After a couple weeks off, the Calgary Flames (26-21-8, 60 points) are back in action after the 4 Nations Face-Off break. They start their march to the end of the regular season on Sunday evening when they host the San Jose Sharks (15-35-7, 37 points). It’s the final home game the Flames will be playing before the NHL’s trade deadline.

Tonight’s broadcast begins at 6 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Jonathan Huberdeau – Nazem Kadri – Matt Coronato
Connor Zary – Mikael Backlund – Blake Coleman
Yegor Sharangovich – Morgan Frost – Joel Farabee
Ryan Lomberg – Kevin Rooney – Martin Pospisil

Kevin Bahl – Rasmus Andersson
Joel Hanley – MacKenzie Weegar
Jake Bean – Brayden Pachal

We’re projecting Dustin Wolf to make the start in net, backed up by Dan Vladar. The projected extras are Daniil Miromanov, Ilya Solovyov and Adam Klapka. Potentially returning to action are Connor Zary (after 15 games out with a lower body injury) and Kevin Bahl (after eight games out with an upper body injury). After an optional morning skate, head coach Ryan Huska indicated that both players are expected to be activated from the injury reserve today… but stopped short of saying they were in.

The Flames hit the break on a bit of a slump, going 2-5-1 over their final eight games. They weren’t play all that poorly, though, but they were finding ways to lose. But for the first time since early January, the Flames have Zary and Bahl available, which makes their defensive pairs slot more cohesively. When you combine that with the additions of Farabee and Frost, it does seem like a whole new Flames group.

The Flames just had four days of dedicated practice time – the first time they’ve had that since training camp and probably the last time they’ll have it for the rest of the season. Ideally, this means that this should be a sharp Flames group. Considering the absolute grind of a schedule they’ll be facing from here on out, they’ll need to be sharp and stay sharp from here on out.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

William Eklund – Macklin Celebrini – Tyler Toffoli
Fabian Zetterlund – Alex Wennberg – Will Smith
Collin Graf – Nico Sturm – Luke Kunin
Walker Duehr – Ty Dellandrea – Barclay Goodrow

Jake Walman – Henry Thrun
Mario Ferraro – Timothy Liljegren
Shakir Mukhamadullin – Jack Thompson

Alexandar Georgiev is projected to start for the Sharks, backed up by Vitek Vanecek. Their projected extras look to be Marc-Eduoard Vlasic, Klim Kostin, and Carl Grundstrom. Walker Duehr faces his old team for the very first time.

What can we say about the Sharks? Man, they could be a fun team in the next few years. If you look up and down their lineup, there are a lot of really intriguing up-and-coming players – we’re looking at you, Macklin Celebrini and Will Smith. We’re not sure if they’re quite there yet, and they need some more talented players to fill in the gaps, but you can look at the shape of things and see how they might come out of the other side of the rebuild looking like a strong hockey team.

The Flames are without Anthony Mantha and Justin Kirkland.

The Sharks are without Logan Couture, Jan Rutta and Nikolai Kovalenko.

This is the second of four meetings between these teams this season. The Flames won the first meeting 3-1 after Christmas. They’ll meet again Apr. 7 in San Jose and Apr. 13 in Calgary.