Flames prepare for brief, key eastern trip

The Calgary Flames gathered briefly at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Sunday morning as they prepared for another road trip. Their brief jaunt east sees them play the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night and the Buffalo Sabres on Tuesday night before returning home.

Coming off an iffy outing on Thursday against the Pittsburgh Penguins and a stronger showing on Saturday against the Washington Capitals, head coach Bill Peters indicated no lineup changes for Monday’s game. That means the line combinations that finished the Saturday game are likely how they start out against the Leafs:

Johnny Gaudreau – Sean Monahan – Matthew Tkachuk
Dillon Dube – Mikael Backlund – Austin Czarnik
Sam Bennett – Elias Lindholm – James Neal
Michael Frolik – Derek Ryan – Garnet Hathaway

Mark Giordano – TJ Brodie
Noah Hanifin – Travis Hamonic
Juuso Valimaki – Rasmus Andersson

Peters shared that the goaltenders will be splitting the two games: Mike Smith starts against Toronto on Monday while David Rittich goes against the Sabres on Tuesday.

Tuesday night would be Rittich’s fourth start through the season’s first 13 games. While Peters declined to indicate what number the coaching staff has targeted for Rittich’s full season workload, extrapolating the early work over the full 82 games breaks down to about 25 starts for the backup and 57 for starter Mike Smith. Smith played 55 games last season, but he began the season starting 20 of the team’s first 22 games (and then played 35 over the remaining 60 games).

“The way it is, it’s more managing the workload and the travel and everything else,” said Peters. “There’s the unforeseen, too, right? It’s a number that’s projected to be reasonable to allow Smitty to be fresh, so we’ll see how that unfolds.”

The healthy scratches for Monday night project as forward Mark Jankowski and a pair of defenders in Michael Stone and Dalton Prout. Peters noted there’s a challenge in balancing the needs of the eight blueliners currently on the Flames roster.

“You know it’s tough,” said Peters. “Obviously Prouter hasn’t played in a long time, so that’s something that we talked about. I know management was talking about it last night with (assistant coach Ryan Huska) and everything else. But we’re going to try to do the right thing, do the best thing. And then if you’re taking a young guy out, what do you do with the young guy? Do you send him to Stockton to play? It’s no good to be a young guy and sit and watch hockey, that much we all know, so that’ll be something that we manage throughout the course of the year.”

The Flames hit the road with a 5-5-1 record and sit in the thick of the Pacific Division standings. The pair of games against the Maple Leafs (8-3-0) and Sabres (6-4-1) represent four points against non-conference opponents, which could end up being difference-makers in the playoff race at the end of the season.