Calgary Flames Game Day 43: Closing out a double-header in St. Louis (6pm MT, SNW/960)

Thursday’s broadcast begins at 6 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan!

Projected lines courtesy Daily Faceoff:

Dube – Lindholm – Toffoli
Huberdeau – Kadri – Lucic
Mangiapane – Backlund – Coleman
Duehr – Ruzicka – Lewis

Hanifin – Andersson
Weegar – Tanev
Zadorov – Stone

Based on reports from our colleagues on the road trip, sounds like Dan Vladar starts in goal, backed up by Jacob Markstrom. The projected extras are Connor Mackey, Jakob Pelletier and Radim Zohorna. After a pretty strong outing on Tuesday, Walker Duehr remains in the expected lineup.

The good news is the Flames have points in three consecutive games and, dating back to Dec. 1, they’re 9-5-6. That’s good! But if you get down to brass tacks, they’ve won just nine out of their past 20 games. Getting points is all well and good, but they need to get more wins if they want to get ahead of the rest of the playoff pack.

The Flames are good team who make mistakes at bad times. And they’re unlucky enough that their few mistakes always seem to come back to haunt them. They don’t need to play mistake-free hockey, but they need to be a bit more consistent than they were on Tuesday evening.

Projected lines courtesy Daily Faceoff:

Buchnevich – Thomas – Kyrou
Saad – Schenn – Barbashev
Neighbours – Acciari – Walker
Toropchenko – Alexandrov – Pitlick

Aside from perhaps Thomas Greiss starting in net, expected to be backed up by Jordan Binnington, we’re not projecting any changes for the Blues. Their expected healthy extras are Josh Leivo and Dmitri Samorukov.

The Blues were the second-best team for much of the game on Tuesday, getting an early lead off a power play and then the Flames took over the game by executing more effectively at five-on-five. But the Blues were the better team for three or four minutes early in the third period, and that was enough. The Blues’ depth is being massively tested right now, but they’re a deep enough team, with good enough coaching, that they’re able to hang around in games and make life challenging for their opposition.

The Flames are without Oliver Kylington and Brett Ritchie.

The Blues are without Logan Brown, Scott Perunovich, Marco Scandella, Torey Krug, Ryan O’Reilly, Vladimir Tarasenko, Nick Leddy and Robert Bortuzzo.

This is the final game between these teams this season. The Flames have registered a regulation loss and an overtime loss against the Blues so far.

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