Preseason Gameday Update – September 28th

 

The Calgary Flames will take on a rather veteran Phoenix Coyotes lineup tonight at the Saddledome for their fourth preseason affair this year (7:30 pm, TSN and The FAN 960).  The Coyotes team will resemble very closely their opening day roster, while Calgary will have a number of notable names not playing.  It’s also the home debut of Henrik Karlsson in net.

Here are lines and pairings for the Flames:

Alex Tanguay-Olli Jokinen-Jarome Iginla
Niklas Hagman-Mikael Backlund-Jon Rheault
Tim Jackman-Stefan Meyer-Cam Cunning
Brett Sutter-Craig Conroy-Greg Nemisz

Robyn Regehr-Ian White
Steve Staios-Jay Bouwmeester
T.J. Brodie-Adam Pardy

Karlsson will get the start for the Flames, his second of the exhibition season…he started the Vancouver-based half of the split squad game last week.  Miikka Kiprusoff will not dress as Leland Irving will serve as Karlsson’s backup tonight.

On the Phoenix side, names like Doan, Wolski, Stempniak, Whitney, Upshall, Hanzal, Turris, Boedker, Morris, Jovanovski, and Yandle will all play.  Jason LaBarbera is expected to get the start in net with Ilya Bryzgalov backing him up.  I talked to captain Shane Doan in the locker room today…he’s very excited about this group of Coyotes and the prospects for the season after an impressive 2009-10 campaign.

Extremely excited to see Karlsson in net, he’s a big guy who made a couple beauty saves this morning at skate.  How he performs in the preseason is going to go a long way to determining the comfort level of Flames fans heading into the season. Also, I wanna draw your attention to Kent’s article on Craig Conroy from earlier this week…he was utlized against Tampa’s top forwards on Saturday, and I expect his line to be in tough situations again tonight.