It’s a Saturday night and there’s hockey at the Saddledome! The Calgary Flames (14-17-4, 32 points) will try to inch their way closer to the .500 mark when they host the Vegas Golden Knights (16-6-10, 42 points). The Flames had a comeback win over Seattle on Thursday. Can they make it back to back wins against divisional foes when they host Vegas?
Today’s broadcast begins at 8 p.m. MT on Sportsnet’s national feed, CBC, City TV and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.
The Flames
Yegor Sharangovich – Nazem Kadri – Joel Farabee
Jonathan Huberdeau – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Connor Zary – Mikael Backlund – Blake Coleman
Ryan Lomberg – John Beecher – Adam Klapka
Yan Kuznetsov – MacKenzie Weegar
Kevin Bahl – Rasmus Andersson
Joel Hanley – Hunter Brzustewicz
We’re projecting Devin Cooley to start in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. The projected extra skaters are Justin Kirkland and Brayden Pachal. A thing to watch: the Flames continue to tinker with their power play units, with Hunter Brzustewicz practising on the second unit.
The Flames are 5-3-0 in December, and they’ve done a nice job bouncing back from tough efforts. They were fine against San Jose but their power play wasn’t a difference-maker. On Thursday, they were a lot better and found ways to win, in part due to a big power play goal at a key time.
The Flames are a pretty good possession team that struggles to score. That’s basically what they’ve been under Ryan Huska for the past two and a half years. They just need to find ways to turn good scoring chances into great ones via tips, screens, deflections and overall net-front chaos. If they can get to the dirty areas, they can be successful. They just haven’t done it consistently enough this season.
The Golden Knights
Mitch Marner – Ivan Barbashev – Braeden Bowman
Reilly Smith – Brett Howden – Mark Stone
Brandon Saad – Tomas Hertl – Pavel Dorofeyev
Cole Reinhardt – Colton Sissons – Keegan Kolesar
Noah Hanifin – Zach Whitecloud
Brayden McNabb – Kaedan Korczak
Ben Hutton – Jeremy Lauzon
We’re projecting Akira Schmid to start in net, backed up by Carter Hart. It’s the first half of a back-to-back, with Hart expected to start in Edmonton on Sunday. Alexander Holtz is the projected healthy extra skater.
The Golden Knights are 5-0-2 in December, but it’s not like they’ve been running through their opposition. They’ve played in five consecutive one goal games, and four of their last five games required overtime or a shootout to determine a winner. But as has been the case with Vegas since basically their introduction to the NHL, they’ve found ways to win when the chips were down, and that’s allowed them to remain nestled snugly in the upper tier of the NHL… despite losing exactly half of their games this season.
Unavailable players
The Flames are without Martin Pospisil, Zayne Parekh, Sam Honzek and Jake Bean.
The Golden Knights are without Alex Pietrangelo, Adin Hill, William Karlsson, Shea Theodore and Jack Eichel.
The numbers
Flames
Golden Knights
13
Wins
16
32 (.457)
Points (%)
42 (.656)
52.1%
(8th)
xGF%
52.6%
(7th)
14.0%
(32nd)
PP%
24.8%
(7th)
82.7%
(9th)
PK%
82.9%
(7th)
Head to head
This is the third of four meetings between these clubs this season. Vegas has won both of the first two match-ups. They’ll close out the season series in Vegas on Apr. 2.
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