The Calgary Flames are one of the teams near the bottom of the Western Conference standings. They had expectations of being a playoff team this season after finishing with 96 points and missing out on the playoffs because of tiebreakers, with the St. Louis Blues clinched the final playoff spot.
However, things have not gone according to plan in Calgary. As one person told NHLRumors.com,
“When the Flames have expectations, they come up short, and when nobody expects anything of Calgary, that is when they surprise.”
NHL Rumors: Could the Calgary Flames Move More Than Rasmus Andersson
And the Flames are underachieving, especially after they shed the label and narrative of players not wanting to be there with the Matt Coronato, Dustin Wolf, Mikael Backlund, and Connor Zary signings. And it is all well and good that they are changing the narrative, but the vultures are still circling as teams are looking to add and see who they can pluck from the Calgary Flames.
So it was interesting to hear Flames President of Hockey Operations Don Maloney told Brendan Parker of Sportsnet on Wednesday night during the Calgary-Buffalo game that he isn’t throwing in the towel on the season.
“We’re not throwing in the towel. We know we’ve got a lot of work to do. There’s three-quarters of the season left, and we just have to keep working and we know we’ve got good players here,” Maloney said. “We got a good veteran group. We’ve got some younger players are pushed. We got a great young goaltender and goaltending tandem, but we have to put it all together. We’ve talked about it, but at the end of the day, you don’t get a medal or red ribbons in this league. It’s winning or losing, and we haven’t done enough winning.”
And that is why the Calgary Flames are always in the trade rumorrs. Players like Rasmus Andersson, Blake Coleman, and Nazem Kadri are out there. However, Kadri isn’t going anywhere unless he wants to leave, ae sees himself as part of the solution in Calgary. As mentioned over the summer on TSN Radio in Montreal, it better be an offer GM Craig Conroy can’t refuse if you want his number one center.
NHL Rumors: Could the Calgary Flames Make Trades After the 20 Game Mark?
This isn’t a couple of seasons ago, when the Flames had all these pending unrestricted free agents, right? It was the 2023-24 season where Calgary traded Tyler Toffoli, Nikita Zadorov, Noah Hanifin, Elias Lindholm, Chris Tanev, and goaltender Jacob Markstrom. They don’t have this year. The only pending UFA is Andersson, and like Kadri, it better be an offer that makes Conroy think and say, ‘Yeah, I want to do it.’
He isn’t getting those offers right now. Though not trading Andersson before the season might have been a mistake, given what their captain, Mikael Backlund, said to The Athletic, we all know he is gone. That wasn’t a good look. But there needs to be a resolution. However, Conroy will do it on his time. There is no rush to make a move just to make a move.
And as Maloney stated later on, rebuilding or retooling on the fly by just playing young players isn’t healthy either. It doesn’t help the culture.
“We’re not rushing these players, and that’s why we’re, I know everybody wants this rebuild a little quicker than this retooled, see the young players, but we’re just determined not to throw young players in before they’re ready. It doesn’t work,” Maloney said. “It’s no good for your culture. We go into the season, we want to win hockey games. We expect to be a playoff team. That’s how we have to enter in our minds every season. Obviously, we’re 20 games in, 20 plus games in. We are always reassessing, reevaluating.”
Look, there are good rebuilds like Anaheim, San Jose, Chicago, and Montreal. Then there are bad rebuilds like we are seeing in Buffalo and Detroit, to an extent. Though if the Red Wings make the playoffs this season, they go into the good rebuild column.
NHL Rumors: New Jersey Devils, and the Calgary Flames
However, that is the fear of ownership; they don’t want to fall into that Buffalo category of missing playoffs for 14 and maybe 15 straight seasons. That is why the Calgary Flames are always in the murky middle. But they need a top pick to accelerate things. They don’t have that explosive weapon, like the New York Islanders have with Matthew Schaefer, or the Sharks have with Macklin Celebrini, or the Blackhawks have with Connor Bedard.
The Calgary Flames have chosen their direction. We’re at the 20-game mark, and they are not throwing in the towel, not yet anyway. They may get to that point where they have to decide on Rasmus Andersson, and can they afford to let him go for nothing?
The Calgary Flames remain an interesting watch for the season ahead. Maloney, Conroy, and company could be the domino that starts the trade movement in the NHL as we get close to the holiday freeze and the trade deadline.
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