24 hours after a pretty solid home victory over the powerhouse Dallas Stars, the Calgary Flames (7-13-3, 17 points) are back at it, this time heading west to tangle with the Vancouver Canucks (9-11-2, 20 points). The Flames have been pretty decent in November after a dreadful October, and they’re threatening to climb out of the NHL’s standings basement. They kick off a season-high five game road trip in Vancouver that will take them into December. Can they start things off with a W?

Today’s broadcast begins at 7 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West, Pacific, One and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Yegor Sharangovich – Nazem Kadri – Joel Farabee
Jonathan Huberdeau – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Connor Zary – Mikael Backlund – Blake Coleman
John Beecher – Sam Morton – Adam Klapka

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

Based on how back-to-backs usually go, we’re projecting Dustin Wolf to start in net, backed up by Devin Cooley. Saturday’s extras were Jake Bean, Dryden Hunt and Ryan Lomberg. We imagine we see one or two tweaks to Saturday’s lineup, but perhaps not anything substantial.

Don’t look now, but the Flames are threatening to creep out of the basement! They’re actually ahead of Nashville by one point, but they’ve played two more games than the Predators. Regardless, the red team has looked pretty solid in the month of November, going 5-5-1 so far through 11 games, and their last five games have seen them go 3-1-1. (Their wins are against San Jose, Buffalo and Dallas.)

The Flames had an awful October, going 2-8-2. They’re looking and playing a lot closer to where they felt they could be since the calendar flipped over to November. But they’ve dug themselves a big, big hole and the math is against them climbing completely out of it.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Evander Kane – Elias Pettersson (40) – Kiefer Sherwood
Brock Boeser – David Kampf – Conor Garland
Jake Debrusk – Aatu Raty – Drew O’Connor
MacKenzie MacEachern – Max Sasson – Linus Karlsson

Quinn Hughes – Filip Hronek
Marcus Pettersson – Tyler Myers
Elias Pettersson (25) – Tom Willander

We’re projecting Kevin Lankinen in net, backed up by Jiri Patera. The projected extras are Pierre-Olivier Joseph, Lukas Reichel and Arshdeep Bains.

While the Flames have had a rough start to the season, things haven’t gone swimming in B.C. either. The Canucks are sub-.500 and they’ve dropped five of their last six outings, going 1-3-2 in that span. Sure, the schedule has sent them teams like Colorado, Winnipeg, Carolina, Florida and Dallas recently, but those are teams that Vancouver has shown the ability to beat in the recent past. This year? They’ve found ways to lose, and allowed games to get away from them at key times.

The Canucks are rested and probably liking their chances against a Flames team that’s played a lot of hockey recently, but they’ll need to have their A-game against a scrappy Flames group.

The Flames are without Martin Pospisil, Zayne Parekh and Sam Honzek.

The Canucks are without Filip Chytil, Derek Forbort, Teddy Blueger, Nils Hoglander and Thatcher Demko.

This is round two of four for this season series. Vancouver beat the Flames by a 5-1 score in their season-opener back in October. They’ll meet again twice more in Calgary: on Dec. 20 and Apr. 2.

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