After a pre-season that lasted longer than everyone really ever wanted, hockey fans are rewarded with a great as the 2025-26 NHL season gets going. On Wednesday evening, the Calgary Flames visit their most bitter rivals, the two-time Stanley Cup Finalists, the Edmonton Oilers.

The Flames are hoping to prove that last season’s surprising resurgence is a sign of things to come. Meanwhile, the Oilers are still smarting after losing to Florida in the Stanley Cup Final for the second consecutive year. It’s two teams that are motivated, well-prepared for the season, and really do not like each other very much. Sounds like a fantastic way to kick off the regular season to us!

Today’s broadcast begins at 8 p.m. MT on Sportsnet’s national feed and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Joel Farabee – Nazem Kadri – Adam Klapka
Matvei Gridin – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Connor Zary – Mikael Backlund – Blake Coleman
Ryan Lomberg – Justin Kirkland – Yegor Sharangovich

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

We’re projecting Dustin Wolf to start in net, backed up by Devin Cooley. The projected healthy extras are Zayne Parekh, Daniil Miromanov and Sam Honzek. It’s the first NHL game for 2024 first-rounder Matvei Gridin, who will get the rookie lap treatment prior to pre-game warm-up.

The Flames were one of the lowest-scoring clubs in the NHL last season. They probably won’t be an offensive juggernaut this year, but their hope is that they can see improvement on special teams and growth from some of their younger players will get them enough goals to get into the playoffs. We’ll see how that pans out, but as long as they have Dustin Wolf in net, they’ll probably have a fighting chance in most games.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Leon Draisaitl – Connor McDavid – Trent Frederic
Andrew Mangiapane – Ryan Nugent-Hopkins – Matthew Savoie
Vasili Podkolzin – Noah Philp – Kasperi Kapanen
Isaac Howard – Adam Henrique – David Tomasek

Mattias Ekholm – Evan Bouchard
Darnell Nurse – Alec Regula
Brett Kulak – Ty Emberson

Stuart Skinner starts in the Oilers net, backed up by Calvin Pickard. Their projected healthy extras are Curtis Lazar and Troy Stecher. It’s shaping up to be the NHL debuts for both Isaac Howard and David Tomasek.

Are the Oilers a perfectly constructed ice hockey team? Nope. You can probably cover up a few key names and then point out a bunch of issues with their roster. But hey, they have Leon Draisaitl, Connor McDavid, Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Evan Bouchard on their roster. And yeah, those guys are taking up a good chunk of their salary cap room. But the Oilers have decided to pay their aces and then do what they need to do to back-fill their roster. And it’s been good enough for them to play a lot of post-season hockey over the past few seasons.

The Flames are without Jonathan Huberdeau and Martin Pospisil.

The Oilers are without Zach Hyman, Jake Walman and Mattias Janmark.

This is the first of four Battles of Alberta between these clubs this season. They’ll play a home-and-home set sandwiching the Christmas break – Dec. 23 in Edmonton and Dec. 27 in Calgary – before concluding the season series on Feb. 4 in Calgary.

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