The Calgary Flames are back on the road Saturday night with a quick chance to reset after a rough season opener, and the assignment doesn’t exactly get easier. They’ll face the Vancouver Canucks at 8 p.m. MT at Rogers Arena, with both teams already coming off wild, high-scoring starts to the season.
Calgary opened with a loss to Seattle, a game that started with eight strong minutes before everything came apart. Head coach Ryan Huska put it bluntly after that one: “I feel like you saw all of our warts in one night.” The Flames will be looking for a much cleaner showing against a Canucks team that has already been dragged into back-to-back shootouts.
The projected Flames lineup has been shuffled a bit from Thursday’s opener. Matvei Gridin is expected to skate with Morgan Frost and Matt Coronato, while Sam Honzek joins Mikael Backlund and Joel Farabee.
Brennan Othmann, who was a force in both preseason games against Seattle, is projected to slot in with Ryan Strome and Yegor Sharangovich. Maxim Tsyplakov, Martin Pospisil and Adam Klapka round out the fourth line.
On the blue line, Calgary is expected to go with Kevin Bahl and Zach Whitecloud, Jake Middleton and Zayne Parekh, plus Joel Hanley and Simon Nemec. Yan Kuznetsov is out of the lineup, with Hanley coming in, and Brayden Pachal and Connor Zary are expected to be healthy extras along with Kuznetsov.
Devin Cooley is slated to start in goal, with Dustin Wolf backing him up.
Vancouver’s projected group, as listed by Daily Faceoff, is equally interesting. Marco Rossi is listed with Elias Pettersson and Linus Karlsson on the top line, followed by Liam Ohgren, Paul Cotter and Brock Boeser. Drew O’Connor, Aatu Raty and Brendan Gallagher are expected on the third line, with Arshdeep Bains, Marco Rossi and Jonathan Lekkerimaki on the fourth.
The Canucks’ blue line is projected to feature Zeev Buium with Filip Hronek, Jamie Oleksiak with Tom Willander, and Elias Pettersson with Luke Schenn.
Based on reports from an optional morning skate, waiver pickup Leevi Merilainen is expected to start for Vancouver, with Kevin Lankinen behind him. Guillaume Brisebois, Victor Mancini and perhaps Jake DeBrusk are listed as the projected extras, though that could still change at warm-up.
The Canucks have already been part of two wild ones, winning 6-5 in overtime on Tuesday before dropping a 9-7 game on Thursday. Calgary is not built to trade chances like that, so avoiding a track meet will be a major part of the plan. The Flames head to Seattle on Sunday to finish their back-to-back, while Vancouver hosts Vegas the same night.
The injury lists are short but notable: the Flames are without Jonathan Huberdeau, and the Canucks are missing Thatcher Demko and Filip Chytil.
Saturday’s game is the first of four meetings between Calgary and Vancouver this season. The teams will meet again on Dec. 26 in Calgary, Feb. 27 in Vancouver and Apr. 10 in the final-ever regular season game at the Saddledome.
In Other News...
Flames Loss In Vancouver Exposed A Familiar Problem Again
The Flames left Vancouver with another reminder of how thin the margin can be in a tight, physical game. The Canucks did not exactly light up the scoreboard, but they did enough in a patchy contest to keep Calgary chasing, with Vancouvers calm work in goal helping stabilize a game that never found much flow.
For Calgary, the frustration came from a familiar place: a game that was there to be grabbed, then slipped away as the tone turned heavier and the details got messier. Vancouver brought the kind of edge that can tilt a night like this, while the Canucks still had to survive through a power play that never really found its rhythm. [Read more 🡒]
Flames Send An Early Message With Lineup Changes After Ugly Opener
After a 6-1 loss to the Seattle Kraken to open the season, the Calgary Flames wasted little time making a point about accountability. On the road against the Vancouver Canucks, the club went with two lineup changes and handed season debuts to Brennan Othmann and Joel Hanley as part of an early response to a rough start.
Ryan Huska said the adjustment came down to puck management, a clear sign the staff is looking for cleaner decisions after the opener went sideways. The shuffle gives Calgary a chance to reset quickly, and it also sends an early message that the margins for error are going to be thin as the Flames try to get back on track. [Read more 🡒]
Canucks Suddenly Have A Goalie Decision They Did Not Expect
Leevi Merilinen has given Vancouver something it did not necessarily expect this early in the season: a goalie who has looked poised in limited action. Claimed off waivers from the Ottawa Senators, the 23-year-old has stepped into two games and handled the assignment with a 1.32 goals-against average and a .943 save percentage, numbers that suggest the Canucks may have found more than just a stopgap while Thatcher Demko was out.
The bigger question now is what happens when Demko is ready to return. Vancouver will have to sort through its goalie picture at a time when Merilinen has made a strong early case to stay in the mix, and that kind of unexpected depth can quickly turn into a roster puzzle. For a team that had been watching him since the summer, the timing has only made the conversation more complicated. [Read more 🡒]