5 THINGS - FLAMES @ GOLDEN KNIGHTS

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GAME DAY VIDEO
Game Day with Brendan Parker
Pregame Interviews
GAME DAY FEATURES
'Great Building To Play In'
Projected Lineup
Say What - 'Great Group Of Guys'
STAT PACK
Media Game Notes
Scoring Leaders
2019-20 Head-to-Head Stats
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Leading Scorers:
Flames:
Points - Johnny Gaudreau (27)
Goals - Andrew Mangiapane (16)
Golden Knights:
Points - Chandler Stephenson (21)
Goals - Reilly Smith, Jonathan Marchessault (10)
Special Teams:
Flames:
PP - 25.8% (5th) / PK - 86.5% (5th)
Golden Knights:
PP - 15.1% (24th) / PK - 83.3% (14th)
Advanced Stats:
Flames:
Shot Attempts: 54.20% (4th)
High-Danger Chances: 54.66% (4th)
Golden Knights:
Shot Attempts: 49.16% (18th)
High-Danger Chances: 48.83% (20th)

1. LAST TIME OUT

Rule No. 1 of the Results-Oriented Business: You turn down a win.
Sure, it wasn't the prettiest, at times, but if there's anything we've learned about the Flames this year …
They stick with it.
They grind.
And they always - but always - empty the tank.
"It was an ugly one and I think that we have to learn from it," Matthew Tkachuk said of Friday's 4-3 shootout win over the Anaheim Ducks. "That was a good hockey team that we played, but we gave them way (more) than they deserved. It's up to us to have a good bounce-back effort.
"We're not satisfied with giving up a point. We thought that should never have been the case, especially with a 3-1 lead. It's time for us to play Vegas for the first time (tonight) and have a good game."
Goals from Blake Coleman, Elias Lindholm and Sean Monahan helped the Flames build a two-goal lead after falling behind 1-0 early in the second period.
The Ducks then got a pair of quick ones - Rickard Rakell blitzing a one-timer past Dan Vladar in the last minute of the second, before Vinni Lettieri did the same in the opening beats of the third.
The Flames, though, had a good response and managed the game well the rest of the way, before their skilled players took over in the shootout.
Johnny Gaudreau and Tkachuk went 2-for-2 on John Gibson, while Vladar made stops on Trevor Zegras and Kevin Shattenkirk to ice the victory.
"That wasn't pretty," Lindholm acknowledged. "The first period, they could have been up a couple goals on us. But Dan played well in net, gave us a chance to win, and I thought we played better in the second and found a way to win.
"That's what a good team does."
The Flames were back on the ice on Saturday, holding a brief, but very business-like practice in Summerlin, Nevada.
Tyler Pitlick (undisclosed) did not participate.
Adam Ruzicka - who was called up from the Stockton Heat late last week - did, lining up at centre between Brad Richardson and Dillon Dube.
Ruzicka has 10 goals and 16 points in 13 games with the Heat this year.
He has one assist in three games at the NHL level when he got a quick look in the spring of last year.

2. KNOW YOUR ENEMY

The Golden Knights are coming off a 7-1 win over the Arizona Coyotes on Friday in the desert.
Max Pacioretty scored twice and is now on a four-game point streak (3G, 3A), while Evgenii Dadonov, Nicolas Roy and Michael Amadio each had a goal and an assist. Former Flames draft pick Laurent Brossoit made 29 saves to improve to 4-1-0 on the season.
"We needed a win," Knights Head Coach Peter DeBoer told reporters after the game. "You look at the standings, you lose a couple in a row and all of a sudden there are teams climbing over you."
It was the second time this year the Knights have put up a touchdown. In doing so, 14 of their 18 skaters recorded at least a point.
Special teams played a big role, with the Knights going 1-for-2 on the powerplay, while going a perfect 3-for-3 on the PK, and scoring their league-leading sixth short-handed goal.
The Knights now have three powerplay goals and three short-handed markers in their past two games.
"We started right off the bat," said Jonathan Marchessault. "The first period, we put a lot of pucks behind their defencemen and got our forecheck going. We recovered a lot of pucks and got a lot of scoring chances off that, so that's what created a little bit of momentum. Obviously, the powerplay got us a big goal there and I think, overall, it was one of our good games of the year.
"Now we've got to get ready for Calgary, because they've been one of the best teams in the league this year."
The Knights have been riddled with injuries all season, but are (slowly) starting to get healthier. Pacioretty and captain Mark Stone are both back in a full-time capacity, but they're still without former 40-goal scorer William Karlsson, Nolan Patrick and Alec Martinez.
Karlsson (foot) skated on Saturday and looked close, but there has been no official update from the team at this point.
Jack Eichel is back skating less than a month after having his long-awaited artificial disk replacement surgery, but he will not factor into the lineup for at least another few weeks.

3. FAST FACTS

HERE COMES THE MONY: Sean Monahan scored his third goal of the season on Friday, giving him 207 career tallies. As a result, he passed Hakan Loob for the seventh-most career goals on the road in Flames history and jumped Eric Vail for the eighth-most goals, overall, in franchise history. Monahan is now only six goals away from catching Al MacInnis (213) for the seventh on the franchise goal list.
GOOD OMEN: The Flames are atop the Pacific Division with a 15-4-5 record for 35 points in 24 games this year. This is their second-best record in franchise history after 24 games, trailing the 16-4-4, 36-point team in 1988-89. You may remember how that season finished.
DID YOU KNOW? Elias Lindholm is fourth in the NHL in plus/minus at +20, Johnny Gaudreau is eighth at +16 and Rasmus Andersson is sixth among defencemen at +13 … The Flames have allowed the fewest goals this year, with an average of 2.00 per game this season (48 in 24 games).

4. PLAYERS TO WATCH

Flames - Noah Hanifin
Hanifin didn't score, but he certainly had his 'goal legs' in Friday's victory.
The blueliner was constantly up the play and contributing offensively. It nearly paid off, too, but the darned goalpost got in the way - twice! - in the first period.
Hanifin finished the night with two shots in more than 21 minutes of ice time. He also led the team with a 70% share (21-9) of the 5-on-5 shot attempts, 72.22% of the scoring chances (13-5), and 75% (9-3) of the high-danger looks.
Golden Knights - Mark Stone
Stone is one of the top two-way players in the league, and always finds a way to make an impact.
The 29-year-old comes into the game on a four-game point streak (1G, 4A).

5. QUOTABLE

Assistant Coach Ryan Huska on Monahan's two-point game Friday:
"It was nice to see him get rewarded, I can say that much. He's been working. And that's the hard part when you have a guy that's used to scoring all the time, or regularly, I should say, and they haven't been going in easy for him this year. But he's been working the last little while and you just had a sense that eventually it was going to go for him. So, it was nice to see him get on the board with a few points tonight. He's an important player for us and does a lot of things well. If we can get him feeling really good about his offensive game again, it will make our team a lot better.
On Blake Coleman snapping a 16-game goal drought:
"You expect everybody to score. That's the mindset that we want our team to have this year. With a guy like Blake, there are so many intangibles that come along with him. The penalty kill, he's gritty, he's hard, he can play against top lines, he can check the right way, but he can also score. As much you want to say that guys understand it's not easy to score, it does bother them. They know that they have a role to play - but they have to contribute. And when they're getting chances and they're not going in, they start lying awake at night thinking about the chances they missed. It's nice to see them get rewarded."