Rangers vs Flames: Strome back, join the live conversation!

The New York Rangers return home after ten days on the road to face the Calgary Flames.   While the Rangers hope to extend their winning streak to five games, the Flames are coming off a big overtime win over the Washington Capitals on Saturday and have now won two in a row.

The good news for the Rangers is that Ryan Strome will back in the lineup while Kaapo Kakko will be held out as the Rangers don’t play again until Friday against Columbus.  Both Strome and Kakko were skating at practice on Sunday, though Kakko was in a non-contact jersey.

With the Rangers almost completely healthy, the Rangers needed to trim the roster. Without Strome and Kakko the Rangers were at the maximum 23 players on the active roster so that means with Strome is in he lineup, Morgan Barron is Hartford bound.

The last time the two teams played was on January 2, 2000 in Calgary.  The Flames have won three in a row against the Rangers with the last time the Blueshirts beating them at the Garden in February 2018.

Projected lineups

The starting lineup won’t be released until just before game time.  Based on the early report from Gallant, this is a reasonable assumption of what they lines will look like.   Goodrow should slide into the right wing slot on the Strome line, but it wouldn’t hurt to see Blais get some time there too.

This is good news for Julien Gauthier who hasn’t played in a week.  He has played in only two games this season and was last in for the game in Toronto.

NEW YORK RANGERS

13 Lafrenière – 93 Zibanejad – 20 Kreider
10 Panarin – 16 Strome – 21 Goodrow
91 Blais  – 72 Chytil – Gauthier
29 Hunt – 17 Rooney – 75 Reaves

55 Lindgren – 23 Fox
79 Miller – 8 Trouba
12 Nemeth – 27 Lundkvist

31 Shesterkin
40 Georgiev

CALGARY FLAMES

13 Johnny Gaudreau – 28 Elias Lindholm – 19 Matthew Tkachuk
20 Blake Coleman -11 Mikael Backlund – 18 Tyler Pitlick
88 Andrew Mangiapane – 29 Dillon Dube – 24 Brett Ritchie
17 Milan Lucic – 23  Sean Monahan – 22Trevor Lewis

58 Oliver Kylington -8  Christopher Tanev
55 Noah Hanifin – 4 Rasmus Andersson
6 Juuso Valimaki – 44 Erik Gudbranson

25 Jacob Markstrom
80 – Dan Vladar

The Flames are led by Elias Lindholm who is tied for the league lead in goals with six.  An interesting matchup will be Blake Coleman versus Barclay Goodrow.  They were together in Tampa and along with Yanni Gourde, formed the Lightning’s vaunted third line.

If you want to see a player whose value has dropped precipitously, look at fourth line center Sean Monahan.   Pulling in over $6 million a year, the 27-year-old  Monahan was a point-a-game player with 34 goals in 2018-19 and is scoreless this season after scoring only ten times last season.

About the game

Game time is 7pm and it will be televised on the MSG Network with the radio call on ESPN 98.7FM.  Nationally, the game will be streamed on ESPN+.

Blue Line Station will be hosting a live in-game conversation using the comments feature below. The comments have not been refreshing and one workaround is to change how the comments sort from “newest” to “oldest” and back to “newest” again. Sorry about that, we’re working on the problem.

The live thread is up now!