Calgary Flames vs Minnesota Wild Preview 3/24/2016

Calgary Flames @ Minnesota Wild, 8 PM ET, Xcel Energy Center, St. Paul, MN

The Flames take a trip to Niklas Backstrom’s old stomping grounds tonight as they finish out a 3 game road trip in Minnesota. Not only is this Backstrom’s home coming, it’s also the first time David Jones will take on his former team since being traded to the Wild. Minnesota finds themselves barely hanging on to a Wild Card spot at 81 points, only one point ahead of the Colorado Avalanche. A win tonight for the Wild will help them in their playoff quest and their home rink has been a decent place to play the Flames. Calgary owns a 42-35-4 overall record against the Wild, but Minny is 21-18-1 when playing at home. This is the second time these two teams have played this season with Minnesota winning the last game 5-3 on February 17th. The Flames will close out the regular season with the Wild again on April 9th. Minnesota comes into this contest having won three in a row and two of those have come against playoff heavy weights Chicago and LA.The Flames meanwhile have are 1-1 on their current 3 game trek having beaten Montreal, but they were manhandled by the league worst Toronto Maple Leafs. Here’s how the teams match-up:

The Flames last played on Monday night and lost to the Toronto Maple Leafs 5-2. It was another tough outing for Jonas Hiller in net as he gave up 3 goals on 24 shots. Joe Colborne continued his hot play by scoring his 16th goal of the season and Matt Stajan scored Calgary’s only other goal in the loss. Here’s the highlights:

The Wild last took to the ice on Tuesday night and beat their Western Conference rivals the LA Kings 2-1. Devan Dubnyk backstopped the win by stopping 38 of 39 shots that came his way, Minnesota got goals from Erik Haula and Mikko Koivu to put them past the Kings. Here’s the highlights:

Calgary Flames Projected Lineup (these are the projected lines and can be changed any time before the puck drop)

Scratches: Deryk Engelland, Freddy Hamilton, Jonas Hiller

Injuries: Karri Ramo, Ladislav Smid, Dennis Wideman

Minnesota Wild Projected Lineup (these are the projected lines and can be changed any time before the puck drop)

Scratches:

Injuries: Jason Pominville

by Mark Parkinson