The most exciting thing about the All-Canadian Division? The explosion of the Battle of Alberta.

We’re going to have 10 meetings between the Edmonton Oilers and the Calgary Flames this year, twice as many as we see in a normal season. This rivalry has gotten very spicy over the past couple of years and these games are going to mean a lot in this hyper-competitive, unpredictable division, so buckle up.

It was a tale of two seasons for the Flames last year.

In 2018-19, they finished with the best record in the Western Conference and then went ahead and laid an egg in the playoffs, getting knocked aside by the eighth-seeded Colorado Avalanche in the first round. After that, the goal for Calgary heading into 2019-20 was to prove that they were actually the team that finished with 107 points, rather than the team that got embarrassed in the playoffs.

The Flames would get off to a mediocre start, sitting with a .500 record after two months of play. At the end of November, head coach Bill Peters was fired and the Flames started to turn their season around. They had a 12-12-4 under Peters but improved quite a bit with Geoff Ward behind the bench, putting up a 24-15-3 record after the switch.

That was good enough to get the Flames into the expanded playoffs, where they would take down the Winnipeg Jets in the play-in round before bowing out to the Dallas Stars in the first round.

Still, even after the improvement with Ward as head coach, the Flames were nowhere near the team they were the previous season when they boasted the second-most potent offence in the league. In 2018-19, the Flames had 11 players score more than 10 goals and five players eclipse the 20-goal plateau. In 2019-20, the offence dried up, as only seven players scored more than 10 goals and only three scored more than 20. The season getting cut short obviously skews individual performances, but the Flames finished 20th in the league in goals scored.

Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan both had uncharacteristically poor seasons in terms of offensive production while depth players like Mark Jankowski and Michael Frolik (who had chipped in with 14 and 16 goals respectively) fell off a cliff. You can reasonably expect Gaudreau and Monahan to bounce back, but that potent depth scoring looks like an anomaly.

Calgary’s biggest upgrade this off-season came in net when they added Jacob Markstrom, who finished fourth in Vezina Trophy voting in 2019-20, to a six-year deal. This gives Calgary a legitimate ace goaltender while simultaneously making a division rival, the Vancouver Canucks, worse.

Though Cam Talbot was very good for the Flames last year, posting a .917 save percentage over 26 games, the team is better off with Markstrom as the main guy than they were with David Rittich, who has a .908 save percentage over his NHL career. Of course, there’s also some injury risk with Markstrom, so a season that features so many games in such a short period of time could be a challenge.

That’s the only place where you can really say the Flames are better off this year than they were last. They lost defenceman T.J. Brodie in free agency and replaced him with Chris Tanev, which is a decent downgrade. They also didn’t have room to add much quality depth up front, as the Flames will be relying on wild cards like Dominik Simon and Josh Leivo to potentially contribute in their top-six, which isn’t ideal.

But, as I said earlier, it’s reasonable to assume that Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan will rebound after a poor season offensively. That coupled with the addition of Markstrom in net and the Flames will be a strong group. They won’t be 2018-19 level, I wouldn’t expect, but they look like a playoff team.

The Oilers and Flames both being competitive teams is a good thing. We’ll certainly be seeing some quality content added to the Battle of Alberta over the course of these 10 meetings. Here’s a refresher as to what happened last year…