'We Have To Pick Him Up'

Those 1,236 faceoffs won’t replace themselves.

Nor will the team-leading 258 short-handed draws – nearly five times the volume of anyone else on the roster.

But press on, they must.

With the indispensable Mikael Backlund out week-to-week with an upper-body injury, others will have to step up and fill the void left by their captain, and versatile, shutdown centre.

“Off the ice, we have a lot of leaders that can help pick up the slack,” said Morgan Frost, who’s one of the prime candidates to play big minutes in Backlund’s absence. “On the ice, that's a tough guy to replace. He plays so many hard minutes, important minutes, he's our top faceoff guy ... As a forward group as a whole, we have to pick him up. But especially the centres.

“We look forward to that challenge.”

Statistically, Frost is the Flames' top centre in overall faceoff percentage, clipping along at 49.2%, including a 55.8% average in the defensive dot.

Backlund, though, faces the toughest matchups, and would’ve been Head Coach Ryan Huska’s first choice tonight as the Flames look to slow down Nathan MacKinnon and Martin Necas at the Scotiabank Saddledome. GET TICKETS

It’s also why Backlund gets the lion’s share of the penalty-killing responsibility, with second-place Kevin Rooney squaring up for only 54 of Calgary’s 379 total draws on the PK.

The 68% left over will now have to be absorbed by Frost, Rooney, Nazem Kadri and Yegor Sharangovich, who will slide into the middle, with Connor Zary serving the first of a two-game suspension.

Tonight, all eyes will be on the defensive zone, where the ‘weak-side’ draws (ie. the right side of the ice for a lefty, which all four of the Flames’ centremen are) prove challenging for even the game’s top pivots.

“On that side, I typically try to take more of a defensive approach,” Frost said. “You might tie up the stick and look for a 50-50 versus trying to win it clean – because if you don't win it clean and they do, against a team like this and they're snapping it back, you've got Cale Makar walking the line and you're suddenly in danger.

“Some teams are fortunate to have lines with guys that are right-handed and left-handed, so a lot of times they're only taking them on their strong side. But for us, it's something we watch a ton of video on and try to work on a lot after practice.”

In addition to the normal game flow, there are four instances in which the attacking team can choose which side of the ice a faceoff is taken: After an icing, at the start of a powerplay, on a shot taken from outside the red line that is frozen by the goaltender, and when a defending player unintentionally dislodges the net.

Understandably, attacking teams will try and exploit that, meaning a lot of the offensive-zone draws in those situations will be taken to the right of Dustin Wolf and Dan Vladar.

So, it’s incumbent on not only the centremen, but the wingers to bear down and help win those 50-50 pucks that Frost touched on.

But it also begs the question: Has he ever considered flipping his stick and trying to win those situational faceoffs as a righty?

“I've tried that before ...” he laughed.

“If you miss, it feels like your shoulder is going to fall off. But I've definitely seen a couple guys do it. When I was younger, I played with Claude Giroux in Philly and he was so good at it. I don't know ... Maybe it's something that comes with age and experience.”

For now, Frost and the Flames will stick to what’s gotten them here.

On draws, and with the hard-working identity they’ve forged over the first three quarters of the campaign.

“I don't know how the lines will be deployed tonight, but the key is that you have to dig in just that much deeper because of how hard the minutes are that Backs plays.

“It will be a group effort tonight and moving forward, for sure.”