Less than 24 hours after they came out of their holiday break with a victory, the Calgary Flames (17-11-7, 41 points) head to fabulous Las Vegas to take on a tough division foe in the form of the Vegas Golden Knights (24-8-3, 51 points). Both teams are coming off wins over San Jose – Vegas on Friday and Calgary on Saturday – and are hoping to keep their momentum going. Which team will be able to pull it off?

(Probably Vegas: the Flames are 2-8-2 in 12 lifetime visits to T-Mobile Arena and they’re on the back half of a back-to-back.)

Tonight’s broadcast begins at 6 p.m. MT on Sportsnet’s national feed and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Jonathan Huberdeau – Nazem Kadri – Martin Pospisil
Yegor Sharangovich – Connor Zary – Jakob Pelletier
Blake Coleman – Mikael Backlund – Matt Coronato
Ryan Lomberg – Kevin Rooney – Walker Duehr

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

We’re projecting Dan Vladar to start in net, backed up by Dustin Wolf. Saturday’s extras are Andrei Kuzmenko, Daniil Miromanov and Tyson Barrie; we’ll see if anybody rotates in given they’re playing on back-to-back nights.

This is the fourth back-to-back set for the Flames this season: they’ve won the second game of the set just once. It’s also the first of five back-to-back sets they’re playing between now and the pause for the 4 Nations Face-Off in February – half of their 10 remaining road games before the break will be scheduled losses (the second game of back-to-back sets).

The Flames are 5-2-3 in December. Jonathan Huberdeau leads the team with 13 points this month; he had two goals in San Jose.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Victor Olofsson – Jack Eichel – Mark Stone
Tomas Hertl – William Karlsson – Keegan Kolesar
Pavel Dorofeyev – Brett Howden – Alexander Holtz
Tanner Pearson – Tanner Laczynski – Cole Schwindt

Brayden McNabb – Shea Theodore
Noah Hanifin – Alex Pietrangelo
Nicolas Hague – Zach Whitecloud

We’re projecting Ilya Samsonov to start in net, backed up by Adin Hill. The projected extras are Ben Hutton and Kaedan Korczak.

Vegas has won nine of 10 games in December and they’re riding a five game winning streak – their lone loss this month came in Edmonton on Dec. 14. They’re tied with the Toronto Maple Leafs for the most home wins in the NHL with 14. Their last home loss was at the end of November against Utah.

In other words: Vegas is Vegas. They are prone to bad nights here and there, but for the most part they play the same game they’ve always played: fast, structured and relentless. They’re a tough opponent any given night, especially at home, where the house always wins.

The Flames are without Anthony Mantha and Justin Kirkland.

The Golden Knights are without Ivan Barbashev and Nicolas Roy.

This is the second of four games between Calgary and Vegas this season. The Golden Knights beat the Flames by a 5-0 score in October. They’ll meet again in Calgary on Apr. 5 and Apr. 15 to close out their season series.