Five Reasons Saturday's Battle of Alberta is Must-Watch

A note to the NHL’s schedule makers: Maybe do back-to-back Battle of Albertas around Christmas every year?

While Tuesday’s first game against the Oilers in Edmonton didn’t go the way the Flames would have liked, Saturday’s rematch in Calgary offers them an immediate shot at redemption – or revenge, pick whatever word suits you best.

It’s been a while since a Battle of Alberta carried this much anticipation. The after-the-whistle extracurriculars at the end of Tuesday’s 5-1 Oilers win ensured as much.

These two teams don’t like each other. That’s as it should be and there’s nothing that’ll get hockey fans in Alberta in the holiday spirit quite like the Flames and Oilers expressing their mutual distaste for one another.

Here are five things we’ll be looking out for in Saturday’s game at the Saddledome:

1. Can the Flames stop McDavid?

We positioned this as a question, but everyone sort of knows the answer, right? Nobody has proven very effective at stopping Connor McDavid or Leon Draisaitl.

Among active NHL players, Draisaitl has put up more points (68) than any other player against the Flames. McDavid is No. 2, with 65 points against his rivals.

On Tuesday, McDavid had five assists while Draisaitl had a hat-trick.

Unless the Flames find any way to limit the damage that the two Oilers superstars can do, this rivalry is going to remain one-sided. The Oilers have won seven of the last 10 Battles of Alberta.

2. Are the Oilers out for revenge?

The Oilers really didn’t like when Rasmus Andersson clipped Zach Hyman in the third period, which they considered to be knee-on-knee.
The Flames blueliner was assessed a tripping penalty on the play, but that clearly didn’t satisfy the Oilers. Darnell Nurse made sure to hit Andersson with a few cross-checks when he got back on the ice.

If these teams weren’t playing twice in five days, it’s the type of incident that might be forgotten about. This time, it might not be.

Both teams are probably going to be preparing for a physical game with a tonne of bad blood.

3. Carry over

It wasn’t just the Andersson penalty that got the blood boiling in Edmonton on Tuesday night. Nurse and Adam Klapka were sharing a not-so-cordial conversation in the game’s dying seconds when Ryan Lomberg got involved and things escalated quickly.

These things happen in hockey and there was nothing to get outraged about, but at this point it would be pretty shocking if we didn’t see at least a few scraps in Saturday’s game.

Both teams have a few guys who can throw hands when they need to.

4. Something to prove

MacKenzie Weegar was thrown out of Tuesday’s game for expressing his displeasure with the refs by repeatedly slamming his stick into the penalty box glass.

It’s not what we’ve come to expect from Weegar throughout his time in Calgary, and it left his team down a defenceman for the final 34 minutes of the game.

No doubt the coaching staff will have talked to Weegar and reminded him of the importance of keeping his cool and not losing his temper.

If Weegar comes out Saturday looking to make it up to his teammates, maybe it gives the Flames a chance to get a better result than they did in Round 1.

5. The points

At the end of the day, the points in the standings don’t count any more in a Battle of Alberta than they do in any other game.
And the Flames need points, plain and simple.

They’re five points out of a playoff spot. They’re also two points up on the last-place team in the entire NHL, the Chicago Blackhawks.
That’s completely mind-boggling to think about, but it also makes it pretty self-evident that the Flames need points no matter who they’re playing against.

daustin@postmedia.com

www.twitter.com/DannyAustin_9