A gigantic week of games begins for the Calgary Flames (36-27-13, 85 points) on Monday evening, as they continue their quest to reel in the Minnesota Wild for the final wild card playoff spot in the Western Conference. The week kicks off in NoCal, as they visit the San Jose Sharks (20-46-10, 50 points). Can the Flames handle the NHL’s lowest team in the standings and grab two very important points?

Today’s broadcast begins at 8:30 p.m. MT on Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

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

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

We’re projecting Dustin Wolf to start in net, backed up by Dan Vladar. The projected extras look to be Daniil Miromanov, Dryden Hunt and Aydar Suniev. The lines are more or less what the Flames ended Saturday’s game against Vegas using.

It’s a pretty interesting time for the red team. Despite virtually everyone in the hockey world assuming we’d be chatting about the draft lottery at this point, the Flames have a fairly realistic path to the playoffs – though it mostly involves them winning out and the Wild losing out. Give the Flames credit: this is a group that’s faced a bunch of circumstances – both in games and in their broader season – and could have folded up shop. Instead, they’ve embraced their scrappy “us against the world” mentality, and that’s allowed them to hang around this long.

Keep an eye on MacKenzie Weegar in this game. He was all over the game with Vegas: making passes, blocking shots, disrupting Vegas rushes, and generally being a menace.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Nikolai Kovalenko – Macklin Celebrini – Will Smith
William Eklund – Alex Wennberg – Collin Graf
Carl Grundstrom – Ty Dellandrea – Cameron Lund
Barclay Goodrow – Zack Ostapchuk – Noah Gregor

Mario Ferraro – Jack Thompson
Lucas Carlsson – Timothy Liljegren
Henry Thrun – Marc-Edouard Vlasic

We’re projecting Georgi Romanov to start in net, backed up by Alexandar Georgiev. The projected extra is Klim Kostin.

The Sharks have lost five games in a row (0-4-1) since their shootout triumph over Toronto on Mar. 29. During those five games, they’ve scored fewer than three goals in four of them. The Sharks are a team that’s playing loose and has a really fun mix of young players that could be a scary-good team in a few seasons.

But they’re not there yet. And this is a game the Flames need to win, but also a game they should reasonably be expected to win given where each team is in the standings.

The Flames are without Anthony Mantha, Justin Kirkland and Connor Zary.

The Sharks are without Logan Couture, Jan Rutta, Vincent Desharnais, Shakir Mukhamadullin and Tyler Toffoli.

This is the third of four games between the Flames and Sharks. Calgary’s won each of the first two games. They play one more time next Sunday at the Saddledome.