Calgary bounced back against Philadelphia. The Flames trailed 3-2 after 2 periods, tied it in the 3rd and won 4-3 past regulation. They did it without Bahl, Brennan Othmann, Connor Zary or Sam Honzek, and the 4 goals were their best scoring night in 5 games. That tells you what the Flames are right now: a team that grinds out low-scoring games and doesn't have much margin when it falls behind.
The form card shows the pattern. Calgary is 8-9-1 and 2-3 in the last 5, with 1-goal games against San Jose, Seattle and Philadelphia sitting next to 5-goal nights from Colorado and Anaheim. When the Flames keep it tight they have a chance. When the other team gets going early, the lineup doesn't have the scoring to come back. For New York, the question is whether the 1-goal night in Edmonton was a one-off against a good team or the start of a road slump. The Rangers' projected top line of Gabriel Perreault, Mika Zibanejad and Alexis Lafrenière gets a Flames defense that just lost its best minutes-eater, which is a decent place to find out.
The Huberdeau watch is still a watch. Jonathan Huberdeau skated in a regular jersey last Friday, but the game-day injury reports still list him out with the hip injury, so the forward group Calgary is projected to ice is led by Joel Farabee, Mikael Backlund and Matt Coronato. Zary and Honzek remain out as well. The lift a Huberdeau return would bring is a later-this-month story, not a tonight one.
Puck drop is 6:30 PM MT. It's a mid-November game between a Metro team trying to get its scoring back and a Pacific team under .500 trying to plug a hole on defense, not appointment viewing. The game should come down to which thinned-out blue line holds up better. Both lost a regular in the last few days, and Calgary lost the bigger one.
