The Calgary Flames were nowhere near as good as they were expected to be this past season. With a new GM and coach, will they find some more fresh faces?
As we settle into the NHL’s 2023 off-season, our focus has turned toward the upcoming regular season. Moving team by team, one by one, we’ve alphabetically arrived at the enigma that is the Calgary Flames.
Can the Flames rebound from a disastrous 2022-23 campaign that resulted in the departures of GM Brad Treliving and coach Darryl Sutter? Or are bigger changes necessary to push Calgary back into the playoff picture? We’ll get into all of that below.
2022-23 Grade: F
Biggest Positive Heading Into the Off-Season
If our ‘F’ grade seems too harsh toward the Flames, let’s remember this team won the Pacific Division in 2021-22. They not only missed the post-season in 2022-23, but they finished 18 standings points worse than they finished in '21-22. This was an unmitigated disaster, and there are likely going to be significant changes to Calgary’s lineup next season.
The Flames’ new GM Craig Conroy and coach Ryan Huska are both first-timers in their positions at the NHL level, but they bring with them a hunger to win that probably will benefit Calgary’s players in 2023-24. The new energy surrounding the team may well bring a gust of competitive wind that was lacking for the Flames for much of last season.
If there are trades to be made, the Flames should seek offense-minded players – and with 18 players on their active roster and just $1.25 million in cap space per CapFriendly, Calgary will have to make trades to affect change. Their defense wasn’t the biggest issue for them in '22-23; rather, it was their struggles to produce more goals than their opponents.
Conroy has a whopping nine veterans with some form of no-trade or no-move clauses in their contracts, but as always, we’ll remind readers those clauses only give themselves a say in where their future home will be.
If Flames brass makes it clear to those nine veterans the team wants to move in a different direction, they’ll be more amenable to being moved, and Calgary could land some solid prospects or draft picks if they do deal some veterans. Finding that balance of new blood and foundational players may be Conroy’s biggest challenge this summer, but Calgary ownership clearly trusts their longtime employee to turn things around.
Biggest Need Heading Into the Off-Season
The Flames didn’t have a single player who averaged at least one point per game last season. That’s unacceptable, and that’s why Conroy will be looking to trade some assets – perhaps on ‘D’ – to acquire point-producing players.
Could defenseman Noah Hanifin be on the trade block? Yes, yes he could. Hanifin will be a UFA next summer and may not want to sign a contract extension. If that’s the case, Conroy cannot let him walk away for nothing, and thus, he’d have to move Hanifin while his value is at its highest. Conroy may not want to risk Hanifin being injured next season, so moving him this summer is the surest way to avoid that possible scenario.
Up front, forwards Mikael Backlund, Elias Lindholm and Tyler Toffoli will all be UFAs after the 2023-24 campaign – and none of them have a no-trade or no-move clause. Toffoli and Lindholm were Calgary’s top two point producers last season. While it would hurt to see them leave, they have a combined cap hit of $9.1 million. That money might be better used by landing a younger player with long-term upside.
In addition, the Flames must sort out their goaltending situation.
Jacob Markstrom was abominably bad this past season, but he’s signed at a cap hit of $6 million through the 2025-26 season. You can’t buy him out at that number, but you also can’t trade him without taking back a bad contract in return. Meanwhile, 25-year-old Dan Vladar will almost certainly return to serve as backup.
That all spells the status quo in net for Calgary, and that means the Flames need to play an even tighter defensive game so they don't depend on Markstrom or Vladar to steal games. They have to steal them as an overall unit.
Bottom Line for Them This Off-Season
With a new administration in place, it’s a brand new era for the Flames. But at the moment, it seems like many of the current members of the team will stay members of the team at the beginning of next season. But there needs to be a degree of change, if only to show the team there are consequences for underachieving.
Maybe that means only one of Lindholm, Toffoli and Backlund get moved this summer, and Conroy moves one or both of the other two at the trade deadline. Maybe Conroy decides to make bigger changes and figure out how to land a generational talent (hint: you only get that by being terrible and landing the top spot in the draft). Maybe there must be steps taken backward before progress can truly take place.
As currently constructed, the Flames won’t contend for a Stanley Cup anytime soon. That may change if Markstrom rediscovers his game and Calgary’s veterans surge in the point-production element of the game. But we sense Conroy has the green light to thoroughly alter the Flames’ core. That’s an operation where pain is unavoidable, but the current status of the patient demands significantly bigger change.