After a pretty rough start to the season, the Calgary Flames (17-18-4, 38 points) could get back to the .500 mark when they host the Philadelphia Flyers (20-11-7, 47 points) in their final game of 2025 – aptly, taking place on the final day of 2025. The Flames were the NHL’s last-place team as recently as Dec. 4… but they’ve really put together a nice run of play and they’re facing a team on the second half of a back-to-back with travel. We’ll see if they can take advantage of the opportunity in front of them.

Today’s broadcast begins at 7:30 p.m. MT on Sportsnet One and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

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

Yan Kuznetsov – MacKenzie Weegar
Kevin Bahl – Rasmus Andersson
Joel Hanley – Hunter Brzustewicz

We’re projecting Dustin Wolf to start in net, backed up by Devin Cooley. The projected extra skaters are Justin Kirkland and Brayden Pachal. Interestingly enough, this will be Yan Kuznetsov’s 26th game of the season, meaning that 2025-26 will be his last year of rookie eligibility – and so you can probably say he’s graduated from being a prospect and he’s now an NHLer.

Since Nov. 2, the Flames are 15-9-2, and that includes going 10-2-1 on home ice. So yeah, they’ve managed to mostly climb out of the chasm they fell into back in October… but it’s largely on the basis of them being a strong team at the Saddledome. Their two leading scorers during this run have been Nazem Kadri and Rasmus Andersson, both with 21 points in 26 games, but Mikael Backlund is right behind them with 18 points.

The Flames don’t have huge offensive weapons. But they’re a team that knows what style they need to play to have a chance to win games, and they’ve played that style really consistently over the past couple of months.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Trevor Zegras – Christian Dvorak – Travis Konecny
Denver Barkey – Sean Couturier – Owen Tippett
Matvei Michkov – Noah Cates – Bobby Brink
Carl Grundstrom – Rodrigo Abols – Nikita Grebenkin

Cam York – Travis Sanheim
Emil Andrae – Jamie Drysdale
Nick Seeler – Rasmus Ristolainen

It sounds like we will not get the Dan Vladar Revenge Game, as the former Flames netminder played in Vancouver on Tuesday night and so Samuel Ersson likely starts against the Flames. Tuesday’s extras were Garnet Hathaway, Nicolas Deslauriers and Noah Juulsen, so we’ll see if any of them rotate in against Calgary.

The Flyers have been playing pretty good hockey lately, most recently beating Vancouver by a 6-3 score. They’re an interesting mix of youngsters and savvy veterans, and while they’re not quite world-beaters yet… they’re a pretty good hockey team. Even on the second night of a back-to-back set.

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

The Flyers are without Tyson Foerster.

This is the second of two meetings between these teams this season. The Flames beat the Flyers on Nov. 2.

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