FGD #38: Mile High Milestones

The Calgary Flames head to the Mile High City of Denver tonight for a meeting with the Colorado Avalanche. They’ve slipped just under the .500 market by virtue of a pair of home losses, and now the Flames will try to shed their “team everyone gets milestones against” label when they face Jarome Iginla, who’s sitting at 599 career goals.

After a pair of losses to Pacific Division teams, the Flames would love to kick off 2016 with a win, and would probably love to keep the old gunslinger (Iginla) off the scoresheet for a night – sentimentality aside. And if the Flames get a point, it’ll be their 3600th standings point in franchise history.

The puck drops just after 8pm MT on CBC and Sportsnet 960 The Fan!

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Presumably Karri Ramo will get the start for the 27th time in Calgary’s last 30 games. He’s 13-12-1 with a 2.70 goals against average and a .907 save percentage. He’s been a league-average goalie for the Flames for awhile. It sounds like Bob Hartley is inserting Josh Jooris (for Brandon Bollig) and Ladislav Smid (for Deryk Engelland) into tonight’s line-up.

Both the Ducks and the Kings were able to key in on Johnny Gaudreau and turn Calgary’s most dangerous weapon into a non-factor. That has to change for the Flames to have a shot at winning tonight. Also, the Flames need to keep winning the special teams battles, particularly when it comes to generating shots and chances on the power-play.

More importantly, I’m very curious if the Flames coaching staff can actually adapt in-game; they had good third periods against Anaheim and Los Angeles, but that was after the game was already out of hand and their opponents seemed to stop caring all that much.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Semyon Varlamov likely starts for the home side. He’s 12-9-3 with a 2.63 goals against average and a .914 save percentage. He’s being backed up by noted former Flames netminder Reto Berra, who’s been decent for Colorado this season.

The big story tonight will be Iginla chasing 600 goals. Granted, this isn’t the same Iginla that led teams in scoring, but he’s very good at picking his spots and making opponents pay. He had two goals (including an empty-netter) and three points in Colorado’s win over Calgary in November. With him chasing a milestone, expect him to be buzzing around the net even more than he usually does.

The Flames lost 6-3 to the Avalanche in Denver back in November.

All-time, the Flames are 69-57-20-7 against the Avalanche/Nordiques franchise.

The Flames would like nothing more in their first game of 2016 than for a big win to put them back at the .500 mark. And if that win involves keeping their franchise’s all-time leading scorer from hitting an all-time milestone, I’m sure they’d be fine with that, too.