Flames Game Day 21: Heading back to Orange County to face the Ducks (7pm ABT, SN1)

Less than 24 hours after a win in Hollywood, the Calgary Flames (9-10-1, 19 points) are headed to Orange County to face the Anaheim Ducks (10-9-1, 21 points), with the potential of moving to the .500 mark with a win! The Flames have mostly dug themselves out after their ugly, ugly start, and .500 represents a significant mile marker in their rebound. Can they win on back-to-back nights and get there?

Edit Edit date and time Today’s broadcast begins at 7 p.m. Alberta Time on Sportsnet One and QR Calgary! Tune in for Warmies before the game and After Burner following the game on the Barn Burner YouTube channel!

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Joel Farabee – Mikael Backlund – Matt Coronato
Matvei Gridin – Martin Pospisil – Ryan Strome
Yegor Sharangovich – Morgan Frost – Adam Klapka
William Stromgren – Jonathan Castagna – Aydar Suniev

Joel Hanley – Simon Nemec
Jake Middleton – Zach Whitecloud
Yan Kuznetsov – Zayne Parekh

It’s the second half of a back-to-back with no morning skate, so we’re engaging in a small amount of guesswork by saying Devin Cooley will likely start, with Dustin Wolf backing up. Saturday’s extras were Brayden Pachal, Maxim Tsyplakov and Brennan Othmann. Considering the Flames won on Saturday, we’re not sure we’ll see many changes, but we’ll see at warm-up.

The Flames beat the Los Angeles Kings by a 3-2 score on Saturday night. They played just well enough to win, thanks to some nifty netminding from Wolf, but they’re probably looking for some improvements.

Fun fact: the last time the Flames were at .500, it was for a three day period between Dec. 31, 2024 and Jan. 3, 2025: they beat the Flyers on New Year’s Eve to finally reach .500 after last year’s rough start, then fell back below on Jan. 3 with a loss to Nashville, never to return. They’ve been a game below .500 three previous times, but lost three times in their attempts to get back to even keel.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Judd Caulfield – Leo Carlsson – Troy Terry
Cutter Gauthier – Mikael Granlund – Beckett Sennecke
Alex Killorn – Tim Washe – Jeff Malott
Frank Vatrano – Roger McQueen – Sam Colangelo

Jackson Lacombe – Drew Helleson
Pavel Mintyukov – Noah Warren
Tyson Hinds – Tristan Luneau

The Ducks also played on Saturday, so we’re making assumptions for them, too. We’re projecting Ville Husso to start in net, backed up by Lukas Dostal. Their extras on Saturday were Nikita Nesterenko and Travis Mitchell. When the Flames met Anaheim at home last week, the Ducks were carrying three goaltenders: Laurent Brossoit has since been sent back to the AHL.

The Ducks lost 6-2 to the New York Islanders on Saturday night, at home, so they have even less travel for this game than the Flames do. The Ducks could drop back down to .500 with a regulation loss in this game, which sort of tells you how their year has been going. They’re good, but they’re inconsistent, and they’ve had fits and starts to their game. When they’re good, though, they’re really good.

The Flames are without Jonathan Huberdeau and Kevin Bahl.

The Ducks are without Ian Moore, Ryan Poehling and A.J. Greer.

This is the fourth of four meetings between Calgary and Anaheim this season. The Ducks have won two of the first three games between these teams already.