After a big win and a few days off, the Calgary Flames (2-6-0, 4 points) are back in action as they continue their homestand at the Scotiabank Saddledome. On Thursday night, the Flames are welcoming an old friend back to town, as Blake Coleman returns to Calgary with the Minnesota Wild (6-2-2, 14 points) for the first time!

Today’s broadcast begins at 7 p.m. MT 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:

Aydar Suniev – Morgan Frost – Yegor Sharangovich
Joel Farabee – Ben Jones – Matt Coronato
Matvei Gridin – Martin Pospisil – Ryan Strome
Brennan Othmann – Jonathan Castagna – Adam Klapka

Kevin Bahl – Simon Nemec
Jake Middleton – Zach Whitecloud
Yan Kuznetsov – Zayne Parekh

Devin Cooley is slated to start in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. Cooley made 34 saves against Carolina, then gave some of the most fascinating post-game analysis about the conscious and unconscious mind – apparently he meant subconscious instead of unconscious. Anyway, the healthy scratches look to be Joel Hanley and Maxim Tsyplakov. It sounds like Mikael Backlund won’t be in action after suffering an upper body injury against Carolina, so Ben Jones will make his Flames debut in his place. The Flames had an optional morning skate, per QR Calgary’s Pat Steinberg, so we’ll get a better sense of lines at warm-up.

The Flames are in last place, points percentage wise, in the National Hockey League. But they’ve also won two of their last three games, and they’ve started to play some pretty good hockey. Yeah, a good deal of Sunday’s win was due to Cooley playing great in the first half of the game. But the Flames also defended well, didn’t allow a ton of follow-up chances, and they managed to bury some key chances at key times.

We’ll see if they can keep their momentum against the Wild.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Kirill Kaprizov – Joel Eriksson Ek – Matt Boldy
Blake Coleman – Ryan Hartman – Bobby Brink
Yakov Trenin – Danila Yurov – Maxim Shabanov
Nico Sturm – Michael McCarron – Tyler Pitlick

Quinn Hughes – Jonas Brodin
Daemon Hunt – Zach Bogosian
Matt Kiersted – David Spacek

We’re projecting Calvin Pickard to start in net, backed up by Jesper Wallstedt. The Wild’s healthy extras look to be Carson Lambos and Rieger Lorenz.

The Wild played in Edmonton on Tuesday and lost in overtime. They ended up playing a heck of a game, going toe-to-toe with Connor McDavid’s top line and generally out-playing them… but still finding a way to lose. That said, the Wild are a bit depleted due to injuries but have found ways to win fairly consistently this season. That’s what happens when you build a talented team with depth top to bottom; if you’re missing a few pieces, you can still keep things rolling along.

The Flames are without Jonathan Huberdeau, Sam Honzek and Mikael Backlund.

The Wild are without Brock Faber, Filip Gustavsson, Nick Foligno, Marcus Foligno, Jared Spurgeon and Olli Maatta.

This is the first of three games between these teams this season. They’ll meet again on Nov. 19 in Calgary and Mar. 19 in Minnesota.