- Kristen Odland of the Calgary Herald: The Flames currently have a cap number of just under $48 million, which doesn’t include RFA Dougie Hamilton who was looking for Drew Doughty money from Boston. Lance Bouma is also looking for a new deal.
“I’d say, they’re all important pieces but Dougie and Lance, those are ones we’ve put in a lot of time with,” Treliving said. “With Dougie with us now, we’re banging away at it with (Hamilton’s agent) J.P. (Barry).”
Next season they’ll have UFAs in Mark Giordano and Jiri Hudler, as well as RFAs Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan.
Flames GM Brad Treliving.
“The idea with free agency is: are there ways to make your team better? And the second piece is, are there financial terms that fit? Both in dollar and term,” he said. “We’ll be active in making calls. Will be active in signing guys? I don’t know.”
The Flames won’t be overly active in the free agent market.
“We’ve got some depth needs that we’ll maybe take a look at in our minor-league system,” he said. “As far as our team in Calgary, there’s a couple of things we’re looking at but I can’t handicap it to say if we’re going to be active or not. We’re certainly not going to be the belle of the ball.
“We’ll look at some things and if it makes sense and fits, we may move. But I have learned that, in free agency, sometimes the dollar and the term you want sometimes changes.”
- Andy Strickland: Vladimir Sobotka tells Strickland that he’s almost guaranteed to come back to the NHL in 2016-17.
- Andy Strickland: Sobotka’s agent said that his KHL contract guarantees that he be paid the same value of the ruble at the time that he signed his new deal last year, which was before the big drop in their currency.
- Jonathan Bombulie: Steve Downie’s agent expects him to sign with a team other than the Penguins, but adds that anything is possible though.
- Jonathan Bombulie: Maxim Lapierre’s agents confirmed that he’ll be testing the open market on July 1st.