FGD 66: The Rangers come to town (7pm MT, SN West)

With their wiggle room down to a precarious ledge about a proverbial cliff, the Calgary Flames (32-23-9) return home tonight for a crucial home game against the visiting New York Rangers (28-30-6). You’ll find that basically all of their remaining 17 contests will be absolutely crucial, and they need to get points to keep pace in the jam-packed Western Conference playoff race. The Rangers unloaded many of their big guns prior to the trade deadline. Regardless of who’s wearing those iconic blue sweaters, this is a must-have game for the Flames after they frittered away potential points on their two-game road trip.

It’s Western Night, and the puck drops just after 7 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines, courtesy of Daily Faceoff:

After David Rittich took the loss on Wednesday, Jon Gillies steps in between the pipes tonight. He’s 2-1-0 with a 2.43 goals against average and .916 save percentage. He’s backed up by Rittich. It’s completely unclear who the scratches will be, as Glen Gulutzan noted after morning skate that the team’s got a lot of bumps and bruises right now. We’ll tweet updated lines after warmup. For now, we’re assuming it’s the same crew as played against Colorado.

The Flames managed just two goals over their two game trip, but gave up seven – granted, one was an empty-netter. They need to figure out how to get more offense, while their goaltenders need to hold things together after being a bit leaky against Dallas and Colorado. We’re at the point of the season where there’s very little room for error from the team’s goaltenders and, unfortunately, error is one of the things that rookie goaltenders are prone to from time to time.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Henrik Lundqvist gets the start. He’s 24-21-5 with a 2.93 goals against average and .914 save percentage. He’s backed up by Alexander Georgiev. Peter Holland is the lone healthy scratch.

The Rangers narrowly beat Vancouver in overtime on Wednesday in a 6-5 thriller. This game looks to be a bit tighter. In a rarity, this game features three members of the 2015 NCAA championship-winning Providence College team: Jankowski and Gillies for the Flames, and John Gilmour for the Rangers. A seventh round Flames draft pick in 2013, Gilmour went unsigned after his college career finished but caught on with the Rangers and has earned his way to the NHL (at least for now).

Flames: Daniel Pribyl (knee), Kris Versteeg (hip), Marek Hrivik (upper-body) and Mike Smith (lower-body) are on the injured reserve. Micheal Ferland (upper-body) is hurt but on the active roster.

NY Rangers: Ondrej Pavelec (knee), Kevin Shattenkirk (knee) and Steve Kampfer (undisclosed) are on the injured reserve.

This is the second of two meetings between these clubs. The Flames blew a late lead and lost a 4-3 heartbreaker in Madison Square Garden last month.

Here are some Rangers tweeters:

It’s a must-win game for the Flames, in what’s likely to be a string of 17 of them to finish off their regular season.