After starting with three games in five nights, the Flames are in the midst of their longest break of the season. Calgary doesn’t play again until Sunday afternoon’s marquee matchup with Toronto, which gives us a good window to dive into some early season observations. At 2-0-1, the Flames are off to a nice start,…
Despite only having three full months of hockey to draw from over the last 365 days, coming up with a top five list from the last calendar year was surprisingly easy. The resurgence of the Battle of Alberta features heavily in our top five moments of 2020, but which game ends up number one? Let’s…
A deep and reliable blueline has been a strength of the Flames in recent years, and that should remain true for the coming 2020-2021 season. Calgary has reshaped their defence over the offseason and there are a few important questions to be answered as a result. That said, I still have the Flames near the…
When the Flames drop the puck in mid-January, they’ll have one of the deeper forward groups in the brand new, all-Canadian North Division. I see Calgary as a top tier group when looking at their forwards top to bottom, but rank them in the middle when focused solely at the top of the depth chart….
An all-Canadian division is a certainty if/when the next NHL season starts in mid-January. With at least nine games against each team, and with moves we’ve seen over the offseason, a Canadian division has the potential to be as tight and hotly contested as any in recent memory. So how do the Flames stack up…
This topic popped up out of nowhere on a radio segment last week (skip to about 1:42:50) when I asked: what jersey should the Flames retire next? It’s a fun question that became a whole lot more relevant when Calgary retired Jarome Iginla’s #12 in March 2019. Theoren Fleury and Miikka Kiprusoff are easy, deserving…
Flames head coach Geoff Ward raised some eyebrows this week when answering a question about forward Sam Bennett. Asked on Sportsnet 960 radio where he sees Bennett playing next season, Ward replied simply: “centre…nothing more to add.” After his performance down the middle during the post-season, you can understand why Ward is intrigued. But moving…
We still don’t know exactly when next season is going to start, but assuming we’re in and around two months away, the Flames still have a lot to get done. A pair of contracts with somewhat firm deadlines lead the pack, but that’s not the only decision general manager Brad Treliving has to make in…
It was a strange year for Calgary’s most important forwards. Four of the team’s top six had strong years, led by another huge step forward from Matthew Tkachuk. Unfortunately, two forwards continued their struggles from the back half of the prior season in a big way: Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan. As we continue our…
With the NHL in a holding pattern until the floating start of next season, let’s start evaluating the 2019-20 season position by position. Today we’ll jump in on the blueline and grade the four players currently under team control that spent significant time with the Flames last year. While the marks aren’t as strong as…
More than two weeks into free agency, the Flames have been busy. They’ve upgraded in net and overhauled the blueline, which is significant. One place we haven’t seen big change, though, is up front. Calgary has tinkered on the fringes, but as it stands right now, this core forward group is the same as it…
The Flames are in the midst of a blueline overhaul and are short on cap space. For both reasons, it’s not uncommon to hear Noah Hanifin’s name tossed around in trade speculation these days. The way I see it, though, Hanifin enters next season in an important position on the depth chart. I’d go as…
