It’s time for matinee hockey! After picking up wins in their first three games of their homestand, the Calgary Flames (11-6-3, 25 points) will go for a sweep on Saturday afternoon when they host the Minnesota Wild (13-3-3, 29 points). The Flames are 6-2-2 in November, and they’re facing one of the few teams with a better record than them this month. Can the Flames follow up their big win over the Rangers with another impressive performance against one of the NHL’s best teams?

Today’s broadcast begins at 2 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Jonathan Huberdeau – Connor Zary – Blake Coleman
Martin Pospisil – Nazem Kadri – Andrei Kuzmenko
Yegor Sharangovich – Mikael Backlund – Matt Coronato
Ryan Lomberg – Kevin Rooney – Justin Kirkland

Kevin Bahl – Rasmus Andersson
MacKenzie Weegar – Daniil Miromanov
Jake Bean – Brayden Pachal

We’re projecting Dan Vladar to start this afternoon, backed up by Dustin Wolf. It’s Vladar’s first appearance in net since last Tuesday in Vancouver. The projected extras are Joel Hanley, Tyson Barrie and Adam Klapka.

What can we say about the Flames after 20 games? Well, they work hard. They battle. They get strong goaltending. They don’t have high-end offensive talent, but they’ve gotten timely goals when they’ve needed them and that’s been enough to rack up 11 wins. Is their success sustainable? Well, it depends if they can keep up their physically taxing playing style. They’re committed to wearing down their opposition, which has to take a toll on them, as well.

The Flames have surprised the hockey world through 20 games. Let’s see if they can keep it up.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Kirill Kaprizov – Joel Eriksson Ek – Matt Boldy
Marcus Johansson – Marco Rossi – Ryan Hartman
Marcus Foligno – Frederick Gaudreau – Yakov Trenin
Jakub Lauko – Marat Khusnutdinov – Devin Shore

Jacob Middleton – Brock Faber
Jonas Brodin – Jared Spurgeon
Declan Chisholm – Zach Bogosian

We’re projecting Filip Gustavsson to start in net, backed up by Marc-Andre Fleury. Their extras on Thursday were Ben Jones and Jon Merrill. The Wild are banged up and called up forward Travis Boyd on Friday afternoon. We’ll likely have to wait until warm-up to determine who’s able to play against the Flames (and who isn’t).

One player that seemed to survive an injury scare unscathed against Edmonton was Kirill Kaprizov. Kaprizov is off to a heck of a start, and his 34 points this season have him near the very top of the NHL’s scoring race. There’s a pretty big gap in points between him and the next-best Wild player (Matt Boldy, with 20 points), but the Wild are getting a lot of contributions from a lot of players and it’s allowed them to win in a lot of different ways.

The Flames are without Anthony Mantha.

The Wild are without Mats Zuccarello.

This is the first of three games that the Flames will play against the Wild this season. They’ll meet again in Minnesota on Jan. 25 and close out the season series in Calgary on Apr. 11.