By Canadian Press

Crouse scores twice, Utah Hockey Club hand Calgary Flames 5-3 loss

Jan 2, 2025 | 11:13 PM

CALGARY — Lawson Crouse scored twice and the Utah Hockey Club snapped a five-game winless skid with a 5-3 comeback victory over the Calgary Flames on Thursday.

Logan Cooley, Clayton Keller, and Kevin Stenlund — into an empty net — also scored for Utah (17-15-6).

Blake Coleman, Connor Zary, and Brayden Pachal scored for Calgary (18-13-7), which had its five-game point streak on home ice snapped.

Karel Vejmelka had 23 stops to snap a three-game losing streak. He improved to 9-10-2.

Dan Vladar had 21 saves for Calgary. He’s winless in his last four starts and 6-8-5 on the season.

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TAKEAWAYS

Utah: An illness is working its way through the locker room. Keller missed Utah’s Tuesday’s game with the bug and Matias Maccelli — who took Keller’s spot on the top line — was the latest to fall victim, missing his first game of the season Thursday.

Flames: Calgary lost the services of Nazem Kadri for an extended period. After a physical shift in the second period where Kadri battled back and forth with Liam O’Brien, both players were assessed 10-minute misconducts for their continued jawing after the whistle. Utah’s tying goal and go-ahead goals in the third came while Kadri was still serving the penalty.

KEY MOMENT

Down 3-2 after 40 minutes, Utah scored twice early in the third with goals less than two minutes apart. Keller steered in Olli Maatta’s point shot to tie it at 0:47. Crouse gave Utah their third lead of the night at 2:35 when he took a pass from Nick Bjugstad and beat Vladar just inside the goalpost for his sixth of the season.

KEY STAT

It’s the first time this season Calgary has failed to pick up at least one point from a game they led after two periods. They fall to 10-1-1 in that scenario.

UP NEXT

Flames: Play host to the Nashville Predators on Saturday.

Utah: Visit the Dallas Stars on Saturday.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 2, 2025.

Darren Haynes, The Canadian Press