Hope you enjoyed a lighter week of Calgary Flames hockey. Things are about to get busy again. Nine games in sixteen days busy.
It starts tonight with the first game of a back-to-back. Coyotes tonight, Oilers tomorrow night for Hockey Night in Canada.
The good news is that the Calgary Flames will be staying in Calgary until April 4th. Five home games, then a four game California and Seattle road trip.
LA, Anaheim, San Jose, Seattle. Four road games over six days. Clear your schedule.
With that said, the most important game of the season is always the next one. The 38-17-8 (84 pts) Calgary Flames and the 20-39-4 (44 pts) Arizona Coyotes faceoff tonight around 7:08pm mst.
44 points over 63 games doesn’t seem like much of a threat. The utter dominance the Flames displayed last meeting also is cause for optimism.
Don’t be fooled though. The Coyotes have had a strong March. 6-4-0.
The Flames in March? 7-4-1. Not all that different.
In fact, in their last ten: they’re almost mirroring each other. 6-3-1 Flames, 6-4-0 Coyotes.
Now obviously you can see from the disparity in the amount of games played this month that the Flames schedule is somewhat less forgiving. A closer look will also show you that the Coyotes have lost their last three.
Let’s take a look at the projected lineup. Today is a strange one. dailyfaceoff.com has this:
Gaudreau-Lindholm-Toffoli Tkachuk-Backlund-Dube Mangiapane-Jarnkrok-Coleman Lucic-Lewis-Ritchie
Hanifin-Anderson Kylington-Tanev Zadorov-Gudbranson
Markstrom
They put that down, but sourced the practice lines Pat Steinberg (@Fan960Steinberg) posted yesterday, which had Carpenter centering the fourth line instead of Lewis.
On that:
Taking measures Head coach Darryl Sutter spoke to the media today about a few topics. One of them being the deployment of Sean Monahan. Zero points in fourteen outings and sixteen games without recording point at 5v5 has resulted in the former first line center getting the night off tonight. Sutter claims he will be giving Sean more breaks to reset his game going forward, and that he should have done it sooner.
Another point Darryl made was that he wants new acquisition Ryan Carpenter to skate with the team a bit more before he gets into a game. Carpenter had played in a 6-3 loss to the Winnipeg Jets the night before being traded for and the last two days have involved moving him and his three kids to Calgary. Tack on learning a new checking system and it’s not unreasonable to say that his life has been fairly chaotic this week.
With Darryl confirming that both Carpenter and Mony are eating popcorn tonight; the next best candidate is Trevor Lewis to play fourth line center. That is unless Darryl wants to disrupt the Dillon Dube revival and slot him down.
Or how about something like this:
Gaudreau-Lindholm-Toffoli Tkachuk-Backlund-Lewis Mangiapane-Dube-Coleman Lucic-Jarnkrok-Ritchie
Wouldn’t hurt to run Dube at center now that his game is picking up. He would have no lack of talent to play with on a line with Andrew Mangiapane and Blake Coleman. Lewis has played on a line with Backlund this year in a shut down role. Games against bottom feeders are good opportunities to make small adjustments. Just a thought.
Anyone missing Brad Richardson yet?
Enjoy your Friday night. Post game and Battle of Alberta game day thoughts tomorrow.
@Trevor_Neufeld