On Tuesday night, the Vancouver Canucks will meet the Calgary Flames for the second time this season, with two more meetings remaining in Calgary.

From a Calgary writer’s perspective, here’s what the Canucks can expect from the Flames tonight at Rogers Arena.

Until recently, the Flames have avoided significant injuries to begin their season. They were without the services of forwards Yegor Sharangovich, Kevin Rooney, and Sam Honzek at various points early on, but they entered the month of November fully healthy after those players all returned to action.

But on Nov. 5 in Montreal, forward Anthony Mantha suffered a significant knee injury that will require surgery and take him out for the remainder of the season. Mantha struggled with consistency during his short tenure with the Flames, but he showed flashes of brilliance here and there – Canucks fans will remember his fight with J.T. Miller and his shorthanded breakaway goal in the season-opener on Oct. 9. The Flames’ forward depth will be tested with Mantha’s injury.

Let’s call a spade a spade, folks: the Flames are a hockey club that doesn’t have a ton of high-end firepower. They’re a hockey club that needs to play a five-man system and really rely on their team game to beat higher-skilled opponents.

On Monday night at home against the Los Angeles Kings, the Flames played perhaps their strongest 60 minutes from that perspective in a 3-1 win.

“Even when we didn’t have the puck, I thought we weren’t cheating the game at all,” said head coach Ryan Huska following the game. “We weren’t looking to hope a puck was going to bounce our direction and maybe get an offensive opportunity. I thought there was commitment to play the game the right way tonight from everybody.”

When the Flames can play with pace and structure, they can really suffocate and frustrate their opposition.

From an individual standpoint, goaltender Dan Vladar is expected to start in net for Calgary. He’s off to a really strong start after undergoing hip surgery in the spring; he’s posted a 3-3-2 record with a 2.60 goals against average, .906 save percentage and one shutout. While it would be reasonable to expect the Flames to take a step back in net after the off-season departure of Jacob Markstrom, Vladar and Dustin Wolf have given the Flames reliable performances in goal.

Up front, keep an eye out for Connor Zary. Playing on the team’s de facto top line alongside Yegor Sharangovich and Nazem Kadri, Zary’s been skating well and generating a ton of chances – he somehow managed to not register a point against Los Angeles despite generating three times as many individual expected goals (0.69) than anyone else on his team.

On paper, the Flames seemed destined to be a hockey club that broke even at five-on-five and managed to win games with their special teams. Well, the opposite has happened so far in 2024-25: the Flames have been a pretty capable even strength team that’s managed to eke out games despite their special teams units – both their power play and penalty kill – under-performing. Their power play and penalty kill are both near the NHL’s bottom in each category.

The Flames have also had a centre problem so far this season, trying out both Martin Pospisil and Sharangovich up the middle throughout the season with mixed results. The Flames boast two strong veteran centres in Nazem Kadri and Mikael Backlund, but both are well past their 30th birthdays and the team doesn’t have much emerging behind them. And so, they’re trying to wingers in the role in the hopes that someone will blossom as an NHL centre. So far, it hasn’t happened.