Practice Notebook - 28.02.25

Putting In The Work

With Saturday's game against the Panthers taking place in the afternoon (1:00 p.m. MT, Sportsnet), the Flames held a lengthy skate in Sunrise on Friday. While the team is coming off of a loss in Tampa on Thursday night, for the most part, the coaching staff was pleased with most of their game. They used today's skate to hone in on one particular point.

"We talked last night - there was a lot of that game that we liked," head coach Ryan Huska said. "We didn't have a lot finish so today's practice was about trying to score a few more goals. Listen, when you put some competition into practice, the guys enjoy it and today was a good one for us. We don't have a skate tomorrow morning, it's an early start, so we felt like it was important for us to bring some energy to the rink today."

There were a couple of changes to the lines being run during today's skate but the coaching staff hasn't set tomorrow's lines in stone quite yet.

"We're talking about it," Huska said. "We're not really sure where we're going to go, we'll see what happens with Marty tomorrow ... (today was) a maintenance day-type of thing. We'll make some decisions tomorrow on the lines. I do feel like we've got two lines who are playing right now, the other two are not quite where they need to be so we may have to make some adjustments."

Forwards

Jonathan Huberdeau - Nazem Kadri - Matt Coronato

Joel Farabee - Morgan Frost - Connor Zary

Yegor Sharangovich - Mikael Backlund - Blake Coleman

Ryan Lomberg - Kevin Rooney - Adam Klapka

Martin Pospisil (maintenance) did not skate

Defence

Kevin Bahl - Rasmus Andersson

Joel Hanley - MacKenzie Weegar

Ilya Solovyov - Brayden Pachal

Daniil Miromanov - Jake Bean

Goaltenders

Dan Vladar

Dustin Wolf

A Steady Blueline

After being without Kevin Bahl for nine games due to a lower-body injury and illness, the Flames defence corps got a boost when the big blueliner stepped back into the lineup on Tuesday in Washington.

Having Bahl back with his regular partner Rasmus Andersson has allowed the other pairings to get into sync with one another and Huska has liked what he's seen two games into this six-game trek through the USA.

"You can look at Kevin and Ras - it's nice having them back together again but I think MacKenzie and Joel have given us some really good minutes against some very good lines," the bench boss said.

"I think Solo and Pachal have done an excellent job together - two younger defenceman that are a bit bigger, a little bit more physical ... I think they've handled themselves very well over the last little while. Their challenge now is consistency. Always for younger players, that next shift, that next game (is) 'I've got to do the same or better my effort.' That's going to be the challenge for them, to make sure that they're ready to go for three o'clock tomorrow."