The Red Wings finished off 2018 on a sour note, coughing up a three goal leading and losing to the Florida Panthers in a shootout. They can’t dwell on the mistakes of the past for very long, though, as the Flames are in town to take them on tonight.

This is the first match-up between these two teams this season. Last year, they played twice and each team escaped with a pretty defiant victory. The Flames will be a tough match-up, though. They are tied for first in the Pacific Division and have a 12-8-0 record on the road.

The Wings are currently on a five game losing streak that really needs to be snapped. Like they say, “new year, new me”. Can the Red Wings start 2019 on the right foot?

The lines have really gone into the blender for tonight, but the good news is that Darren Helm is back! He’ll be on the third line with Luke Glendening and Andreas Athanasiou, who was bumped from the top line despite being a contributing factor to the score sheet Monday night.

Tyler Bertuzzi’s been promoted to the second line with Nielsen and Vanek in the hopes that he can light a fire under them and Nyquist has been returned to the top line with Larkin and Abdelkader. On the fourth line, Wade Megan comes out of the lineup and we’ll see a grind line of Rasmussen, De La Rose, and Ehn.

On the blue line, Luke Witkowski slots back into the lineup after it was announced that Trevor Daley will miss 3-5 weeks with a broken foot. He’ll play on a pairing with Dennis Cholowski. Brian Lashoff was also called up from Grand Rapids in case of an emergency, but I don’t anticipate him seeing any ice time.

Calgary has been getting some stellar performances from their top-6. Four of those players, Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, Matthew Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm, have over 40 points. Gaudreau leads the charge with 21 goals and 55 points.

James Neal has been surprisingly quiet for the Flames this year after a monster performance with Vegas last season, but the team is getting depth scoring from other sources, such as Sam Bennett, Mikael backlund, and Mark Giordano.

On the back end, Noah Hanifin has been making some noise with his 19 points. It sure looks like the Flames made out like bandits in that Carolina trade. Hanifin has really rounded out their top-4 with Travis Hamonic and T.J. Brodie.

This is a good, deep team that could make some noise in the playoffs.

Jimmy Howard vs. Mike Smith

The Red Wings have not been getting the goaltending support that they had in November, which has really put a damper on their playoff hopes. After Howard’s back spasms mid-December, he’s really slowed down. He hasn’t logged a win in his last five starts, giving up 13 goals.

On the other end, the far-from-consistent Mike Smith is 4-1 in his last five, despite a sub-900 save percentage. Smith is having a terrible year relative to his career averages and easily the weakest part of this Flames team. He does have two shutouts this year, though, which is more than can be said for either of the Red Wings goaltenders.

Puck drop is at 7:00 P.M. ET tonight and you’ll be able to catch the game on Fox Sports Detroit or Sportsnet West if you’re tuning in from Canada.

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