Johnson, a Calgary native, will play his first regular season game for the Flames since signing a one-year, $1.7 million contract as a free agent on July 1. He had a .920 save percentage and played in a career-high 45 games for the Buffalo Sabres last season.
"We got him this summer for a reason and when we're playing three games in four nights that's why we wanted to have another really good goalie with us," Flames coach Glen Gulutzan said.
Although Elliott had to face Oilers star Connor McDavid, who had three goals and six points in the two games,
Johnson will face a more deliberate, balanced attack from a Canucks team that scored the second fewest goals in the NHL last season (186), trailing the New Jersey Devils (182).
"It's going to be a different game defensively for us," Gulutzan said.
The Flames hope to play better defensively than they did for Elliott.
"We feel safe with both of them in net so I'm excited for Chad to get his first start and hopefully we can help him out better than we have with [Elliott] so far," center Mikael Backlund said.
Vancouver is hoping the addition to free agent forward Loui Eriksson, who scored 30 goals for the Boston Bruins last season, will bolster the top line and power play with Henrik Sedin and Daniel Sedin.
Coach Willie Desjardins juggled his forward lines, dropping center Bo Horvat down into a checking role and promoting center Markus Granlund to an offensive spot with Sven Baertschi. It's a move that caught many off guard, including Horvat, who led the Canucks in scoring the second half of last season with 30 points in his past 43 games playing mostly with Baertschi. Granlund has 31 points in 102 career NHL games.
"We need to play four lines, we have nine games in 15 days," Desjardins said. "We want to find lines we think can match up against everybody, that are good defensively, but the biggest thing is we want to have some balance in our lineup because we need to play four lines."
Desjardins is more worried about the Canucks playing their first game in a week against a Flames team that has already played twice.
"It's a big concern," Desjardins said. "You just can't the game tempo [in practice]."
