After a win on Saturday night against Carolina, the Calgary Flames (25-30-7, 57 points) kick off a hefty five game road trip on Monday as they visit the Washington Capitals (31-26-7, 69 points). It’s the first half of a back-to-back set and continues a frenzy of activity since the Flames returned from the Olympic break. Can the Flames build on Saturday’s win?

Today’s broadcast begins at 5 p.m. MT on Sportsnet West and Sportsnet 960 The Fan.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Blake Coleman – Morgan Frost – Joel Farabee
Connor Zary – Ryan Strome – Matvei Gridin
Victor Olofsson – Mikael Backlund – Matt Coronato
Ryan Lomberg – Yegor Sharangovich – Adam Klapka

Kevin Bahl – Yan Kuznetsov
Olli Maatta – Brayden Pachal
Joel Hanley – Zayne Parekh

Via Sportsnet’s Derek Wills, here’s what to expect against Washington. Devin Cooley starts, backed up by Dustin Wolf (who would presumably start on Tuesday against the Rangers). The projected healthy extras look to be Hunter Brzustewicz, Martin Pospisil and John Beecher. Zach Whitecloud is likely missing this game due to the upper body injury he suffered on Saturday. And Victor Olofsson will make his Flames debut.

Man, the Flames were quite good in two-thirds of Saturday’s game against Carolina. Yeah, it was a scheduled win with the Hurricanes playing the prior evening in Edmonton and then flying in. Yeah, they were really carried by Morgan Frost’s line with Blake Coleman and Joel Farabee. But that doesn’t make the win count any less, or mean any less to a Flames locker room that lost a pair of key players in Nazem Kadri and MacKenzie Weegar this past week.

This could be a long final 20 games with a depleted Flames group, but they’ll probably battle hard more often than not.

Projected lines via Daily Faceoff:

Alex Ovechkin – Dylan Strome – Anthony Beauvillier
Aliaksei Protas – Pierre-Luc Dubois – Tom Wilson
Connor McMichael – Justin Sourdif – Ryan Leonard
Brandon Duhaime – Hendrix Lapierre – Ethen Frank

Rasmus Dahlin – Jakob Chychrun
Matt Roy – Martin Fehervary
Declan Chisholm – Trevor van Riemsdyk

We’re projecting Logan Thompson to start in net, backed up by Charlie Lindgren. Saturday’s extras were Timothy Liljegren, Ivan Miroshnichenko, Dylan McIlrath and David Kampf. We’ll see if the newcomers, Liljegren and Kampf, make their Capitals debuts.

The Capitals enter play on Monday sitting seven points back of Boston for the final Eastern Conference playoff spot. They’re not cooked, but they seem to have a handle on where the winds are blowing. They sold off veterans Nic Dowd and John Carlson at the deadline and seem to be focusing more on the future than a mad dash for a playoff spot.

The Flames are without Sam Honzek, Jake Bean, Jonathan Huberdeau and Zach Whitecloud.

The Capitals are healthy.

This is the second and final meeting between these teams this season. The Capitals beat the Flames by a 3-1 score in Calgary back in January.