CALGARY — It was inevitable Connor Zary would break through.
How fortuitous for him and the Flames he was able to do so midway through the third period of a tied game he wound up being the hero in.
How perfectly symbolic too, that the 23-year-old would fight through the mounting frustration by trusting the process, remaining committed and being rewarded in the end.
“I would be lying if I said it didn’t get frustrating at times,” said Zary, arguably the Flames’ best forward over the first quarter of the season, but with only one goal in his previous 16 games to show for it.
“I’ve had nights where I’ve hit posts or had four or five opportunities, and I’m just not doing enough to kind of finish them off.
“It feels good to see it cross the line. It’s a little bit of a relief. I don’t want to change my game, I just want to bear down and finish my chances.”
In a tight game that saw the Flames stopped a career-high 46 times by Rangers star Igor Shesterkin, there was Zary, collecting a Jonathan Huberdeau pass as he entered New York’s zone, driving hard to the net with Kaapo Kakko on his hip.
Somehow, someway, he managed to lift a shot just a few feet away from the net that found the tiniest of holes over the netminder’s shoulder, for a bar down snipe with 10 minutes left that lifted the Flames to a 3-2 win.
Perhaps the Flames’ most impressive win in this storybook start of theirs, it was fitting Huberdeau finally got his long-awaited 500th assist.
Again, staying with the process.
“Obviously took a while to get that one, but it felt good to get one on the game-winner,” said Huberdeau, who can teach Zary, his new centre, a thing or two about battling through adversity.
“Stuck with it again in the third period and got a nice win.”
Offensively-challenged all season long, the Flames out-shot the Rangers 20-5 in a first period that saw Matt Coronato continue to grow his confidence with a snipe through traffic.
Yegor Sharangovich, the Flames leading scorer a year earlier, got just his third of the year with a rare power-play one-timer that rang in off the post.
Two goals in 16 seconds by the Rangers late in the second changed the complexion of the game, but not the approach for a Flames club that has been one of the league’s best third period clubs.
“We were pretty sure we were going to come out the right way in the third period again,” said Ryan Huska, whose club sits a remarkable fourth in the west with an 11-6-3 record despite scoring three goals or less in 17 straight outings.
“We’ve done it all year long, and I think you look at the older players: Our room was noisy, it wasn’t really a big deal to them.”
And no matter how many people believe the late-game magic will eventually disappear, they continue to prove people wrong.
Yes, the goaltending has been the backbone of it all, as Dustin Wolf’s 27-save effort can attest.
He’s faced 29 shots in each of his last four consecutive wins, allowing just four goals total.
Yet, on this night, the talk of the town was given a night off from the media and Three Stars bows, as the lads who finally broke through deserved kudos.
Huberdeau still leads all forwards with just 11 points, and the power play is still amongst the league’s worst.
But both are showing encouraging signs, playing huge roles in the team’s latest triumph in their storybook start.
When you outshoot a highly-touted eastern favourite 49-29, you deserve a win no matter how hard it was to scrape together.
“We’ve established an identity, which is big for our group,” said MacKenzie Weegar, whose three-assist outing was punctuated by a post-game Team Canada endorsement from Huberdeau.
“Coming into the Saddledome now it’s hard to play against our group. We’ve got forwards tracking and forechecking hard, and defence are in your face, and goalies are kicking.
“We have an identity, and I love to see it.”
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