Huberdeau, Rooney help Flames hand Predators 8th straight loss

NASHVILLE -- Jonathan Huberdeau and Kevin Rooney each had a goal and an assist for the Calgary Flames, who handed the Nashville Predators their eighth consecutive loss, 4-3 at Bridgestone Arena on Tuesday.

Nazem Kadri and Brayden Pachal also scored for the Flames (14-10-5), who had lost six of their previous seven games (1-4-2) and eight consecutive road games (0-5-3). Dan Vladar made 17 saves.

“I think we stuck with the way we were playing,” Huberdeau said. “Even though they came back, they scored some good goals, we came back. Special teams was good tonight. We found a way to win that game and end that little skid that we had on the road. That’s great. Now we’ve got a big stretch coming up at home, so we’ve got to take advantage of that.”

Jonathan Marchessault scored twice, and Tommy Novak also scored for the Predators (7-16-6), who are 0-5-3 during their eight-game skid. Juuse Saros made 24 saves.

“It’s obviously a situation you don’t want to be in,” Nashville forward Filip Forsberg said. “But at the same time, we can’t do anything about what just happened. We’ve just got to keep digging in. I’m sure that’s been the message from everybody you guys have talked to, but it’s the truth.

“At the end of the day we’ve obviously set ourselves in this position, but nobody can get us out of it except us and I think we’re very capable of doing that.”

Predators defenseman Roman Josi left after the first period because of a lower-body injury and did not return. The team did not have an update on his status after the game.

Marchessault gave Nashville a 1-0 lead at 7:45 of the first period on a redirection from the slot off a pass from Steven Stamkos.

Kadri tied it 1-1 at 10:22 on a wrist shot past Saros.

Novak put the Predators back ahead 2-1 at 10:52 with a wrist shot on the rush off a pass from Mark Jankowski.

Rooney tied it 2-2 at 2:27 of the second period on a pass from Walker Duehr on the rush.

“When you get your fourth line contributing like that, you take it always,” Flames coach Ryan Huska said. “But you have a night where there’s two of them coming our way, we’ll take it all the time.”

Marchessault gave Nashville a 3-2 lead at 7:41 with his second goal of the game after Forsberg led the rush and delivered a backhand pass across the ice.

“I mean it’s a tough league,” Marchessault said. “There’s 30 good teams in the NHL, and every night you can’t say who is going to win or lose. I think that’s the beauty of it. Something I’ve realized with time is it never gets easier, so you’ve got to embrace the grind and embrace the adversity that you face as an individual and as a team also.”

Pachal tied it 3-3 at 13:49 on a wrist shot from the right circle.

“We’ve been talking about it for some time now, being better on the road,” Rooney said. “It felt really good to be able to finally get one on the road. In the Dallas game (6-2 loss on Sunday) we thought we played two really good periods, and then it snowballed on us in the third. So we just tried to stay positive coming into tonight, and able to get one.”

Huberdeau scored a power-play goal on a rebound to give the Flames a 4-3 lead at 18:41.

“These are the goals that you want to score,” Huberdeau said. “That was a huge one for us, taking that lead. In the third period, we kind of shut down the opposition.”

NOTES: Huberdeau extended his point streak to five games (three goals, four assists). … Predators forward Gustav Nyquist missed the game because of an illness. … Nashville defenseman Alexandre Carrier is week to week because of an upper-body injury. Marc Del Gaizo came into the lineup in place of Carrier and finished with one shot on goal in 20:24 of ice time.