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G6 Calgary Flames @ San Jose Sharks: Cam Talbot debuts

October 13, 2019, 12:07 PM ET [40 Comments]
Todd Cordell
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Here are five things to watch when the Calgary Flames take on the San Jose Sharks:

1. The fatigue effect

It’s early in the season so there’s little wear and tear or injuries to worry about. At least relative to what we see in the spring when seemingly half of every roster is playing at less than 100%. With that said, the Flames are playing on the road in a B2B, 3-in-4, and 4-in-6 situation against a San Jose team that a) is fully rested, having played just once since Tuesday and; b) really needs the points, having accumulated just two of a possible 10 thus far.

The Flames won’t have a ton of pep in their step and the Sharks will undoubtedly be looking to take advantage of that early on. This is a big test.

2. Cam Talbot’s debut

Talbot is making his regular season debut with the Flames. Last year was obviously a disaster for him and the preseason was a mixed bag, although it ended with a positive showing (he stopped 24/24) against these same Sharks. He’ll need to pick up where he left off because the Sharks are a talented, volume-shooting team and, again, Talbot is unlikely to get a top performance from the guys in front of him. He might be asked to steal a win.

3. High-event hockey

The Flames and Sharks were both elite teams at suppressing chances a season ago. That hasn’t exactly been the case in the early going. Calgary’s defense has looked shaky at times, which is why it’s not surprising they rank 25th in expected goals against/60 at 5v5. The Sharks have fared just as poorly, sitting 26th in xGA/60. We could see some goals in this one, especially if Talbot and/or Martin Jones play like they did last year.

4. A big game for the bottom-6

Calgary’s depth forwards have not played well this season and they were *crushed* last night against Vegas. The Flames really need them to be better, particularly in a 4-in-6 situation like this when Bill Peters doesn’t have the luxury of riding his big guns into the ground. The good news is they’re going up against a very pedestrian Sharks B6 grouping that looks a lot worse after all the off-season departures. Perhaps Sam Bennett, Milan Lucic, Derek Ryan, Mark Jankowski and co. can make some real contributions.

5. Attacking on the PK

San Jose’s power play has given *a lot* back this season. I know we’re dealing with a small sample size, but they’ve already allowed three short-handed goals and only Winnipeg has given up more chances thus far. Calgary is generally a team that likes to be aggressive and create some offense while down a man and this seems like a good spot for them to do just that.

Here are the projected lineups:

Calgary

Johnny Gaudreau - Sean Monahan - Elias Lindholm
Matthew Tkachuk - Mikael Backlund - Michael Frolik
Milan Lucic - Mark Jankowski - Sam Bennett
Tobias Rieder/Austin Czarnik - Derek Ryan - Andrew Mangiapane

Mark Giordano - Rasmus Andersson
Noah Hanifin - Travis Hamonic
T.J. Brodie - Michael Stone**

**I think we could see Oliver Kylington today in a B2B situation

Cam Talbot

San Jose

Timo Meier - Logan Couture - Patrick Marleau
Evander Kane - Tomas Hertl - Kevin Labanc
Danil Yurtaikin - Joe Thornton - Barclay Goodrow
Lean Bergmann - Dylan Gambrell - Melker Karlsson

Marc-Edouard Vlasic - Brent Burns
Brendan Dillon - Erik Karlsson
Mario Ferraro - Trevor Carrick

Martin Jones

Puck drop is just after 10:00 p.m. Eastern and can be seen on SN1, SN360, and NBCSCA.

Numbers via naturalstattrick.com

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