What a Girl Wants: Blackhawks vs. Flames Preview

The Chicago Blackhawks host the Calgary Flames on Thursday night at the United Center, hoping to get back in the win column as the flu bug that’s ripped through the locker room appears to be winding down.

This season has largely gone sideways for the Flames, who enter the midpoint of the year sitting 30th in the league by points percentage (.457) and looking every bit like a team stuck in neutral. On paper, they look mostly average — the Flames own 51.01 percent of shot attempts (12th in the league) and 49.67 percent of expected goals (17th) — but the outcomes have skewed far lower than those underlying numbers would suggest. Whatever optimism existed back in October has steadily eroded, with inconsistent scoring and defensive breakdowns keeping Calgary near the bottom of the standings. January hasn’t offered much relief, either, as the Flames have managed just one win in six games this month, a continuation of a season-long trend where progress feels fleeting and momentum is almost impossible to sustain.

Calgary’s issues up front start with a lack of true high-end production, as no Flame is scoring at a point-per-game pace this season. Nazem Kadri leads the team at 0.70 points per game (32 in 46), but he hasn’t recorded a point since the calendar flipped to January, emblematic of the broader scoring drought. Mikael Backlund (29 in 46, 0.63), Matt Coronato (25 in 45, 0.56), and Jonathan Huberdeau (21 in 41, 0.51) are the only other forwards above the half-point-per-game mark — modest numbers for established veterans and a highly touted young scorer. Morgan Frost and Blake Coleman (22 in 46, 21 in 44, respectively) sit just below that line at 0.48, offering some secondary offense but not enough to tilt games consistently. Interestingly, Connor Zary has been one of the brighter spots this month, posting four points (2 G, 2 A) in six January games despite sitting at 0.39 points per game on the season. The lack of scoring depth continues to haunt the Flames, and when the bottom of the lineup can’t defend well enough to protect the occasional lead generated by the top six, even small advantages tend to evaporate quickly.

On the back end, the Flames are running into a familiar problem: limited offense without the defensive insulation to make up for it. Rasmus Andersson (29 in 46, 0.63 PPG) has been the lone defenseman providing consistent offensive and defensive contributions. The only other notable defender, MacKenzie Weegar, is tracking toward a finish roughly 20 points below each of his last two seasons, which would also mark his lowest point total in six years. Beyond those two, there simply isn’t enough coming from the rest of the blue line, and the group as a whole hasn’t been strong enough defensively to offset that lack of production — leaving Calgary stuck in the middle with neither scoring punch nor shutdown reliability.

No lines to report from a morning skate, so here was the Calgary lineup in its most recent game: a 5-3 loss to the Blue Jackets on Tuesday night in Columbus.

#Flames vs. #CBJ:

Huberdeau-Kadri-Farabee
Sharangovich-Backlund-Coronato
Zary-Frost-Klapka
Lomberg-Kirkland-Stromgren

Bahl-Andersson
Kuznetsov-Weegar
Hanley-Pachal

Wolf (Starter)
Cooley pic.twitter.com/BMltHJpr0j

— Derek Wills (@Fan960Wills) January 13, 2026

Unlike the Flames, January has at least offered some tangible progress for the Blackhawks, who opened the new year by winning five of their first six games before having that momentum halted in a 4–1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers on Monday. Edmonton has looked like one of the league’s better teams since ironing out its early-season issues and, of course, employs the best player on the planet in Connor McDavid. Even so, the game felt closer than the final score suggested, and it was hard to ignore how much the flu tearing through the Chicago locker room factored in — most notably with Connor Bedard sidelined. Given the circumstances, the result felt less like a step backward and more like a speed bump in what’s otherwise been a more encouraging month.

That progress shows up clearly in the numbers, as the Blackhawks have played like a mostly average team in January, posting 49.78 percent of shot attempts and 48.22 percent of expected goals — both sizable jumps compared to their season-long metrics and a sign that the underlying process has taken a step forward, even if the results haven’t always followed. Considering the bigger-picture focus is on improving the process rather than obsessing over results, that’s genuinely encouraging. Wins are obviously welcome, but seeing tangible gains in how the Blackhawks are playing is a victory in its own right, especially if this level of performance can be sustained and built on moving forward.

This will be the third and final meeting between the Blackhawks and Flames this season, with Chicago having taken both previous matchups. The first came in early November, a 4–0 win, followed a couple of weeks later by a 5–2 victory, hopefully giving the Blackhawks an edge heading into Thursday’s matchup to complete the season sweep.

As for the lines, it was confirmed that Bedard would return to the lineup after battling the flu while Teuvo Teravainen remains out with an injury after the veteran forward left Monday’s loss to the Oilers in the first period with an upper-body injury.

Teravainen is out tomorrow vs Flames but isn’t ruled out yet beyond that, so he might just be day-to-day.

— Ben Pope (@BenPopeCST) January 14, 2026

The Blackhawks lines at the morning skate were the same as at Wednesday’s practice:

#Blackhawks practice lineup:
Greene-Bedard-Burakovsky
Bertuzzi-Dickinson-Mikheyev
Donato-Moore-Lardis
Foligno-Dach-Slaggert

Vlasic-Crevier
Kaiser-Levshunov
Grzelcyk-Murphy

Knight
Soderblom

Out: Teravainen (upper-body), Lafferty (illness)

— Charlie Roumeliotis (@CRoumeliotis) January 14, 2026