CALGARY — Jiri Hudler scored his first two goals of the pre-season Tuesday night to lead the Calgary Flames to a 2-0 victory over the Colorado Avalanche.
Calgary (4-2-0), which has won four straight games, will finish off with a home-and-home against Winnipeg.
Colorado (1-2-1) has two games remaining — at Anaheim and home to Los Angeles.
Hudler opened the night lined up beside familiar faces Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan, his linemates from a year ago. It took them just 24 seconds to open the scoring with Hudler neatly finishing off a slick give-and-go with Gaudreau.
In the second, lined up on the wing with Sam Bennett and Michael Frolik, Hudler converted once again on his first shift. One minute in, he got the puck from Frolik and shovelled the puck under Avs goaltender Calvin Pickard.
That was all the offensive support the Flames’ two goaltenders needed as Jonas Hiller (15 saves) and Karri Ramo (14 saves) combined for the shutout with each playing half the game.
The Flames have a three-way battle going on for their two goalie jobs with rookie Joni Ortio coming off a 35-save shutout in his last start.
Pickard made 30 saves in his first action of the pre-season.
The Flames dressed the far more experienced line-up with their top five defencemen (excluding injured TJ Brodie) and projected top two lines all in uniform.
The long list of notable absentees for the Avalanche included forwards Matt Duchene, Jarome Iginla, Alex Tanguay, Gabriel Landeskog and defencemen Erik Johnson and Francois Beauchemin.
The most interesting name in the line-up for the Avs was Curtis Glencross, who just signed a professional try-out with Colorado after being released from his PTO with Toronto on the weekend. Playing on a line with John Mitchell and Mikhail Grigorenko, Glencross was involved and was one of the Avs best players.