Thursday afternoon was a relatively normal day of practice for the Calgary Flames. In one of their last on-ice sessions of Phase 3 training camp, their lines began to resemble what we’ve seen during the regular season (and what we’ll likely see in Game 1 against Winnipeg on Aug. 1).
Familiar faces in familiar places
Lines from Thursday’s main group:
Johnny Gaudreau – Sean Monahan – Elias Lindholm
Andrew Mangiapane – Mikael Backlund – Matthew Tkachuk
Milan Lucic – Derek Ryan – Dillon Dube
Tobias Rieder/Zac Rinaldo – Mark Jankowski – Sam Bennett
Mark Giordano – TJ Brodie
Noah Hanifin – Rasmus Andersson
Derek Forbort – Erik Gustafsson
Oliver Kylington – Michael Stone
David Rittich
Cam Talbot
These 23 players look awfully familiar because this is basically the established NHL group in their most common deployments.