Gang, the Calgary Flames are spending the holiday season in a pretty memorable way: a home and home series against their most bitter rival, the Edmonton Oilers.

Not only is a pretty unique idea to help fans get excited for their winter holidays, but it also minimizes travel for both the Flames and the Oilers before and after their three day Christmas breaks.

We were curious, and so we dug into some unique holiday history – scheduling and otherwise.

Since entering the NHL in 1972, the Flames – whether based in Atlanta or Calgary – have never played a game on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day. They’ve played 17 times on Boxing Day, the most recent being in 2006. The 2013 collective bargaining agreement added a provision forbidding games on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day or Boxing Day. Since then, every single team has been given (at minimum) three days between games during the holidays.

Ignoring unique circumstances – like lockouts or the COVID pandemic – the Flames have had at least three days between games around Christmas since 2007. Last year’s six day gap was tied with 2000 for their longest regularly-scheduled holiday break. 11 times, though, they had just two days off – playing a game on Dec. 23 and then getting back at it on Boxing Day. That hasn’t happened since 2006, though.

The Flames have played Edmonton before or after Christmas (or both) in 17 different seasons since moving to Calgary in 1980. They’ve also been matched up against Vancouver around the holidays 14 times. This year is just the third home-and-home set straddling the holidays; it previously happened in 1983 and 1990.

The Flames “hosted” Vancouver on Dec. 23, 1993 in the second half of a back-to-back, with the prior night’s game in Edmonton. However, the Flames were the home team in a neutral site game in Saskatoon, as part of the NHL’s program exploring potential expansion venues – something that the NHL and the NHLPA agreed to coming out of the 1992 players strike.

The Canucks lost to the Flames by a 4-3 score.

Way, way back in 2014-15, 2011 fourth-round selection Johnny Gaudreau had terrorized the NCAA and then moved onto pro hockey as a rookie. His results had been a bit mixed, though by December Gaudreau had adjusted well to the NHL and moved on from a really challenging first few games.

Dec. 22, 2014 may have been the first real glimpse that NHL audiences received of Johnny Hockey – the first time that Gaudreau provided a preview of what he could be at the eight of his powers.

With the Flames trailing 3-0 midway through the second period against Los Angeles, in Calgary’s final game before the Christmas break, Gaudreau flipped a switch and began to utterly dominate the game. Gaudreau scored his first NHL hat trick – one goal in the second period and two more in the third period – to force overtime. Mark Giordano added a tally in extra time to call game, and the Flames won 4-3. The win snapped an eight game losing streak and set the table for a tremendous second half for the Flames.

History repeated itself in 2015, when Gaudreau had another hat trick in the Flames’ final game before Christmas.

Finally, the Flames were having a really good season in December 2021 when their season was derailed, temporarily, by what The Simpsons magnate C. Montgomery Burns would term “microscopic germs.” The Flames were set to head to Chicago to kick off a road trip on Dec. 12 when several members of the club tested positive for COVID-19 in the midst of the ongoing pandemic.

The Flames would experience one of the larger outbreaks in the NHL and had their season paused for 18 days – with seven games rescheduled due to the team’s many ill players (and staff) and another three games postponed due to ongoing adjustments made to public assembly regulations in various jurisdictions. Other teams subsequently experienced their own cases – it wasn’t just a Flames thing – and the NHL ended up pulling out of the Beijing Olympics due to the schedule impacts of so many teams dealing with COVID.

The Flames ended up resuming their schedule on Dec. 30 and playing a game every second day until the end of the season… and posting their second-best regular season record in franchise history.

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