Coming off of a tense 5-3 victory over the Winnipeg Jets to open the 2023-2024 season, the Calgary Flames will play their first road game today in Pittsburgh. The Penguins will be playing out the second half of a back-to-back whereas the Flames will be entering the night with two full days of rest between games.
A quick look at the lineup.
Calgary Lineup Courtesy of Eric Francis. @EricFrancis Huberdeau - Lindholm - Mangiapane Ruzicka - Kadri - Dube Coleman - Backlund - Coronato Greer - Sharangovich - Duehr
Hanifin - Andersson Zadorov - Weegar Gilbert - Tanev
Markstrom Vladar
The Shuffle Continues One thing you may notice first is that veteran offensive defenceman Jordan Oesterle draws out of the lineup. His defensive game just isn’t holding up against higher levels of competition. The 31 year old plays a riverboat gambler style of puck management and said style led to him being a -2 against the Jets.
Those kinds of numbers are bad, but they get worse considering he was paired with the best defender on the team in Chris Tanev. The physically imposing Dennis Gilbert gets a shot to solidify a spot in the lineup after sustaining a head injury on September 24 from a Nils Hoglander body check.
Oesterle is -4 in his last two games.
First Line Humming Calgary’s top forward unit more or less carried the offence on Wednesday. The trio combined for eight points on the night. Jonathan Huberdeau, two assists, Elias Lindholm, a goal and two assists, and Andrew Mangiapane, two goals and an assist, appear to have some decent chemistry together.
Adjustments Needed Despite winning the game in the only statistic that matters — the score — the group has work to do in order to find success over a larger sample size. Winnipeg dominated Calgary by most underlying metrics.
In terms of chances for and against, the Flames got caved to the tune of a 34.09CF%. They only produced 25% of the high danger chances between both teams and the Jets’ 37 shots nearly doubled the Flames’ 22.
This can mostly be explained by growing pains. Head coach Ryan Huska doesn’t quite have the team playing the zone defence style the way he envisions, but that will likely come with time.
The Penguins, on the other hand, are coming off of a statistically dominant 4-0 victory over the Washington Capitals last night. The team featuring Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin and Erik Karlsson recorded 71.43% of all high danger chances and it reflected on the scoresheet.
For the sake of brevity, we won’t go too into how dominant Crosby and Malkin were, but let’s just say that Calgary will have their hands full with those two. Malkin had a point on all four Pittsburgh tallies and Crosby notched two goals himself.
Pittsburgh Lineup
Courtesy of Seth Rorabaugh. @SethRorabaugh
Seth prefers to do things the hard way.
Hurtin’ While Pittsburgh’s power duo had a game for the ages, offensive dynamo defenceman Erik Karlsson had a less-than-stellar night. The 33 year old received one of the biggest hits of his career.
Ovechkin lowers the boom on Erik Karlsson. 💥 pic.twitter.com/DUA5BW5sZF
— Sportsnet (@Sportsnet) October 14, 2023
Puck drop is at 5:10 pm MST. Catch the broadcast on Sportsnet in Canada and ESPN+ in the States.
Trevor Neufeld
@Trevor_Neufeld
Stats via naturalstattrick.com and espn.com.