Folks, there’s a lot of wild and horrible stuff swirling around the hockey world right now and a lot of it is centered around the Calgary Flames. But as they say: the show must go on, and hopefully there’s a reasonably entertaining 60 minutes of hockey as everything else comes to a swift resolution.
The Flames (11-12-4, 26 points) finish off their tumultuous four game road trip tonight. Their opponent is the Buffalo Sabres (11-10-3, 25 points), who have cooled off a ton after their tremendous start to the season and are absolutely riddled with injuries of late.
This one begins at 5 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan!

The Flames

Projected lines, via Daily Faceoff:
Gaudreau – Monahan – Lindholm
Tkachuk – Backlund – Mangiapane
Dube – Ryan – Lucic
Rieder – Jankowski – Frolik
Giordano – Brodie
Hanifin – Andersson
Kylington – Stone
It sounds like David Rittich starts for the Flames (making his league-leading 22nd start), backed up by Cam Talbot. The projected scratches are Alexander Yelesin and Zac Rinaldo. There are no lineup changes from Monday night’s overtime setback in Pittsburgh. Associate coach Geoff Ward will run the bench tonight.
The Flames have points in back to back games. That’s good, right? They’ve captured three of a possible six points so far on their road trip and have a chance to head home with a .500 overall record with a victory this evening. But to do that they’ll need to find a way to out-chance and out-work their opposition, something they haven’t been able to do consistently all season.

The Sabres

Projected lines, via Daily Faceoff:
Olofsson – Eichel – Reinhart
Skinner – Mittelstadt – Sheary
Girgensons – Larsson – Lazar
Vesey – Asplund – Dea
Miller – Ristolainen
Jokiharju – Montour
Bogosian – Scandella
Linus Ullmark starts for Buffalo, backed up by Carter Hutton. The lone healthy scratch for the Sabres looks to be Jake McCabe.
The Sabres have won twice in the month of November, cooling off considerably after a strong October. They’re missing many, many regulars and just lost Rasmus Dahlin for an unspecified period of time following a concussion he suffered last game against Tampa Bay.
This is a winnable game for the Flames if they have the will to out-work the Sabres.

The Numbers

Flames
Sabres
Wins
11
11
Points
26
25
Adjusted Corsi
51.1%
50.0%
Power Play
16.3%
19.2%
Penalty Kill
85.0%
73.7%

Injury Report

The Flames are without D Travis Hamonic (lower body), F Sam Bennett (upper body), D Juuso Valimaki (ACL surgery) and F Austin Czarnik (lower body).
The Sabres are missing D Rasmus Dahlin (concussion), D Matt Hunwick (neck), F Kyle Okposo (concussion), F Vladimir Sobotka (lower body), F Marcus Johansson (upper body), F Tage Thompson (shoulder) and F Evan Rodrigues (lower body).

When Last We Met

These two clubs met twice in 2018-19. Both games went to overtime and the teams split the series. Calgary won 2-1 in OT in Buffalo in October, while Buffalo won 4-3 in OT in Calgary in January.

Know Thy Enemy

Here are some key Twitter peeps to follow for today’s game: