It\u2019s a Saturday night and there\u2019s hockey at the Saddledome! The\u00a0Calgary Flames (14-17-4, 32 points) will try to inch their way closer to the .500 mark when they host the\u00a0Vegas 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?<\/p>\n
Today\u2019s broadcast begins at 8 p.m. MT on Sportsnet\u2019s national feed, CBC, City TV 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
Connor Zary \u2013 Mikael Backlund \u2013 Blake Coleman
Ryan Lomberg \u2013 John Beecher \u2013 Adam Klapka<\/p>\n
Yan Kuznetsov \u2013 MacKenzie Weegar
Kevin Bahl \u2013 Rasmus Andersson
Joel Hanley \u2013 Hunter Brzustewicz<\/p>\n
We\u2019re 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.<\/p>\n
The Flames are 5-3-0 in December, and they\u2019ve done a nice job bouncing back from tough efforts. They were\u00a0fine against San Jose but their power play wasn\u2019t 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.<\/p>\n
The Flames are a pretty good possession team that struggles to score. That\u2019s basically what they\u2019ve 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\u00a0can be successful. They just haven\u2019t done it consistently enough this season.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights<\/p>\n
Mitch Marner \u2013 Ivan Barbashev \u2013 Braeden Bowman
Reilly Smith \u2013 Brett Howden \u2013 Mark Stone
Brandon Saad \u2013 Tomas Hertl \u2013 Pavel Dorofeyev
Cole Reinhardt \u2013 Colton Sissons \u2013 Keegan Kolesar<\/p>\n
Noah Hanifin \u2013 Zach Whitecloud
Brayden McNabb \u2013 Kaedan Korczak
Ben Hutton \u2013 Jeremy Lauzon<\/p>\n
We\u2019re projecting Akira Schmid to start in net, backed up by Carter Hart. It\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights are 5-0-2 in December, but it\u2019s not like they\u2019ve been running through their opposition. They\u2019ve 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\u2019ve found ways to win when the chips were down, and that\u2019s allowed them to remain nestled snugly in the upper tier of the NHL\u2026 despite losing exactly half of their games this season.<\/p>\n
Unavailable players<\/p>\n
The Flames are without Martin Pospisil, Zayne Parekh, Sam Honzek and Jake Bean.<\/p>\n
The Golden Knights are without Alex Pietrangelo, Adin Hill, William Karlsson, Shea Theodore and Jack Eichel.<\/p>\n
The numbers<\/p>\n
Flames<\/p>\n
Golden Knights<\/p>\n
13<\/p>\n
Wins<\/p>\n
16<\/p>\n
32 (.457)<\/p>\n
Points (%)<\/p>\n
42 (.656)<\/p>\n
52.1%
(8th)<\/p>\n
xGF%<\/p>\n
52.6%
(7th)<\/p>\n
14.0%
(32nd)<\/p>\n
PP%<\/p>\n
24.8%
(7th)<\/p>\n
82.7%
(9th)<\/p>\n
PK%<\/p>\n
82.9%
(7th)<\/p>\n
Head to head<\/p>\n
This is the third of four meetings between these clubs this season. Vegas has won both of the first two match-ups. They\u2019ll close out the season series in Vegas on Apr. 2.<\/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":"It\u2019s a Saturday night and there\u2019s hockey at the Saddledome! The\u00a0Calgary Flames (14-17-4, 32 points) will try to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":359601,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-359600","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\/359600","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=359600"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/359600\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/359601"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=359600"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=359600"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=359600"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}