For the Calgary Flames, sickness and injury couldn’t come at a worse time than when one of the strongest Western Conference teams rolls into town.
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As the Dallas Stars roll into town, there have been a succession of key Calgary Flames players not practising or not at full strength; the likes of Sean Monahan (cold) and Johnny Gaudreau (flu) included.
According to the official Calgary Flames website, both and any others that missed practice ice-time will be ‘assessed by medical staff’ pre-game.
Michael Frolik and Kris Russell also missed time due to ‘maintenance reasons’, whilst Josh Jooris would be forgiven if his mind is elsewhere, due to personal reasons:
The #Flames send their condolences to Josh Jooris & his family, who are mourning the loss of his grandfather Lucien, who passed away today.
— Calgary Flames (@NHLFlames) November 29, 2015
The challenge lies with Bob Hartley and his coaching team to cobble together a strong Calgary Flames line-up should any or all of these five guys be missing against the in-form Stars.
If Gaudreau or Monahan don’t make the ice, that’s a loss of one (or both) of the strongest point-scorers in the team last month.
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There isn’t many people in the Calgary Flames line-up that can fill that sort of hole; both are impressive goal-scoring talents.
Likewise, should Kris Russell be missing – that’s a much bigger deal than it may have been earlier in the season for the Calgary Flames. Defensively, the team is poor, but Russell has started to find a bit of rhythm and form of late. To have him missing means calling in Ladislav Smid – not a bad call-up, but he hasn’t seen any real ice-time in weeks and could be lacking conditioning.
Frolik and Jooris both play important roles, though the feeling is that their absence/s wouldn’t be less prominent than that of the other three guys.
The hope is that all of the fear about players missing the game is for nothing and a full-strength, albeit slightly ‘under the weather’ Calgary Flames team line-up against the Dallas Stars in Calgary.