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The Calgary Flames are back in the comforts of their own homes following a very successful five-game road trip.
Despite one of their more dominant showings of the year, the Flames dropped the opener of their road trip in Vancouver. They still got a point out of that game, though, and followed it up by winning four consecutive contests.
As a result of the six-game point streak they're riding, the Flames have given themselves a bit of breathing room in the wild-card race. The Los Angeles Kings are five points back and every other team below them is realistically out of the mix already.
The Kings are the only team the Flames may have to worry about. If the Flames get a clean win tonight, they'd all but stick a fork in any chances the Kings have of catching up. The Flames would sit seven points up, which is a lot of ground to make up on a good team in less than 20 games.
This is a schedule loss for the Kings, too, as they played a hard fought overtime game in Minnesota last night while the Flames were resting.
The Flames are in a good spot tonight. They need to take advantage of it.
Here are the expected line combinations for the Flames:
Johnny Gaudreau - Sean Monahan - Micheal Ferland
Matthew Tkachuk - Mikael Backlund - Michael Frolik
Kris Versteeg - Sam Bennett - Troy Brouwer
Lance Bouma - Matt Stajan - Alex Chiasson
Mark Giordano - Dougie Hamilton
T.J. Brodie - Michael Stone
Matt Bartkowski - Deryk Engelland
Brian Elliott
And the expected lines for the Kings (via dailyfaceoff.com):
Adrian Kempe - Anze Kopitar - Dustin Brown
Tanner Pearson - Jeff Carter - Tyler Toffoli
Marian Gaborik - Nic Dowd - Kyle Clifford
Dwight King - Nick Shore - Trevor Lewis
Derek Forbort - Drew Doughty
Jake Muzzin - Kevin Gravel
Brayden McNabb - Alec Martinez
Ben Bishop
A few notes:
1) The Kings have won just three of their last 10 games but don't let that fool you - this team is still dangerous. In that span, the Kings have controlled almost 58% of the shot attempts and 54.55% of the scoring chances at 5v5. They'll be a tough test for the Flames, especially given how desperate they are for points.
2) Remember when Gaudreau was struggling to produce? Well, he sure snapped out of that. No. 13 has eight points in his last four games and has looked like a new player since Ferland replaced Brouwer on the top line.
3) The Kings have been struggling to score of late -- only four teams have fewer goals over the last 10 games -- so the Flames need to make sure they stay disciplined and keep things at 5v5. Don't give them easy opportunities to snap out of this funk.
Tonight's game is scheduled for 9:00 eastern and can be seen on SN1 and FS-W.
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