Flames Game Day 38: Watch out for the cannon! (5pm MT, SN West)

Two days after a fairly big triumph over the St. Louis Blues, the Calgary Flames (19-16-2, 44 points) hit the road for a pretty important back-to-back set of games. First up? The Columbus Blue Jackets (18-20-1, 37 points), a pretty young group that’s working through some growing pains right now. Can the Flames pick up another two points and avoid being spooked by the cannon that goes off whenever Columbus scores at home?

This game gets going at 5 p.m. MT. You can catch the action on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Gaudreau – Lindholm – Tkachuk
Coleman – Backlund – Mangiapane
Lucic – Monahan – Dube
Lewis – Ruzicka – Ritchie

Hanifin – Andersson
Kylington – Tanev
Zadorov – Gudbranson

Jacob Markström starts, backed up by Dan Vladar. Michael Stone and Brad Richardson are the active extras, with Tyler Pitlick out day-to-day with an injury. Connor Mackey and Byron Froese are on the taxi squad. No changes are expected from a Flames group that scored a touchdown against the Blues on Monday.

The Flames were full marks against a pretty flat Blues team last time out. They forechecked. They backchecked. They got saves from their goalie. They made plays that made life easier on their goalie. Columbus won’t be as disjointed as the Blues were, but can the Flames do the same types of things that made them successful on Monday?

This is the final Eastern time zone game of the regular season and the last 5 p.m. MT start of the year, too. (There’s a bunch of 6 p.m. MT games left, though.)

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Elvis Merzlikins starts for Columbus, backed up by Joonas Korpisalo. Gabriel Carlsson, Emil Bemstrom and Gavin Bayreuther project as their healthy extras.

The Jackets are young and with that youth has come some bumps in the road. They’ve been a win-one, lose-one team for much of the season, and between inconsistency and COVID and injuries they haven’t been able to put together a ton of momentum. That said, they’re better than their record indicates and they have quite a few dangerous players on their roster to watch out for. (We see you, Zach Werenski.)

The Flames are without Tyler Pitlick.

The Blue Jackets are without Nathan Gerbe, Daniil Tarasov, Justin Danforth and Adam Boqvist.

These teams haven’t met since the month this stupid pandemic started, March 2020: the Flames won 3-2 in overtime in Calgary.

Your recommended Twitter follows for tonight’s contest: