Calgary Flames 3, Oilers first line 2.

On a night when one team iced an entire lineup and the other tried to win with five players, the result was closer than expected Saturday, but predictable just the same.

The Flames rode their depth and muscle, two elements the Oilers simply do not have, to a well-earned victory, with fourth-line players factoring in on two goals and their third line scoring the back-breaking winner as they made amends for that 5-1 pre-Christmas defeat in Edmonton.

What did the Flames have that the Oilers didn’t?

“Probably a little more spirit to their game,” said oilers coach Kris Knoblauch. “They were pushing a lot harder. Obviously they felt they didn’t play very well in our building and they were making sure that didn’t happen again.”

The Flames called their shot, too.

Two of Calgary’s tougher guys, Adam Klapka and Ryan Lomberg, made it clear before the game even started that Edmonton was going to be in for a long night. Klapka skated several strides over the red line and into Oilers territory during the pre-game warm-up, which is basically saying ‘I have zero respect for your team’s ability to respond, so I’m going to do whatever I want.’

And they backed it up. Klapka steamrolled Evan Bouchard, smoked Leon Draisaitl from behind, got an assist, very nearly scored a highlight-reel goal and made the Oilers biggest guys look away when he stared them down.

Lomberg had six of the fourth line’s 12 hits.

Edmonton’s depth players? You had to check the NHL Event Summary to be sure they even played. The fourth line of Trent Frederic, Max Jones and Mattias Janmark combined for zero points and three hits. The third line of Adam Henrique, Matt Savoie and celebrated pest Andrew Mangiapane combined for zero points and one hit.

That would have been nice. The fourth line hardly got any ice time, less than eight minutes, but how do you play guys who are not bringing it?

And forget there chicken-and-egg debate, about guys not being able to make an impact with limited ice time. Klapka was all over the place in 10:49 of ice time and Lomberg was second star with 7:28.

Either you want it or you don’t, and Calgary’s guys wanted it a lot more than Edmonton’s.

“Their intensity was kind of up there today,” Mangipane said of the Flames. “It also kind of falls on us, our start was slow and sluggish. I would have liked our intensity to have been maybe a little bit more engaged.”

So the Oilers relied entirely on the usual suspects and the ice times were almost comical, with Connor McDavid playing 26:39 and Leon Draisaitl 24:23.

The scoring summary: Evan Bouchard from Draisaitl and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins. Connor McDavid from Zach Hyman and Evan Bouchard.

Edmonton’s power play, which has accounted for 12 of their last 23 goals, went one-for-three.

The Oilers have been rolling and playing well, but they’ve been very top heavy. This was a good lesson.

“We weren’t as sharp as we were before the break,” said Knoblauch. “We gave up a lot of odd-man rushes, which we haven’t been doing, so we’ll have to get back to work. There were a lot of good things, but probably more bad than good coming off the break.”

E-mail: rtychkowski@postmedia.com

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