After a shutout loss on home ice on Friday night, the\u00a0Calgary Flames (4-10-2, 10 points) start a two game road trip on Sunday night when they head to the recently-renamed Grand Casino Arena to face the\u00a0Minnesota Wild (6-7-3, 15 points).<\/p>\n
The Flames lost 4-0 on Friday, snapping their stretch of positive results at two games. The Flames still have designs on climbing back up the standings, so they simply cannot let one bad game snowball. Can they bounce back against the Wild?<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s broadcast begins at 6 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.<\/p>\n
The Flames<\/p>\n
Yegor Sharangovich \u2013 Nazem Kadri \u2013 Joel Farabee
Jonathan Huberdeau \u2013 Morgan Frost \u2013 Matt Coronato
Sam Honzek \u2013 Mikael Backlund \u2013 Blake Coleman
Ryan Lomberg \u2013 Connor Zary \u2013 Adam Klapka<\/p>\n
Joel Hanley \u2013 MacKenzie Weegar
Yan Kuznetsov \u2013 Rasmus Andersson
Kevin Bahl \u2013 Brayden Pachal<\/p>\n
Based on reports from the rink (thanks to Sportsnet\u2019s Derek Wills),\u00a0we\u2019re projecting Devin Cooley in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. The projected extras are Jake Bean, Daniil Miromanov and Justin Kirkland.<\/p>\n
The Flames were reasonably good for two periods against Chicago. And then they seemed to abandon their structure and puck management in the third period, allowing three goals on three turnovers and losing 4-0 to the Blackhawks. Well, the Flames seem to be well-aware of what they did wrong, but they\u00a0need to be better. The Flames are almost out of runway in terms of having a faint hope of the playoffs; if they lose, they better go down swinging.<\/p>\n
When you factor in points percentages, the Flames open Sunday sitting eight points back of Chicago for the final Western Conference wild card spot.<\/p>\n
The Wild<\/p>\n
Kirill Kaprizov \u2013 Marco Rossi \u2013 Mats Zuccarello
Matt Boldy \u2013 Joel Eriksson Ek \u2013 Marcus Johansson
Vinnie Hinostroza \u2013 Ryan Hartman \u2013 Vladimir Tarasenko
Yakov Trenin \u2013 Danila Yurov \u2013 Marcus Foligno<\/p>\n
Jacob Middleton \u2013 Jared Spurgeon
Jonas Brodin \u2013 Brock Faber
Zeev Buium \u2013 Daemon Hunt<\/p>\n
It sounds like Jesper Wallstedt starts in net, backed up by Filip Gustavsson. The projected extra skaters are Ben Jones and David Jiricek.<\/p>\n
What can we say about the Wild? They\u2019ve arguably under-achieved this season, but when you look up and down their lineup, they seem pretty dangerous. Their top two forward lines are strong. They have some impressive young blueliners mixed in with steady veterans. And Filip Gustavsson is a really steady netminder.<\/p>\n
The Wild may be wobbling right around the .500 mark to start the season, but they\u2019re no pushovers.<\/p>\n
Unavailable players<\/p>\n
The Flames are without Martin Pospisil and Zayne Parekh.<\/p>\n
The Wild are without Zach Bogosian and Nico Sturm.<\/p>\n
The numbers<\/p>\n
Flames<\/p>\n
Wild<\/p>\n
4<\/p>\n
Wins<\/p>\n
6<\/p>\n
10 (.333)<\/p>\n
Points (%)<\/p>\n
15 (.469)<\/p>\n
52.8%
(7th)<\/p>\n
xGF%<\/p>\n
49.0%
(20th)<\/p>\n
12.3%
(30th)<\/p>\n
PP%<\/p>\n
31.0%
(4th)<\/p>\n
77.2%
(19th)<\/p>\n
PK%<\/p>\n
70.6%
(26th)<\/p>\n
Head to head<\/p>\n
This is the first of three games this season between the Flames and the Wild. They\u2019ll meet again on Dec. 4 in Calgary before closing out the season series on Jan. 29 in Minnesota.<\/p>\n
This article is brought to you by Platinum MitsubishiThis article is a presentation of Platinum Mitsubishi, family owned and operated by lifelong Calgarians. Home of the industry-leading 10-year, 160,000-kilometre powertrain warranty. Check out their showroom at 2720 Barlow Trail NE or online at www.mitsu.ca<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"After a shutout loss on home ice on Friday night, the\u00a0Calgary Flames (4-10-2, 10 points) start a two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":272758,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-272757","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nhl","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-nhl","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272757","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=272757"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/272757\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/272758"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=272757"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=272757"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=272757"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}