Jacob Markstrom looks to rebound on a new-look Flames squad following a proper summer of training. And the proud new papa may just have a secret weapon.

This feature on Calgary Flames netminder Jacob Markstrom appears in The Hockey News' NHL Yearbook. Find this article along with the top 50 players in the NHL and features on Dallas Stars forward Jason Robertson, Devils center Jack Hughes, Panthers winger Matthew Tkachuk and so much more. Receive the issue for free with an annual subscription here.

If the members of hockey’s analytics community want to scrutinize a new data set that could help predict future spikes in performance, they could do worse than to study up on Dad Strength.

It’s a widespread topic of conversation, front of mind this summer after both Vegas’ William Karlsson and Florida’s Brandon Montour raised their games when they became first-time fathers during last season’s playoffs.

A couple of months earlier in Calgary, on Feb. 27, Jacob Markstrom also joined the NHL’s fatherhood fraternity. 

“It’s been amazing,” he said this summer. “I think he was six weeks when we flew back to Sweden, so it was nice to show him off.”

The 33-year-old Flames goalie shares young Clark Marley with his fiancee, Amanda Ostervall. Back in their hometown of Gavle for the summer, they’ve visited with friends – many of whom also now have young children – and family members, including Markstrom’s brother and sister, who recently became first-time parents themselves. “It’s a close group of cousins there,” he said.

Is there any chance that Markstrom’s son’s name is a tribute to Ian Clark, Markstrom’s former goaltending coach? 

“If you ask him, it was all him,” Markstrom said, smiling. “But no. My fiancee threw it out first. She didn’t receive much pushback from me.”

Clark returned to the Vancouver Canucks for his second tour of duty in 2018-19, and the pair spent two seasons together before Markstrom signed the six-year contract that brought him to Calgary. 

“He meant a lot to me in my career and in my life, and he made it possible for me to take another step in my hockey career,” Markstrom said.

For the Flames, the 2022-23 campaign was mostly one to forget. It started with high expectations fuelled by the arrival of new faces such as Jonathan Huberdeau, Nazem Kadri and MacKenzie Weegar, and it ended with the team outside the playoffs and both GM Brad Treliving and coach Darryl Sutter leaving the organization.

Markstrom also had an off year, which was especially surprising as he was coming off a second-place finish in Vezina Trophy voting in 2021-22. He started 58 games in 2022-23 and finished with a 2.92 goals-against average and .892 save percentage. But at least both those stats improved down the stretch.

In the 20 games after he became a dad, Markstrom posted an 8-6-5 record. And his best game of the year may have been a 1-0 shootout victory on the road against the Minnesota Wild March 7, when he faced a season-high 40 shots.

The late-season surge kept Calgary in the playoff conversation until Game 81, four days before the end of the season. But rather than see if they could mirror the Florida Panthers’ underdog success story, the Flames closed out the season two points behind eighth-place Winnipeg in the West.

Then, one year after saying goodbye to Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau, the organization underwent another round of foundational changes – this time in the front office and behind the bench. After spending the past 12 seasons in a support role with Flames management following his retirement from playing in 2011, Craig Conroy moved into the GM’s chair. And after five seasons as an assistant coach through the Bill Peters, Geoff Ward and Darryl Sutter regimes, Ryan Huska runs his own bench now, for the first time at the NHL level.

From Markstrom’s point of view, it will be good to have a defensive specialist running the show. 

“Huska was in charge of the D-men and making sure that the defense and myself work together well,” he said. “For me personally as a goalie, you want defense first, and then we score.”

Not having a captain since Mark Giordano’s departure two years ago until Mikael Backlund earned the 'C' didn’t cause a leadership void in the dressing room, according to Markstrom. But when the wins got scarce, cracks emerged in that internal support system. 

“When you lose a lot of games, it’s tougher to stand up and hold people accountable,” he said. “I criticize myself a little bit for not trying to get the boys going more, because I was trying to find my game. 

“As a goalie, it’s all mental. You’re not really thinking about, ‘OK guys, we need to get going here,’ one goal behind or one goal up and all that stuff. You’re so focused on trying to find your feeling. But when you’re winning, everybody can throw tape at each other and yell and swear. That’s the easy part.”

Required to bend and stretch their bodies into and out of positions that would be unimaginable to us mere mortals, goalies can be tight-lipped about their injuries and rehab protocols. After all, we’d never understand.

Markstrom admits now that the wear and tear of 75 total games played through the 2021-22 regular season and the playoffs left its mark on his summer routine. 

“I had a few bumps on the body, and I couldn’t do exactly what I’ve been doing the last three or four years,” he said. “Summer training was a little bit of me needing more rest after a long season, to heal up everything so it would be ready to go when the season started.”

This past summer, the routine went back to normal in Gavle, a city of around 90,000 that is also home to Nicklas Backstrom, Jakob Silfverberg, Calle Jarnkrok and netminders Felix Sandstrom and Jonas Johansson, among others. 

“I feel like half the city is NHL players,” Markstrom said, chuckling. “I’m working out with a few other goalies and a trainer, Johan Holmqvist, who used to play in Tampa and New York. We have little goalie workouts and get on the ice and do some goalie drills.”

Healthy, rested and feeling confident about the summer’s organizational changes, Markstrom heads into this season feeling like he has something to prove. 

“It’s not good to have a chip on your shoulder,” he said. “But for sure, it helps as motivation.”

Dad Strength helps, too.