BEST LINE: Pinnacle -½ +103

Posted at 12:45 PM EST

Regulation only. The Hurricanes are still winless and hungry but the truth is they are fighting a losing battle with injuries to both Staal’s and a defense that is among the worst in the league. The ‘Canes offense isn’t very threatening either. Carolina has scored just 11 times in five games. In its last two games it has scored twice. They’ll now play their third consecutive on the road and with each loss, winning becomes more difficult. Calgary is not the team you want to be playing when searching for that illusive first win.

The Flames are for real. Projected to be near of the bottom of the West standings, Calgary is playing with a chip on their shoulder and they remain perhaps the hardest working team in the league under Bob Hartley. Besides that, they are so much talented than they get credit for. Mason Raymond is among the league leaders in points and is turning out to be another great acquisition by GM, Brad Treliving. Raymond joins Mikael Backlund, Joe Colborne and Jiri Hudler along with rookies Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau to provide the Flames with an underrated offense that has scored 20 times in eight games. Not great but let us point out that the Flames have played Chicago, St. Louis, Nashville and Tampa Bay in four of their eight games and when they played weaker defenses like Edmonton and Winnipeg, they scored nine times in two games. The Flames’ strength however is on defense where they employ one of the best units in the NHL with T.J. Brodie, Mark Giordano, Dennis Wideman and Kris Russell. Two of those guys are all-stars while the other two could crack the lineup of 90% of the teams in this league. Calgary returned home from a six-game trip and held the Lightning to 22 shots on net in a 2-1 OT loss. They are now 0-2 at home and they figure to be extremely hungry for a home victory after going 4-2 on the road. This is Calgary’s second game back after said trip and we can almost guarantee you that they will not get outworked or outplayed in this game and it sure doesn’t hurt that they are the superior team.