Flames Game Day: Opening the Young Stars Classic against Vancouver (8:30pm MT, Flames.com)

It’s finally here! For the first time since Game 5 of their series with the Edmonton Oilers, the Calgary Flames will be playing organized hockey again! They kick off their pre-pre-season with a trio of games at the Young Stars Classic tournament in Penticton, starting with a late evening meeting with the Vancouver Canucks on Friday night.

The puck drops shortly after 8:30 p.m. MT and you can catch the action streamed live on the Flames’ website and hear the action on Sportsnet 960 The Fan!

Lines from Thursday’s practice, via the Flames site:

@Jakob Pelletier – @Cole Schwindt – @Walker Duehr
@Emilio Pettersen – @Connor Zary – @Adam Klapka
@Jack Beck – @Rory Kerins – @Lucas Ciona
@Cole Huckins/@Evan Boucher – @Ilya Nikolaev – @Lucas Feuk/@Cooper Walker

@Ilya Solovyov – @Jeremie Poirier
@Cole Jordan – @Yan Kuznetsov
@Simon Lavigne – @Christoffer Sedoff
@Jake Lee – @Rhett Rhinehart
@Cameron Whynot

Per the Flames site, @Dustin Wolf will start and play the entire game. One of @Daniil Chechelev or @Brad Arvanitis will back him up. No word on which skaters will be scratched.

Reigning AHL coach of the year Mitch Love and his staff will be running the bench for Calgary tonight, and it’s an opportunity for him to see a lot of likely Wranglers players for the first time up-close in game action, including Schwindt, Klapka and Poirier. As much as this tournament is a good head-start for players, it’s an opportunity for a very good AHL team to try to get even better after being knocked out of the Calder Cup playoffs in the third round by the eventual league champions, the Chicago Wolves.

Player to watch: It seems super obvious, but a lot of smart people have pencilled Jakob Pelletier onto the NHL roster. If that’s going to become reality, Pelletier will need to consistently stand out.

Lines from Thursday’s practice, via the Flames site:

@Tristen Nielsen – @Nils Åman – @Danila Klimovich
@Connor Lockhart – @Michael Regish – @Simon Pinard
@Max Namestnikov – @Carson Focht – @Marc Gatcomb
@Linus Karlsson – @Chase Wouters – @Arshdeep Bains / @Cole Shepard
@Justin Gill – @Evan Konyen

@Quinn Schmiemann – @Jett Woo
@Chad Nychuk – @Matt Anderson
@Jackson Van de Leest – @Alex Kannok Leipert
@Kirill Kudryavtsuv – @Dylan MacPherson

Vancouver’s goaltenders are @Brett Brochu, @Arturs Silovs and @Ty Young. We’ll have updates on goalies and scratches later in the day. There’s lots of Calgary Hitmen flavour with the Canucks group, with Nielsen, Focht, Woo and Van de Leest all suited up for the Hitmen during their junior careers.

The Canucks’ group is less star-studded than those sent by other clubs, but that’s at least in part by design. The Canucks will be trying players in roles that will probably be similar to what they’d be doing in Abbotsford this coming season, in an effort to give folks a fair audition. We’ll see if it works.

Player to watch: Danila Klimovich is the highest-drafted Canucks prospect involved in Penticton, and you’d hope he stands out from a Canucks standpoint.