Happy Hockey Day in Canada, everyone! It’s a Saturday and the fine folks at the National Hockey League have put together a veritable buffet of ice hockey matches for everyone’s enjoyment. The festivities kick off bright and early with a matinee pitting the Calgary Flames (20-23-4, 44 points) against the New York Islanders (26-16-5, 57 points) in a clash of two teams that entered the NHL together in 1972 – though the Flames were based in Atlanta, Georgia at the time.

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

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Connor Zary – Nazem Kadri – Adam Klapka
Jonathan Huberdeau – Morgan Frost – Joel Farabee
Yegor Sharangovich – Mikael Backlund – Matt Coronato
Ryan Lomberg – Justin Kirkland – Dryden Hunt

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

It’s an early game so there’s no morning skate, and the Flames travelled on Friday and didn’t practice, so we’re engaging in some guesswork. We’re projecting Dustin Wolf to start in net, backed up by Devin Cooley. The healthy extras look to be William Stromgren and Brayden Pachal, but we’ll update as we find out more. Like you, we’re pretty curious as to how the lineup looks given everything that’s swirling around the team in terms of trade rumours.

The Flames are 2-5-0 in 2026. They’ve played two really effective games on the road, which were wins against Pittsburgh and Chicago. When they play a structured, stout defensive game and make the other teams have to play the Flames’ preferred style, they can have success. But the Flames, as we’ve said before, can’t out-score their mistakes, so they simply have to try to minimize them. It’s a tough way to play, but they’ve managed to win quite a few games this way.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Anders Lee – Mathew Barzal – Anthony Duclair
Maxim Shabanov – Calum Ritchie – Emil Heineman
Jonathan Drouin – Jean-Gabriel Pageau – Simon Holmstrom
Kyle MacLean – Casey Cizikas – Marc Gatcomb

Matthew Schaefer – Ryan Pulock
Adam Pelech – Tony DeAngelo
Adam Boqvist – Scott Mayfield

We’re projecting Ilya Sorokin to start in net for the Islanders, backed up by David Rittich. The projected extra skaters are Max Tsyplakov and Cole McWard.

The Islanders are 4-2-1 in 2026. Two of their wins were in overtime. Their other two were shutouts. They shut out Edmonton on Thursday evening by a 1-0 score, which was their second goose-egg of 2026: the other being the time they pumped New Jersey 9-0. They’re not a perfect hockey team, but when you look at their lineup, they’re missing a bunch of key players but the guys they have are giving them tremendous value.

Keep an eye on rookie Matthew Schaefer, the presumptive Calder Trophy front-runner, in this one.

The Flames are without Martin Pospisil, Sam Honzek, Jake Bean, John Beecher, Zayne Parekh and Blake Coleman.

The Islanders are without Semyon Varlamov, Pierre Engvall, Ethan Bear, Alexander Romanov, Kyle Palmieri and Bo Horvat.

This is the first of two meetings between these 1972 expansion cousins. They’ll close out the season series on Long Island on Mar. 14.

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