Tonight the Calgary Flames will put their three-game winning streak on the line as they host the Washington Capitals.
The Capitals are once again expected to be among the NHL's elite teams this season and their start hasn't given us any reason to believe they won't.
To date they may not have been as dominant as some would expect, yet they still enter tonight's contest with a 4-2-1 despite playing four of their first seven on the road and having already faced Pittsburgh, Florida and both New York teams.
The scoreboard may not suggest this to be the case but the Capitals have been noticeably outplaying teams. At 5 v 5 they are controlling a hair under 55% of the shot attempts, 2nd only to Pittsburgh, and almost 60% of the high-danger scoring chances.
Comparably the Flames are controlling ~48% of the shot attempts and ~41% of the high-danger looks (all the breakaways against don't help) even though they've played much better over the last week or so.
The Capitals did play last night but they have a fresh Braden Holtby manning the crease and will certainly give the Flames everything they can handle. This will be a good test to see just how far they've come.
Here are the Flames' expected line combinations for tonight:
Johnny Gaudreau - Sean Monahan - Alex Chiasson Kris Versteeg - Sam Bennett - Troy Brouwer Matthew Tkachuk - Mikael Backlund - Michael Frolik Micheal Ferland - Matt Stajan - Lance Bouma
Mark Giordano - Dennis Wideman T.J. Brodie - Deryk Engelland Jyrki Jokipakka - Dougie Hamilton
Brian Elliott
And the expected lines for the Capita;s:
Alex Ovechkin - Nicklas Backstrom - Justin Williams Marcus Johannson - Evgeny Kuznetsov - Tom Wilson Andre Burakovsky - Lars Eller - T.J Oshie Zachary Sanford - Jay Beagle - Brett Connolly
Karl Alzner - Matt Niskanen Dmitri Orlov - John Carlson Brooks Orpik - Nate Schmidt
Braden Holtby
A few notes:
1) The Flames are in the bottom-half of the league in terms of shot and scoring chance suppression while killing penalties. They best not spoon feed the Caps man advantage opportunities because they have the talent on both units to make Calgary pay.
2) With Tkachuk playing well on the 3rd line alongside Backlund and Frolik the Flames have three lines legitimately capable of producing offense. This season the team has struggled to create quality looks at 5 v 5 but perhaps this top-9 can get things headed in the right direction.
3) Hamilton has six points and 12 shots over the last five games despite playing about ~16:30 per night and seeing limited ice at special teams. If the Flames don't up his usage while he's scorching hot when will they ever?
Tonight's game is scheduled for 9:30 eastern and can be seen on Sportsnet Flames and CSN-DC+.
Recent posts: On Hamilton, Tkachuk and Elliott