Gameday #13: Calgary Flames at Montreal Canadiens
It’s all about opportunity for the Calgary Flames right now. With so many injuries on this team, Calgary’s roster is as depleted as it might be all season long. On Friday night, the Flames found a way to take out Nashville 4-3, and they did it without four regular forwards in the lineup. Michael Ferland made his NHL debut against the Predators while Markus Granlund made his season debut. Tonight, it’s Sven Baertschi playing his first NHL game of the season as the Flames start off a five game road trip in Montreal (5 pm, City and Sportsnet 960).
Calgary Flames 6-4-2, 5th Pacific Division
Curtis Glencross-Sean Monahan-David Jones
Johnny Gaudreau-Markus Granlund-Jiri Hudler
Sven Baertschi-Paul Byron-Devin Setoguchi
Brandon Bollig-Lance Bouma-Josh Jooris
TJ Brodie-Mark Giordano
Kris Russell-Dennis Wideman
Ladislav Smid-Rapha Diaz
The Flames have all kinds of changes to their lineup once again tonight. Ferland suffered an upper body injury on Friday night and didn’t make the trip to Montreal while Calgary placed Joe Colborne (wrist) on injured reserve. That gave them space to recall Baertschi and, with Ferland’s absence, gave them a natural spot to put him in the roster. This is a huge opportunity for Baertschi, who hasn’t played all that well in Adirondack. He has three assists in ten games with Calgary’s AHL affiliate so far this season. That said, the 2011 first round pick has a great deal of offensive skill, so we’ll see if he can make any sort of impact on this recall.
It’s also a big night for Diaz, who re-enters the lineup to take on his former team. Diaz has been a healthy scratch for the last five games and hasn’t played since October 19th against Winnipeg. Diaz will take Deryk Engelland’s spot in the lineup, as the big money free agent signing will sit out as a healthy scratch for the first time this season. Head Coach Bob Hartley stressed the decision wasn’t based on his play and is more a reflection of Diaz’s hard work in practice. In reality, Engelland has had his struggles and against a fast, aggressive team like Montreal, this looks like a really good move.
The only other healthy scratch tonight is Brian McGrattan, who got back in the lineup on Friday and will take a seat again to start this five game road trip. With Colborne going to IR, he joins Matt Stajan (knee), Mikael Backlund (abdominal), and Mason Raymond (shoulder) on the shelf for an extended period of time. Ferland’s timeline isn’t known right now, but we do know Anton Volchenkov has been suspended four games for the hit that caused the injury.
It’ll be Jonas Hiller in net for the third consecutive night as the Flames continue to ride his red hot play. You could make a pretty strong argument that Hiller has been Calgary’s MVP in the early going this season, and he’s been especially strong in his last five starts. Over that span, he’s 4-0-1 and as has stopped 145 of 151 shots faced. That’s good for a 0.960 save percentage, which is a real indicator as to just how good he’s been.
Montreal Canadiens 8-2-1, 1st Atlantic Division
Max Pacioretty-David Desharnais-Dale Weise
Brendan Gallagaher-Alex Galchenyuk-Rene Bourque
PA Parenteau-Tomas Plekanec-Lars Eller
Travis Moen-Manny Malhotra-Brandon Prust
Andrei Markov-Tom Gilbert
Alexei Emelin-PK Subban
Nathan Bealieu-Mike Weaver
Those combinations were what Montreal went with during Saturday’s practice, and will likely be the group we’ll see tonight. It was just five days ago the Habs took out the Flames 2-1 in a shootout at the Saddledome, so there’s plenty of familiarity for tonight’s matchup. Montreal is back at home after their western road trip, and they’re hoping for some better results; the Canadiens won just one of their games in Western Canada.
That one game the Habs did win was in Calgary, and that was thanks to Carey Price. Montreal’s number one goalie made 37 saves at the Saddledome and was the deserving first start of the evening. He’ll get the start tonight and will look to continue his red hot play; in Price’s last five games he’s 4-0-1, allowing just eight goals for a save percentage of 0.952. With Hiller at the other end, we should be in for a pretty good goaltending battle tonight.
Offensively, the Habs are lead by Plekanec, who has nine points in 11 games. But, if you take a look at that lineup, you don’t see one offensive superstar, you see a pretty solid and deep group of players. Galchenyuk, Pacioretty, Desharnias, Gallagher, and Parenteau have all contributed regularly for this team as well. When you throw in Subban and Emelin’s contributions off the back end, you start to get the picture of how balanced Montreal’s attack is.
