The Flames should be looking for a young, high upside winger to complement their existing core. It’s a task easier said than done.

They have already acquired one in Elias Lindholm this offseason, but that was through a trade that involved the Flames’ existing first line right winger and their first pairing defenceman. It’s not a trade you can make often, and only goes to show the prices teams will pay for young, established forwards.

Thankfully for them, Anthony Duclair is another young, high upside winger who is now available on the market after the Blackhawks refused to qualify him. He’s a name who could potentially come cheap, making him an ideal fit for a Flames team that could use depth scoring.

I’ll admit that the Lindholm-Duclair comparison is far from perfect. The important difference between Lindholm and Duclair is that one is an established 40-point scorer whereas the other scored 40 points three seasons ago. In Lindholm, you’re getting a player who can be expected to score once every two games at the very least. In Duclair, you have a reclamation project.

Duclair has had an up and down career in just the four years he’s been playing in the NHL. The next hot thing after an explosive draft +1 season, he was a key part of the package the Rangers sent to the Coyotes for Keith Yandle. In his first season with the Coyotes (2015-16), he picked up 20 goals and 44 points in 81 games, finishing fourth in team scoring.

The next season did not go as well for Duclair, as he only picked up 15 points in 58 games and was demoted to the AHL. His most recent year saw a bit of a bounce back, as he picked up five goals and 10 assists in 33 games for the Coyotes, but he was traded to Chicago in January. With the Blackhawks, Duclair couldn’t find much of a role, bouncing around, in and out of the lineup. And here we are now, with the Blackhawks having let their prize acquisition this season walk into the UFA waters.

Don’t take the downturn to mean that Duclair is a bad player that needs to be avoided. Duclair has been one of the better possession players no matter where he’s been. He’s never registered a negative CF rel% in his entire career: both the Blackhawks and the Coyotes were around 2% better when he was on the ice versus when he was off.

Perhaps a part of Duclair’s lack of production is the fact that he rarely gets an opportunity. He’s never averaged more than 12 minutes of 5v5 ice time at any point in his career, despite some production that suggests that he could handle a larger role. Duclair’s 5v5 points per 60 would rank sixth on the Flames had he played in Calgary this year. Sporadically bouncing between the first and second powerplay units didn’t do him any favours, as he has had some success on the man advantage.

The knock on Duclair is that he likely needs to be sheltered to be successful. He’s never had less than a 50% offensive zone starts in his career, and perhaps you could read his lack of ice time as worry that he is unable to handle the big boys of the NHL. There’s some smoke to that fire, as Duclair’s 5v5 CA/60 is above 60 attempts per hour (he would be the worst regular Flames forward in that category behind Kris Versteeg, though it is worth pointing out that this is a recent development. He averaged less than 59 attempts against per hour on a significantly worse Coyotes team in his 2015-16 season).

The flip side is that he can be an offensive dynamo. His CF/60 stats are the opposite, as he would be the second best Flames regular forward in that category with over 68 attempts fired at the net per 60 minutes.

If he’s successful when sheltered, he should be a fit on the third line at the very least. Mark Jankowski and Sam Bennett sorely lack a right wing, and given Duclair’s felxibility on both sides, he could be a fit. The bounce back potential can’t be understated here. If Duclair could find his groove again in an offence-first role with limited minutes, perhaps he can work his way up the lineup and become a handy top six option while moving another winger down.

One of the best reasons the Flames should look at Duclair is that he should absolutely be cheap. Matt Cane’s salary projection tool estimates that Duclair will be paid around $1.1M for about two years, a very digestible contract. There’s even the chance he comes a bit cheaper given the optics of being traded twice and not having been offered a qualifying offer at age 22 (also worth noting: he doesn’t turn 23 until August). If the Flames can get Duclair for under $1M, it could be a steal.

There’s also a built-in parachute in the contract. Should things not come to fruition, Duclair would also be easy to bury in the minors, as the Flames would receive almost or entirely full relief from his cap hit (relief is $1,025,000 for 2018-19). It almost completely mitigates the risk of the contract, which makes Duclair one of the better all around potential bargains on July 1.

Flames VP of Hockey Ops Don Maloney already acquired him once when he was GM of Arizona, so there’s a connection between the two which could make this plausible. We’ll have to wait and see.

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