With their playoff spot locked up as the second seed in the Western Conference, the Vegas Golden Knights will keep several of their top players out of the lineup on Tuesday against the Calgary Flames.
Jack Eichel, Mark Stone. Alex Pietrangelo, Noah Hanifin will all sit out the contest, which is a must-win for the Flames to keep their playoff hopes alive. Adin Hill will also get the night off, with Ilya Samsonov starting in goal.
Eichel has been dealing with an upper-body injury, with Tuesday marking the fourth straight game he has missed. Pietrangelo will also miss his fourth straight game with an undisclosed injury.
The Flames enter play Tuesday sitting three points back of the Minnesota Wild for the top wild-card spot and two points behind the St. Louis Blues with a game in hand on both.
Calgary needs to win both of their final two games to have a chance, but Thursday’s game against the Los Angeles Kings, which was rescheduled from January, could be meaningless based on results from Tuesday.
Owning tiebreakers on the Flames, the Wild can punch their ticket to the playoffs with a single point Tuesday against the Anaheim Ducks. The Blues will lock up their spot with a regulation win against the Utah Hockey Club, but a win in overtime or a shootout, would keep the door open to Calgary, should the Flames pick up a regulation win over the Vegas Golden Knights.
The Blues currently have 31 regulation wins to Calgary’s 30 and own the second tiebreaker – regulation and overtime wins – over the Flames 39 to 35. With a win beyond regulation Tuesday, the Blues would finish with 31 regulation wins, while Calgary could come in as high 32.
Seeing the watered down lineups in their final games was a known possibility for the Flames, but the team is focused solely on their own needs.
“I don’t know the mentality that they’re going to go into it with, but our mentality is going to be that we’re fighting for our lives, so they’d better be ready to go because it’s going to be a good game,” Flames blueliner MacKenzie Weegar said ahead of Tuesday’s game, per the Calgary Herald.
The Flames last reached the playoffs in 2022, falling to the Edmonton Oilers in the second round. Calgary has made the postseason five times in the past 10 years, never advancing past the second round.
