Dan Vladar matched up for the first time against his old goaltending partner Jacob Markstrom, and he won in style with a shutout.
Vladar made 22 stops as the Calgary Flames snapped a four-game losing skid with a 3-0 victory over the New Jersey Devils on Friday.
“This is a nice day for me, especially against Marky,” said Vladar. “Good growing game for me, for sure.”
After the game, Vladar, 27, thanked Flames goaltending coach, Jason LaBarbera, for helping him get ready for the showdown against the 34-year-old Markstrom, with whom he shared the crease with for the past three seasons.
“He’s such a great person and we are still really good friends and obviously, I cheer for him. So for me, going into tonight’s game, I wasn’t nervous, but I didn’t feel comfortable, to be honest, playing against Marky,” said Vladar. “So Barbs got me ready. He was like let’s go, let’s go.”
One of Vladar’s biggest stops came early in the second period when he kept the game scoreless by thwarting Jack Hughes on a breakaway. Hughes got a second breakaway later in the period, but slid the puck wide.
“I was just focused on next save and the next save. It didn’t really matter if it was Jack Hughes or somebody else,” said Vladar, who improved to 3-2-1 on the season.
After starting the season 5-0-1, the Flames had scuffled of late, including being outscored 10-3 in their last two games.
“I felt that we deserved the win,” said Blake Coleman, who scored twice including the winner at 14:26 of the third. “Our effort was much better all around tonight. I thought we checked tight, didn’t give up a whole lot, and when we did, Vladdy was great.”
Coleman, a former Devil, knows what it’s like to go against players you used to share a dressing room with.
“I would imagine that it’s a game that (Vladar) probably had circled on his calendar,” said Coleman. “It’s fun to get to compete against old friends and teammates like that. Obviously, I still have a few on that team as well. Sometimes it just makes it a little bit sweeter to pull this out.”
Mikael Backlund, honoured before the game for playing in his 1,000th game, had an assist on Coleman’s game-winner.
“(Vladar) played really solid tonight. He’s been playing really solid for us all year, and good for him to come in tonight and play so well,” said the Flames captain. “He was great, right from the first. I’m really happy for him.”
As the game remained scoreless into the late stages of the third, Vladar’s belief never wavered.
“You just gotta believe that our guys are going to score and I never had a doubt the whole game. I knew we were going to bury at least one,” said Vladar.
When Markstrom was traded to New Jersey last summer, it opened the starter’s job in Calgary and through 11 games this season, coach Ryan Huska has rotated between Vladar and rookie Dustin Wolf.
But that “may” change, admitted Huska, with the next opponent on Sunday being the Edmonton Oilers, who Vladar defeated earlier in the season.
“In his approach to the game, there’s not much different. He’s the same guy every day, whether he was a backup, if you want to call it that, or now he’s getting more starts,” said Huska.
“What I do like about it is the tandem that we do have. I feel like there’s some competition between the two of them, where Dan Vladar has a great game, and now Dustin’s wheels are probably rolling a little bit, where I have to answer in my next start. So I think that’s such a good thing for our team to have two guys that want the net, and they’re playing really well for us.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 1, 2024.