 12:09. Leo Carlsson put Anaheim ahead on the power play 1:56 later. In less than two minutes, Calgary had gone from controlling the game to chasing it.
Earlier in the season, that sequence might have been enough to pull the Flames apart. This time, they kept playing.
“I felt like the group was ready not to lose,” Backlund said. “It was like, ‘We’re not going to be denied here. We’re going to keep pushing and we’re going to turn this around.’”
Suniev handled the turning-around part.
The 20-year-old tied the game at 8:02 of the second period, hammering a one-timer from the right circle off passes from Ryan Strome and Nemec. It was Suniev’s second goal in as many games after scoring his first NHL goal against Anaheim on Saturday.
He was not finished. Suniev picked up the primary assist on Pospisil’s winner and finished with two points, giving Calgary’s youth movement something better than moral victories.
Wolf did his share at the other end. He stopped 23 of 25 shots for his first win of the season, steadying the Flames during Anaheim’s first-period burst and protecting the tie until Pospisil arrived with the decisive strike.
Dostal made 32 saves for Anaheim, which had beaten Calgary by the same 4-2 score three nights earlier at the Saddledome. This time, the Flames were quicker, cleaner and far less interested in handing the game away.
Backlund said Calgary’s challenge is making that effort the standard rather than treating it as a one-night rescue.
“There have been other games where we played really well for periods, but not for a full 60,” he said. “That was probably our best full game.”
The Flames introduced post-win hardware: a hard hat and safety vest, inspired by workers building Calgary’s next arena. Backlund helped create the award after touring the site and seeing the gear.
“We want to show respect and appreciation to the people behind the scenes working hard to get that building up for us and the city,” he said.
It fit the evening. Calgary had spent five games digging itself a hole. In Anaheim, everybody grabbed a shovel, including the captain, who assisted on Sharangovich’s clincher.
One victory cannot erase an ugly opening week. Calgary is still 1-5-0 and now heads to Las Vegas for a Thursday meeting with the Golden Knights.
But the Flames have something tangible to carry there: two points, a confident Wolf, productive kids and proof that a complete game can survive a bad two-minute stretch.
The season did not get fixed in Anaheim.
It finally got started.
