The Calgary Flames hit the practice ice at the Scotiabank Saddledome on Wednesday morning for their final day of preparations for Thursday evening’s clash with the powerhouse Colorado Avalanche.

After making some fairly noteworthy roster shuffles on Tuesday and Wednesday, the big news at Wednesday’s skate was that the two newest faces on the club’s roster – forward prospects Aydar Suniev and Jonathan Castagna – look like they should be in the lineup for Thursday’s meeting with the Avalanche.

Via QR Calgary’s Pat Steinberg, here’s how things lined up on Wednesday at the ‘Dome:

Matvei Gridin – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Yegor Sharangovich – Mikael Backlund – Joel Farabee
Sam Honzek – Martin Pospisil – Ryan Strome
Aydar Suniev – Jonathan Castagna – Adam Klapka
Brennan Othmann – Maxim Tsyplakov

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

Dustin Wolf
Devin Cooley

(Steinberg noted after this original social media post that the team sees Martin Pospisil as a centre, so he’ll be up the middle between Honzek and Strome on the third line.)

Based on how these players lined up, we would anticipate (a) Dustin Wolf starting on Thursday, (b) the healthy scratches to be Brennan Othmann, Maxim Tsyplakov and Joel Hanley, and (c) Jonathan Castagna to make his National Hockey League debut on Thursday.

The Flames have had a rough start to the season. They lost 6-1 at home to Seattle, then lost 4-1 in Vancouver and 6-1 to Seattle again. They’ve scored three goals and allowed 16. They don’t have a single player who’s played multiple games without a negative plus/minus. They are the only NHL club yet to register a standings point, and they have – on paper – a pretty tough schedule ahead of them with dates set with Colorado, Anaheim (twice) and Vegas in the next week or so.

Suffice it to say, the Flames are not happy with where they are, and they’ve already started making lineup and roster changes in an effort to fix things. They might not win every game this season, but they sure as heck want to be more competitive than they have been to this point.

We’ll see if there are improvements against Colorado on Thursday evening.