CALGARY, Alberta -- Al MacNeil's tenure as head coach of the Calgary Flames is not expected to be long, but it's been successful -- so far.
Thanks to a great effort by Calgary's penalty killers and Roman Turek's 34 saves the Flames tied the Minnesota Wild 1-1 Thursday night, improving MacNeil's record to 1-0-1 since taking over Tuesday for the fired Greg Gilbert.
"We're glad to get the point," MacNeil, 67, said. "When you have to kill eight penalties, that really saps you and takes your offense away. We were kind of worn down after that."
Turek preserved the tie with two minutes left in overtime when he stuck out a pad to stop Sergei Zholtok's breakaway.
"Roman has really been a major part of the three points we've picked up in the last two games. He's been a big, big factor in them," MacNeil said. "He's playing the kind of games that we come to expect of him last year."
Rob Niedermayer scored his second goal of the season for Calgary (7-13-4-3). Minnesota got its only goal from Andrew Brunette.
The game was played before a crowd of 14,118, the worst attended Flames game at home this season.
MacNeil hasn't coached in the NHL since he was behind the Calgary bench in 1982, the Flames' second season in Calgary. Now in his 23rd year with the organization, MacNeil is expected to return to his role of special assistant to general manager Craig Button as soon as Button finds a permanent replacement.
That is expected to happen quickly.
MacNeil has had a great start considering the team was mired in a 1-10-0-1 skid and dropped to second-to-last in the Western Conference when he led a 2-1 road win Tuesday night over Colorado.
The Wild are winless in their last five games (0-2-2-1) although they've picked up points in three of those games.
"Calgary always plays us tough and you can't take anything away from them," said Dwayne Roloson, who finished with 19 saves. "Playing a team in their position is always difficult and we knew what we were up against but we stuck to our game plan and were unfortunate to only get one point."
A key reason why the Wild failed to win was their ineffective power play that went 0-for-8.
"On one side we are frustrated about not winning the game, not scoring on the power play when we could have put the game away early," Zholtok said. "But on the other side, we're doing the right things and we're playing good so we can't let ourselves get too frustrated."
While MacNeil has managed to put the brakes on Calgary's losing ways, he hasn't been able to ignite the offense at all.
Calgary has scored two goals or fewer in 13 of 14 games and with just 55 goals on the season, the Flames are ahead of only Buffalo (52) and Nashville (50).
"Minnesota's a great defensive club, they're very disciplined," Niedermayer said. "Jacques Lemaire has them playing his system to a `T' and it's tough to get a lot of chances against them."
Calgary's best two scoring opportunities to break the tie came in the third period and they failed to get a shot on Roloson on either chance.
Stephane Yelle burst down the wing and around a Wild defenseman only to have his centering pass into the slot shot wide of the net by Chris Clark.
Later in the third, Chris Drury moved in on a breakaway but mishandled the puck and never got a shot off.
Playing in his 600th NHL game, Niedermayer opened the scoring 37 seconds into the game. Brunette, however, answered at 13:27 of the first period.
Notes
- Niedermayer played in his 600th NHL game.
- Calgary forward Jarome Iginla has only three multipoint games this season after recording 31 last year.
- Minnesota coach Jacques Lemaire played on the 1969-70 Montreal Canadiens team that was coached by MacNeil.
- Minnesota center Cliff Ronning has gone 12 games without a goal.
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