Dustin Wolf smooched the crossbar.
And then Nazem Kadri sealed the win at the other end of the ice.
The Calgary Flames capped a dramatic comeback Wednesday when Kadri sniped in the eighth round of the breakaway competition, with the road team rallying from three down to escape with a 4-3 shootout victory in their season-opener against the arch-rival Oilers in Edmonton.
“Actually, Kads … He looked back and said, ‘Can I have this, please?’ ” Flames bench boss Ryan Huska revealed during his post-game scrum at Rogers Place. “So I’m glad we went with him instead of choosing somebody else at that moment.”
Good call, coach.
In 40-some years of the NHL’s Battle of Alberta, this marks just the second time that the Flames have fallen behind by a hat-trick and still scratched back to claim two points against their provincial foes.
Rookie winger Matvei Gridin got the ball rolling with his first NHL goal, Connor Zary continued to turn the momentum with a batter-up bury on the power-play and Blake Coleman capitalized on an oopsie by the Oilers — a miscommunication between netminder Stuart Skinner and defenceman Evan Bouchard after a dump-in early in the third — to notch the equalizer.
Wolf was credited with 32 saves, a whole bunch of the clutch variety. He surrendered only one goal on eight shootout attempts, stopping six of those and getting a little lucky when Kasperi Kapanen cranked iron. (The Flames also plunked a pair of posts, so there was ringing in Skinner’s ears, too.)
With the game on his stick, and with surprisingly poor shootout stats over his career, Kadri made a slick move to his backhand to end the Flames’ most epic opening-night comeback since … well … last season.
Starting there, here are three takeaways from Wednesday’s thriller at Rogers Place …
Oilers forward Kasperi Kapanen is hindered by Flames defenceman Brayden Pachal in front of goaltender Dustin Wolf on Wednesday.
Remind you of anything?
This seems like a familiar script, doesn’t it?
Last October, during their lid-lifter in Vancouver, the Flames climbed out of a 3-0 hole and stormed back for an overtime triumph.
On Wednesday, against Connor McDavid & Co., they repeated the feat.
“I don’t know why we have it make it so dramatic,” Kadri told reporters at Rogers Place. “But it’s never easy to be a visiting team during a home-opener. They came out flying and we were able to sustain the pressure and kind of build our game from there. That’s a character win.”
That’s exactly what the Flames were saying a year ago.
They proved themselves right by surging to a 5-0-1 start and sticking in the wild-card race for way longer than anybody anticipated. They were ultimately eliminated on a tiebreaker, and they’re a little miffed that everyone seems to expect they’ll miss the playoffs once again in 2025-26.
“I liked the way we stuck with it,” Huska said after Wednesday’s win. “We found ourselves behind the 8-ball early, but I thought we got better as the night went on.”
The only trouble with an eight-round shootout is that it further delayed their flight to Vancouver, where they’ll clash Thursday with the Canucks.
Yeah, another home-opener against another fierce rival.
Can they spoil both?
“Much like an offensive player, if they get a point or find themselves on the scoresheet, they feel better about themselves,” Huska said. “When a team wins their first game, same thing — they feel better. But with our schedule, we have to shift gears pretty quickly and make sure that we’re prepared to start the right way tomorrow.”
Making his NHL debut, Flames forward Matvei Gridi is chased by Oilers defenceman Evan Bouchard on Wednesday.
Not how, how many
It might not have been a bar-down beauty, but you won’t hear any gripes from Gridin about his first career goal.
After earning a job with a standout pre-season showing, the 19-year-old from Russia fired a team-high five shots on net Wednesday in his NHL debut, although it was an attempted pass that found the back of the net.
That spinning dish — Matt Coronato was the intended recipient — banked off the skate of a backchecking Noah Philp.
“Hey, you gotta be good to be lucky,” reminded Kadri, who assisted on Gridin’s memorable marker.
“I’ll take it,” Gridin agreed. “You never forget your first game, right? And your first goal.”
In Flames’ franchise lore, Gridin is only the fourth teenager to light the lamp in his big-league debut.
He joins Brian Glynn, Jarome Iginla and fellow 2024 first-rounder Zayne Parekh, who was a healthy scratch in Edmonton, on that list.
“It’s unreal,” said Gridin, who posted a plus-2 rating in 15:25 of ice time. “A couple years ago, I played on PS (PlayStation) and now I’m in there. So it feels nice.”
It only could have been better if he cashed on his shootout attempt, but Skinner snagged his shot in the fifth round.
“I thought he was good,” Huska praised. “He looks comfortable in his own zone. That’s always the thing you worry about with a young player like that.
“He looked comfortable and I thought he played very well, so glad he was able to get the first one. No matter how it goes in, it’s still his first one.”
Flames forward Nazem Kadri celebrates his game-winner in the eighth round of the shootout on Wednesday.
Shootout statement
Kadri could hardly believe it when a reporter mentioned after Wednesday’s wild one that he was the 16th shooter in the skills competition.
That total tally, it should be noted, includes both teams.
“Sixteen?” Kadri repeated. “You’re going to have to talk to Husk about that.”
The stats show why Huska waited so long to go to his leading lamp-lighter from last season, why he tapped Justin Kirkland, Morgan Frost, Rasmus Andersson, Coronato, Gridin, Yegor Sharangovich and Zary before nodding toward No. 91.
This successful attempt boosted Kadri’s career shootout clip to only 20 percent. The 35-year-old, on track to collect a silver stick next month, is 8-for-40 on those after-overtime penalty shots.
That’s hard to believe, especially for anybody who was paying close attention as the Flames’ first-line centre racked up 35 goals last winter. Perhaps, Wednesday’s walk-off will boost his spot in the rotation.
“I certainly wanted to put it in the back of the net, especially after Wolfie made some big saves,” Kadri said. “I tried to dig in a little deeper for him.”
Wolf has, in the early stages of his career, been stellar in the shootout.
The rising-star goalie is four-of-five so far, and his save percentage is a sparkling .783.
“That’s a heck of a hockey club over there and obviously there’s a very large rivalry between us, a lot of hatred,” Wolf told Sportsnet in a post-game interview. “So to be able to get the extra point out of that one feels pretty nice.”