Calgary Flames Game Day 33: A pre-Christmas trip to Disneyland (8pm MT)

After sweeping a pair of home games against the teams from Florida, the Calgary Flames (13-14-5, 31 points) are headed on the road for a pair of games to close out their pre-Christmas schedule. First up? A trip to Disneyland, or at least right across the interstate from Disneyland, to face the Anaheim Ducks (12-19-0, 24 points).

The broadcast begins at 8 p.m. MT on Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 960 The Fan. The Flames are -150 favourites against the Ducks on Betway.

Projected lines courtesy Daily Faceoff:

Mangiapane – Lindholm – Sharangovich
Zary – Kadri – Pospisil
Huberdeau – Backlund – Coleman
Greer – Ruzicka – Dube

Weegar – Andersson
Hanifin – Tanev
Gilbert – DeSimone

We’re projecting Jacob Markstrom to start in goal, backed up by Dan Vladar. The projected extras are Jordan Oesterle and Walker Duehr. In short: we’re not expecting any changes from a Flames lineup that beat Florida on Monday night.

The Flames haven’t been over .500 since losing to Columbus way back on Oct. 20 to drop to 2-2-1. Heck, they haven’t been at .500 since losing to Vancouver on Dec. 2 to drop to 10-11-3. The Flames have designs on being a playoff team and if you ignore their woeful October, they’re pretty close to one at 11-8-4. But if they want to have a hope of a post-season appearance, they need to get back above .500 with a couple wins before Santa’s arrival.

A win against the Ducks to get them to .500 would be a good first step.

Projected lines courtesy Daily Faceoff:

Killorn – Carlsson – Terry
Vatrano – Henrique – Leason
Jones – Strome – McGinn
Johnston – Carrick – Silfverberg

Fowler – LaCombe
Mintyukov – Lyubushkin
Vaakanainen – Gudas

We’re projecting Lukas Dostal to start in net, backed up by John Gibson. Benoit-Olivier Groulx projects as their extra forward. It sounds like Mason McTavish and/or Jamie Drysdale could return against the Flames, which would obviously cause some line shuffling to happen.

The Ducks are super streaky this season. They won both halves of a back-to-back on Sunday and Monday, beating New Jersey and Detroit respectfully. That’s good! That strong 48 hours ended a five game losing streak they had before that. That’s bad! And that’s sort of how the Ducks have been this season. When they’re good, they’re good. But when they’re bad, they’re quite bad.

The Flames have won each of their last six games at Honda Center, dating back to the beginning of the 2019-20 season. Before that… their record was appreciably worse.

The Flames are without Oliver Kylington, Jakob Pelletier and Kevin Rooney.

The Ducks are without Isac Lundestrom, Jamie Drysdale, Trevor Zegras, Mason McTavish and John Gibson.

This is the first of three games between these old rivals. They’ll meet twice more in April.