Calgary Flames Game Day Preview: Last Game of 2016
By Ramina Shlah
The Calgary Flames will play their last game of the year tonight on New Years Eve against the Arizona Coyotes. Let’s look at the matchup for tonight.
The Calgary Flames will hope to come out with a win tonight to finish off their year. They’ll be playing against what looks like could be a new rivalry with the Arizona Coyotes. Even though these two teams are in the same division, they’ve never really had any sort of rivalry. But that may be changing.
They’ve already met three times so far this season where the Flames have won all three contests. In the last two games however, things seem to be heating up between the two teams. So much so that one of their top forwards, youngster Max Domi, got into a fight with Garnet Hathaway in the second meeting and broke his hand. He’s still out of the lineup with the injury.
Let’s see what happened in the last three meetings with their special teams
Special teams
In the first three meetings, the Coyotes had 11 powerplay opportunities. The Calgary Flames have managed to kill them all off, including five in the last game. In the first meeting, the Flames couldn’t capitalize on one of their three PP opportunities. But like we all know how the season is going, the special team have been drastically improving since mid-November.
In the second meeting of the two, the Flames did manage to capitalize on one of their four PP opportunities. That score ended up being the exact same as the first meeting, the Flames winning 2-1 in OT.
But the third meeting was where the Flames special teams really did show how much they’ve improved. They actually managed to win that game in regulation this time and managed to also score more than two goals. Like I mentioned, the Flames killed off all five penalties. They also capitalized on three of their six powerplay opportunities which is an extremely impressive feat for the team.
In the Flames last 12 games, they’ve scored at least one PP in ten of those games and have 15 PPG in those ten games. However in their last game against the Anaheim Ducks, their indiscipline really showed with being short-handed six times and allowing two PPG against. A lot of their focus since that game has been on staying out of the penalty box. If they can manage to do that tonight, I’m confident they can end the year with two extra points.
Projected Line-up
For the game tonight, Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau will be together on the same line again. They’ll play alongside Alex Chiasson, which I’m not sure how much I fully agree with that, but hey. Now with Troy Brouwer injured, they need some changes.
The 3M line will also now be moved to the third line and Dougie Hamilton will return to the lineup. He didn’t play last game because of an illness, but he’ll be paired with Mark Giordano again tonight. He scored the game-winner in OT in the second meeting between these two teams.
For more lineups, go here.
Tonight, Mikael Backlund goes into the game on a three-game point streak with seven points and Matthew Tkachuk goes into the game on a five-game point streak with six points. Garnet Hathaway is in the lineup tonight as well. Right now, the Flames are 13-4-0 whenever he’s in the lineup.
For more fast facts, go here.
Next: Flames New Years Resolutions for 2017
That’s all for now for the preview for tonight. Let’s hope the Calgary Flames can end their year on a high note.