The Predators roll into town on the heels of their 4-3 victory over the Sharks. Nashville struggled out of the gates but have turned it around recently. Course, whether they were winning or losing would be immaterial to the Flames - Calgary went 0-4 against the Preds last year, which included the clubs most humiliating loss (9-4) of the season.
In order to avoid such an outcome, Calgary will look to continue the improvement on special teams we saw against the Coyotes. In addition, the Flames will have to learn how to stay out of the box if they want to have a fighting chance to end this losing streak against the snarling cats. Another dominating night in the face-off circle wouldn't hurt either.
Keep an eye on Matthew Lombardi (or, at least, his stats since the game isn't televised) tonight - I personally think he's been the best Flame forward to date. He's tied for the club lead in points with 7 and is far away the top Calgary skater in the +/- category (+7). Like Tuesday, he'll be centering a line with Kobasew and Friesen. Despite being largely ineffective, the #1 line will once again consist of Iginla, Langkow and Tanguay. The possibility remains that Tanguay and Iginla will start to click at any time, but I wouldn't hang any prediction of that happening on the results so far. As I've mentioned previously, Tanguay looked the most comfortble when he was skating with Lombo and Charles. So, tonight, hopefully it either starts working between the two top paid players on the team, or Playfair abandons this experiment for more well proven combinations.
Prediction: Iginla and Vokoun fight in the corner in the third. Flames win a squeeker 4-2 (with an empty-netter).
