Blake Coleman 'Roar'-ing his way to best season yet as Flames stay hot

CALGARY — High on the emotion of a 3-2 overtime win over to cap the team’s fourth victory in a row, Blake Coleman strutted over to the post-game scrum singing Katy Perry’s Roar.

Loudly, and proudly.

On the heels of being dubbed the “Texas Tiger” by his father on the Dad’s Trip, the Saddledome’s game day production crew opted to punctuate his 20^th goal of the year Tuesday night in a win over the Arizona Coyotes with a little switcheroo to his goal song.

“Is that the worst goal song in the league?” laughed Coleman, after kickstarting the team’s league-leading eighth third-period comeback win.

So, he didn’t request it?

“My daughter may have.”

Will he keep it?

“I don’t know, I was scoring with the Goal Mine song too, whatever that one was,” said the red-hot winger of the Working in a Coal Mine ditty from 1966. 

“It’s fun, I had a good laugh.

“I actually picked my wife out in the stands, and she was giving one of these guys (burying his face in his hands).

“The boys were digging it though.”

Asked how much of the song he knew, he perked up.

“It was a hot song back in the day,” he smiled.

“I don’t know if you remember, but that was one all the girls back in the day were singing in the club.”

Everyone in Calgary has been singing Coleman’s praises this season, as the third liner tied his season-high 38 points with his 12^th third-period goal, tying the league lead in that category with Carter Verhaeghe.

And while the NHL’s second star of the week now has five goals and eight points in his last four games, he wasn’t even the hero of the night.

That distinction appeared to belong to either Martin Pospisil or Nazem Kadri who combined 63 seconds after Coleman to tie the game 2-2 with ten minutes left.

Pospisil’s impressive drive to the net finished with a one-handed shovel pass in front to Kadri, who crashed the crease to bang in his 15^th and extend his point streak to seven games.

To be fair, when Dan Vladar forced Logan Cooley to shoot wide on a breakaway in overtime, it seemed perhaps the Flames backup was the star on a day in which Jacob Markstrom was listed as day to day with a lower-body injury.

However, on a team full of stars of late, all of it led up to Yegor Sharangovich stealing the show with his sixth goal in the last four games — one of his patented wristy roof-jobs that ended the night with 17 seconds left in overtime.

It was the team’s first power-play goal of the night in five tries, coming on their 14^th shot with the extra man.

“We’ve seen that a lot from him – we usually see it in the shootout, how he gets that sweeping wrister off there,” said Flames coach Ryan Huska.

“He’s got such a great release and it’s hard so obviously there’s something with it where it’s hard for goaltenders to pick it up the way he pulls it and brings it into his body.”  

Kadri had the best view of the winner, as he stood on Connor Ingram’s doorstep and jumped for joy after the puck clanged off the back bar.

“It was just a little too close to my face,” chuckled Kadri, whose club continues to show its resilience, battling back from being 2-0 down a mere six minutes into the third when a brilliant passing play bounced in off Cooley’s foot. 

“We’ve got that confidence – we’ve been doing it all year. Sometimes you’ve got to roll your sleeves up and get to work. It certainly wasn’t pretty, but we’ll take it.”  

Huska was diplomatic when he suggested, “there was nothing going on the first two periods,” as the teams’ second meeting in a week started as a decidedly low-event affair.

That all changed in a wildly entertaining third that saw Coleman start the comeback two minutes after Cooley’s apparent dagger.

“Sharky, he’s hot too,” said Coleman of Sharangovich, who arrived (with a third-round pick) this summer in the Tyler Toffoli trade.

“The trade happens, and everyone wants to put a winner and loser on a trade right away. He did a great job ignoring all that noise, came in and it took him a little bit to find what his role was on the team and how he’d slot in and help us win games, but he’s clearly found it.”

The win allowed the Flames to stay two back in the wild card race behind the Predators and Oilers, who beat the Leafs to win their 11^th in a row.

Toronto visits Thursday and Edmonton comes calling Saturday, making Tuesday’s win an important start to a six-game homestand that leads into the all-star break.

The team is now 4-0 in overtime and 7-2 since New Year’s Eve.

A, um, roaring good start to the year.