NHL20 Sim: Flames vs Coyotes Series Preview

The Calgary Flames and Arizona Coyotes will square off in the first round of our NHL20 Sim playoffs as we use a much different bracket than the traditional one. With the league having discussed the possibility of up to 12 teams in each conference making the playoffs, we decided to do just that with our bracket while also incorporating sims we did for the Flames remaining regular season games.

As a result, the Flames finished with the 6th seed in the Western Conference and will host the 11th seeded Arizona Coyotes in this qualifying round for the playoffs. This first round will be a Best of 3 series, with Games 1 & 3 in Calgary and Game 2 in Arizona. Here is the full first round bracket:

This will be the first meeting between the two teams since the Coyotes moved to Arizona from Winnipeg. Prior to that the Flames and original Jets franchise met in three straight seasons, from 1984-85 to 1986-87, with the Jets winning in ‘85 and ‘87.

The Flames went 3-1 against the Coyotes this year, winning both matchups in Calgary and splitting the two games in Arizona.

With this series the Coyotes will get the opportunity to see Taylor Hall in the playoffs, something that may not have been afforded to them in real life. Of course the Coyotes fell right off a cliff shortly after acquiring Hall and would’ve almost definitely missed the playoffs with the standard eight team format.

Here is our projected lineup for tonight’s game against Arizona:

Calgary Flames

Johnny Gaudreau – Sean Monahan – Elias Lindholm

Matthew Tkachuk – Mikael Backlund – Andrew Mangiapane

Milan Lucic – Dillon Dube – Sam Bennett

Tobias Rieder – Derek Ryan – Austin Czarnik

Mark Giordano – TJ Brodie

Erik Gustafsson – Rasmus Andersson

Noah Hanifin – Travis Hamonic

Cam Talbot

Arizona Coyotes

Taylor Hall – Christian Dvorak – Clayton Keller

Carl Soderberg – Nick Schmaltz – Phil Kessel

Lawson Crouse – Derek Stepan – Conor Garland

Michael Grabner – Brad Richardson – Vinnie Hinostroza

Oliver Ekman-Larsson – Ilya Lyubushkin

Alex Goligoski – Niklas Hjalmarsson

Jakob Chychrun – Jason Demers

Darcy Kuemper

Puck drop will be at 7:30 PM. Be sure to follow our live updates on Twitter. Game 2 and 3 if necessary will be on Thursday and Saturday.

Other playoff series also being played tonight:

East

6. Carolina vs 11. NY Rangers

7. NY Islanders vs 10. Florida

West

5. Edmonton vs 12. Chicago

by Gordie Taylor