Daily Faceoff Live: Predicting Saturday’s Battle of Alberta fight card

After a ferocious battle in the second round of the 2022 Stanley Cup Playoffs, the Calgary Flames and Edmonton Oilers will go at it again on Saturday night to determine which side will draw blood in this Battle of Alberta season series.

While the Oilers only made one major roster move this summer (swapping Jack Campbell in for Mike Smith), the Flames made many and enter this season looking very different than they did back in May.

Johnny Gaudreau, Sean Monahan, and Matthew Tkachuk are all gone. So are Erik Gudbranson and Calle Janrkrok. The Flames now have a completely different on-ice identity centered around newcomers Nazem Kadri, Jonathan Huberdeau, and MacKenzie Weegar — albeit with the same demanding personality behind the bench in Darryl Sutter.

The Flames opened their season with a statement, defeating the defending champion Colorado Avalanche 5–3 on Thursday. The Oilers kicked things off with a win by the same score over the Vancouver Canucks on Wednesday.

But in Friday’s edition of Daily Faceoff Live, Frank Seravalli and Matt Larkin were less concerned about the final score in the first 2022–23 Battle of Alberta. They went straight to the fights.

Frank Seravalli: The first Battle of Alberta on Saturday night, shoot it into my veins, the first of two over the next three Saturday nights. And the question for you is, over/under 1.5 fights to open up the season in the BoA?

Matt Larkin: I’m gonna kick a little bit of sand on the campfire, I’m gonna say under. If you look at the matchup last year, if my research is right, these two teams met nine times, including the playoffs, and there were no fights. There were a bunch of roughing calls, of course, it was a physical series in the playoffs, but I see no fights on the card that I can remember. And you also look at, who’s the heavyweight in Edmonton now? Zack Kassian’s out of town, is it Darnell Nurse? Evander Kane? Obviously, they’re asked to do a lot more than throw hands on that team. That said, I’m wondering if we’ll get one fight because there is a revenge narrative coming into play [tomorrow]: Nazem Kadri was not a Calgary Flame during the playoffs last year but he had his thumb broken by Evander Kane. So I’m wondering if maybe it’s Milan Lucic who wants to carry out justice or if there’s some sort of retribution narrative coming into play, so I’m gonna say one fight, but just one.

Check out the full episode below …