Exhibition hockey is here, friends, and the pre-season calendar is way shorter than it was previously. The Calgary Flames play their first of four pre-season games on Sunday evening when they host the Seattle Kraken!

The game starts just after 6 p.m. MT, streaming on the Flames website and over the airwaves on QR Calgary! (They have a 90-minute pre-game show on QR Calgary starting at 4:30 p.m. MT!)

Here are projected lines for this evening via QR Calgary’s Pat Steinberg:

Alex Nylander – Rory Kerins – Matvei Gridin
Sam Honzek – Ben Jones – Dryden Hunt
William Stromgren – Tyson Gross – Andrew Basha
Brennan Othmann – Jonathan Castagna – Aydar Suniev

Joel Hanley – Brayden Pachal
Yan Kuznetsov – Zayne Parekh
Abram Wiebe – Hunter Brzustewicz

Devin Cooley starts in net and is slated to play the full 60 minutes, per Flames head coach Ryan Huska. Arsenii Sergeev is dressed as his backup.

The “veterans” for the Flames’ group are Nylander, Gridin, Honzek, Jones, Hunt, Hanley, Pachal, Kuznetsov, Parekh, Brzustewicz and Cooley. (Of those guys, Nylander, Hunt, Hanley, Pachal and Cooley are 100-gamers.)

It’s a pretty interesting group for the Flames at home, featuring all five younger players that played much of the season with the big club last season: Matvei Gridin, Sam Honzek, Yan Kuznetsov, Zayne Parekh and Hunter Brzustewicz. The remainder of the roster is guys who seem on the roster periphery – if you want to nickname this group “the bubble boys,” we won’t hold it against you. This lineup is chock full of guys that likely really want to make an impression on Flames brass.

The Kraken opened their exhibition calendar on Saturday evening against Vancouver, winning 4-2.

Here are our guesswork lines for this evening based on the posted roster.

Jani Nyman – Oscar Fisker Molgaard – Jagger Firkus
Carson Rehkopf – Logan Morrison – Ryan Winterton
Eduard Sale – Mitchell Stephens – Jon-Randall Avon
Curtis Douglas – John Hayden – Nathan Villeneuve

Tyson Jugnauth – Ville Ottavainen
Gustav Olofsson – Ty Nelson
Caden Price – Kaden Hammell

Philipp Grubauer
Nikke Kokko

The “veterans” for Seattle are Douglas, Grubauer, Hayden, Olofsson, Sale, Stephens, Villeneuve and Winterton.

A decent chunk of the Kraken lineup played in that 4-2 win over Vancouver, and then made the trek to Calgary. We’ll see how they can keep the energy up playing on back-to-back evenings. (Nelson, Nyman and Morrison all scored against Vancouver.)

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