The Calgary Flames are back at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Friday night with a chance to climb back to .500 for the first time this season, and they’ll try to do it against an Anaheim Ducks team that arrives with a different kind of momentum.
Calgary comes home after taking three points from a three-game road trip, and the Flames’ 7-8-1 record has them sitting on 15 points. Anaheim is 8-7-1 with 17 points, and this is the final visit the Ducks will make to the Saddledome in this building.
Puck drop is set for 7 p.m. Alberta Time on Sportsnet West and QR Calgary, with Warmies before the game and After Burner afterward on the Barn Burner YouTube channel.
The Flames are rolling with the same group they’ve used recently, with a few familiar names in familiar spots. The projected forward lines have Aydar Suniev with Morgan Frost and Yegor Sharangovich, Joel Farabee centering Mikael Backlund and Matt Coronato, Matvei Gridin between Martin Pospisil and Ryan Strome, and William Stromgren on a fourth line with Jonathan Castagna and Adam Klapka.
On the back end, the expected pairings are Kevin Bahl with Simon Nemec, Jake Middleton with Zach Whitecloud, and Yan Kuznetsov with Zayne Parekh. Dustin Wolf is expected to get the start in goal, with Devin Cooley backing him up.
Cooley is back after missing four games with a lower-body injury, and Joel Hanley and Maxim Tsyplakov are projected as the healthy extras. Outside of that, Calgary’s lineup looks unchanged from the recent run.
That recent stretch has been relentless. Since Oct. 22, the Flames have played at least every second day, and Friday is their ninth game in 16 days.
The run wraps up Sunday against the Flyers, which will be their 10th game in 18 days. Even with the workload, Calgary has gone 5-2-1 over that span.
Joel Farabee has 10 points in the run, Matt Coronato has nine, and Matvei Gridin is right there with seven.
The Flames haven’t been blowing teams away. Their wins have mostly come by slim margins, but they’ve been finding a way through it, and the younger players have been doing plenty of the heavy lifting.
Anaheim comes in on the second night of a back-to-back after beating Edmonton 5-4 on Thursday, and it’s their fourth game in six days. The Ducks have spent much of the season alternating results, winning one and losing one without building much of a sustained run. That kind of pattern can wear on a team, especially when the roster and the growth of some of its younger players suggest there should be more there.
The Ducks’ projected lines have Alex Killorn with Leo Carlsson and Judd Caulfield, Cutter Gauthier alongside Mikael Granlund and Beckett Sennecke, Nico Myatovic with Tim Washe and Sam Colangelo, and Jeff Malott on a fourth line with Roger McQueen and Nikita Nesterenko. Their blue line is projected to feature Jackson LaCombe with Drew Helleson, Pavel Mintyukov with Noah Warren, and Travis Mitchell with Tristan Luneau.
Lukas Dostal is projected to start in net for Anaheim, backed up by either Laurent Brossoit, who started in Edmonton, or Ville Husso, who did not. The Ducks’ healthy extras on Thursday were Frank Vatrano and Tyson Hinds.
Calgary is missing Jonathan Huberdeau, Sam Honzek and Brennan Othmann. Anaheim is without Troy Terry, Ian Moore, Ryan Poehling and A.J. Greer.
The numbers tell a pretty clear story. Calgary’s 53.3 expected goals percentage ranks ninth, while Anaheim sits 25th at 46.4.
The Ducks have the edge on the power play at 36.2 percent, good for second in the league, while the Flames are at 29.7 percent and fifth. On the penalty kill, Calgary is at 84.0 percent, eighth, and Anaheim is at 73.8 percent, 22nd.
This is the third of four meetings between the teams. They split the first two, and the season series wraps up next weekend in Orange County.
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