After starting their road trip off with back-to-back losses, the Calgary Flames (2-8-2, 6 points) return to action on Saturday afternoon as they attempt to get back on track with a back-to-back weekend set. First up? A meeting with the Nashville Predators (4-6-2, 10 points), a team off to a fairly uneven start themselves.

Simply put: the Flames need wins and points, any way they can get ’em.

Today’s broadcast begins at 1:30 p.m. MT on Sportsnet’s national feed, Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Thursday’s lines via Daily Faceoff:

Jonathan Huberdeau – Nazem Kadri – Morgan Frost
Sam Honzek – Mikael Backlund – Blake Coleman
Joel Farabee – Yegor Sharangovich – Matt Coronato
Ryan Lomberg – Justin Kirkland – Adam Klapka

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

The Flames had an optional skate in Ottawa on Friday before flying to Nashville. And since it’s an early game, there’s no morning skate. So we’re making some educated guesses here. Dustin Wolf usually gets the first half of back-to-backs, so we suspect he’ll start this afternoon and Devin Cooley will go on Sunday in Philadelphia. Zayne Parekh was held out of the lineup in Ottawa due to a minor ailment, per Sportsnet’s Eric Francis, so we’ll see if he rotates back in or not. The Flames have been rotating forwards in and out of the lineup lately, with Connor Zary sitting out in Ottawa. We’ll see if he is swapped back in.

The worst-ever start for the Flames saw them go 1-8-3 over their first dozen games in 1995-96. The Flames are a point ahead of that pace, which isn’t exactly a sign that things have gone all that well. The Flames have played six quite good games of hockey, coming on the heels of six games where they weren’t all that great. The shape of their game is generally trending in a good direction, but man, they really need to avoid turnovers and penalties at inopportune times.

The Flames have been fairly unlucky. But you tend to get the breaks you deserve, and they need to keep improving if they want to follow in the 1995-96 team’s footsteps and make the post-season after a horrible start.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

We’re projecting Juuse Saros to start in net for the Predators, backed up by Justus Annunen. The projected extra is Tyson Jost.

The Predators have lost three in a row. Prior to that they won back-to-back games. Prior to that they lost four in a row. In other words: they’re kind of streaky and all over the place this season. They haven’t really found their consistency quite yet, and that makes them both a vulnerable and dangerous team to play.

The Flames are without Martin Pospisil.

The Predators are without Roman Josi and Adam Wilsby.

This is the first of three games between these teams this season. They’ll meet again in Nashville on Dec. 2 and close things out in Calgary on Jan. 3.

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