After a shutout loss on home ice on Friday night, the Calgary Flames (4-10-2, 10 points) start a two game road trip on Sunday night when they head to the recently-renamed Grand Casino Arena to face the Minnesota Wild (6-7-3, 15 points).

The Flames lost 4-0 on Friday, snapping their stretch of positive results at two games. The Flames still have designs on climbing back up the standings, so they simply cannot let one bad game snowball. Can they bounce back against the Wild?

Today’s broadcast begins at 6 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

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

Joel Hanley – MacKenzie Weegar
Yan Kuznetsov – Rasmus Andersson
Kevin Bahl – Brayden Pachal

Based on reports from the rink (thanks to Sportsnet’s Derek Wills), we’re projecting Devin Cooley in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. The projected extras are Jake Bean, Daniil Miromanov and Justin Kirkland.

The Flames were reasonably good for two periods against Chicago. And then they seemed to abandon their structure and puck management in the third period, allowing three goals on three turnovers and losing 4-0 to the Blackhawks. Well, the Flames seem to be well-aware of what they did wrong, but they need to be better. The Flames are almost out of runway in terms of having a faint hope of the playoffs; if they lose, they better go down swinging.

When you factor in points percentages, the Flames open Sunday sitting eight points back of Chicago for the final Western Conference wild card spot.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

It sounds like Jesper Wallstedt starts in net, backed up by Filip Gustavsson. The projected extra skaters are Ben Jones and David Jiricek.

What can we say about the Wild? They’ve arguably under-achieved this season, but when you look up and down their lineup, they seem pretty dangerous. Their top two forward lines are strong. They have some impressive young blueliners mixed in with steady veterans. And Filip Gustavsson is a really steady netminder.

The Wild may be wobbling right around the .500 mark to start the season, but they’re no pushovers.

The Flames are without Martin Pospisil and Zayne Parekh.

The Wild are without Zach Bogosian and Nico Sturm.

This is the first of three games this season between the Flames and the Wild. They’ll meet again on Dec. 4 in Calgary before closing out the season series on Jan. 29 in Minnesota.

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