Cooley makes 36 saves, Flames hang on to edge Wild

CALGARY -- Devin Cooley made 36 saves for his second straight win, and the Calgary Flames held on for a 2-1 victory against the Minnesota Wild at Scotiabank Saddledome on Thursday.

“I’m really glad I was able to make some saves, because the guys tonight were just unbelievable,” Cooley said. “Everyone was blocking shots. The power play was great. The penalty kill was great. It was just incredible.” 

After a 34-save performance helped Calgary to a 3-2 win against the Carolina Hurricanes on Sunday, Cooley stopped the first 24 shots he faced from the Wild before giving up a third-period goal to Michael McCarron.

“For two periods, I thought we were really good,” Calgary coach Ryan Huska said. “I thought we did a lot of good things against a good team. In the third period, our goaltender was our best player. When you find yourself in situations when you’re really pushing for a win, sometimes you take on a little water, and when we did, he was unreal.”

Aydar Suniev and Joel Farabee scored on the power play for the Flames (3-6-0), who started their four-game homestand with two straight wins and have won three of four.

“Beating Carolina last game definitely gave us a lot of confidence and we just rolled into this game with that same confidence and had a good start and let that propel us throughout the game,” Farabee said.

Jesper Wallstedt made 20 saves for the Wild (6-3-2), who lost 4-3 in overtime at the Edmonton Oilers on Tuesday to open a five-game road trip.

“We battled back and gave ourselves a chance, but ultimately, it wasn’t good enough,” Minnesota coach John Hynes said.

Suniev scored to put the Flames up 1-0 at 10:49 of the first period on the power play. Adam Klapka passed the puck into the slot from behind the net to Suniev, who put a wrist shot into the top corner over Wallstedt’s glove.

“That’s two games in a row we lost the special teams battle and it cost us,” said Minnesota forward Blake Coleman, who serving a penalty for tripping when Suniev scored. “You’ve got guys sitting on the bench that need to be on the ice. Three penalties in a row in the first period is not the recipe and I’m certainly part of that. I’ll clean it up. I know we all will and we’ll go from there.”

Farabee scored his first goal of the season during another man-advantage at 14:06 to make it 2-0. After Wallstedt stopped Morgan Frost’s initial shot, Farabee deposited the rebound into the net past defenseman Jared Spurgeon, who was attempting to help out his goaltender.

“He’s had a lot of chances,” Huska said of Farabee. “As long as the chances are coming for him, he’s a bit of a streaker scorer, so we’re anticipating this will hopefully open some floodgates for him.”

Said Wild defenseman Olli Maatta: “If you give up two goals and you’re trying to chase the whole game, it’s tough playing that way. Kudos to them for defending hard, but also I think we got our chances again and that just showed the way we’ve got to play the full 60.”

McCarron took a pass from Nico Sturm and scored on a slap shot from the right circle at 4:39 of the third period to cut Calgary’s lead to 2-1.

“’Sturmy’ made a heck of a play getting it over and finding me coming down the slot, so we need more of that,” McCarron said. “I don’t think our line has been doing that enough as of late. It was good to get that for our line. Hopefully that can jumpstart us.”

The Wild outshot the Flames 17-3 in the third, including a late push with Wallstedt pulled for an extra attacker, but weren’t able to get any more pucks past Cooley.

“The last five or 10 minutes where I was like, ‘Okay, now it's my turn. Like to return the favor a little bit,’” Cooley said. “The guys battled so hard for me. I wanted to battle for them.”

NOTES: Minnesota forward Kirill Kaprizov had his seven-game point streak (eight goals, six assists) and four-game goal streak stopped. … Spurgeon had four shots on goal in 19:19 of ice time after missing four games with an upper-body injury. Maatta played 14:16 after he missed three games with an upper-body injury. … Maxim Shabanov was a late scratch; Hynes said the forward is day to day with an upper-body injury.