It’s time to bring back an old feature here at FlamesNation: 5 Flames Takes. After digging into a main topic, Mike will weigh in on five more popular discussion topics involving the Flames and their prospects.

Calgary Flames captain Mikael Backlund isn’t (currently) on Team Sweden’s roster for the men’s ice hockey tournament at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan, and quite frankly, that’s ridiculous.

For reasons known only to them, the Swedish management group elected to include such names as Pontus Holmberg and Alex Wennberg on their national team roster instead of Backlund, who, if you’ll recall, once captained the Tre Kronor to gold at the IIHF World Championship.

Backlund will turn 37 on St. Patrick’s Day, but if the Swedish brain trust has had any doubts over whether the Vasteras product could still keep up in his 18th NHL season, those questions have undoubtedly been answered over the past few weeks.

Dating back to Dec. 1, Backlund ranks sixth among the NHL’s Swedish contingent with 17 points in 21 games. His eight goals over that span put him in a tie with Filip Forsberg and Simon Holmstrom for second, behind only Mika Zibanejad (who has 12). Backlund has done all this while serving in his usual role as the Flames’ top match-up centre, and even with Blake Coleman now sidelined with an injury, he hasn’t missed a single step.

Seriously. Seriously. Why wouldn’t the Swedes want these hands?

Sure, injuries are inevitable, and we’ve already seen Anaheim’s Leo Carlsson hit the IR with a thigh lesion, of all things, so it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Backlund end up heading to Italy after all. It’d be hard to fathom Sweden picking anybody else as an injury replacement.

But … c’mon. What are we doing here? Hockey is a sport where veterans tend to get the benefit of the doubt, often to a fault, and absolutely nobody would’ve batted an eye at Backlund making Team Sweden in the first place. Now that he’s on this kind of tear, that initial snub is looking more and more egregious with each passing day.

Put some respect on Mikael Backlund’s name. This isn’t a charity case. He would give the Swedes an enormous boost, especially if he went with a chip on his shoulder — and now, there’s a pretty good reason for him to have one.

1. His home country isn’t taking part in this year’s Olympics, but Yegor Sharangovich served as captain of Team Belarus in their last major international tournament (the 2021 IIHF Worlds) and would likely do the same in any future best-on-best competition. After starting the season at a pace that could charitably be described as “glacial,” Sharangovich has bounced back over the past few weeks to reclaim his status as one of Calgary’s better secondary scorers. After netting five goals in the month of December, Sharangovich has six points through eight games in 2026 and is playing noticeably better hockey without the puck. He’s stepped up in a big way in Coleman’s absence, putting up back-to-back multi-point games on the Backlund line and appearing prominently on both special teams. It’s been a nice development for a player who looked more than a little lost in October and November. That goal against the Islanders on Saturday was vintage stuff.

2. As we all wait for the Flames to finally pull the trigger on a Rasmus Andersson trade, it’s worth taking a look back at Craig Conroy’s first deal as general manager. We’ve already discussed Sharangovich, who was the main piece the Flames received back from the New Jersey Devils in exchange for Tyler Toffoli back in June 2023, but the Flames also received a third-round pick in that year’s draft as part of the deal and made the most of it by picking Penticton Vees winger Aydar Suniev. On a Calgary Wranglers team that’s been starved for secondary scoring, Suniev currently ranks fifth with eight goals in 28 games as a first-year pro. The Kazan, Russia product has been productive everywhere he’s played, including two strong seasons at UMass-Amherst between 2023 and 2025. He scored the lone goal for the Wranglers in their 5-1 loss to the Bakersfield Condors on Friday night, letting a heavy wrister fly at the top of the right circle. Between Sharangovich and Suniev, the Flames have a pair of 6’2″ left-shot wingers who aren’t overly physical but make up for it with a wicked release. It just so happens that they got both of them in the same deal — and they have one for now, and one for later.

3. If and when the Flames do finally move on from Andersson, it’ll be interesting to see how they handle what has turned into a bit of a logjam on their blue line. Zayne Parekh and Hunter Brzustewicz need their pieces of the pie, but what if the Flames get another NHL defender back in the Andersson deal? I’m fascinated to see what happens from here on out with Joel Hanley and Brayden Pachal, both of whom are signed through the end of next season. If the Flames are keen on moving MacKenzie Weegar back to the left side — understandable, given his struggles on the right this year — it’d make more sense to keep Pachal, who has been an unfortunate victim of the numbers game this season despite his strong track record of quality play. Hanley, who’s eight years older than Pachal, is the more established of the two and has done everything the Flames have asked of him since they claimed him off waivers. Still, Yan Kuznetsov’s emergence as an everyday NHLer on the left side makes him expendable, no?

4. The Flames haven’t had much success drafting in the fifth round in recent history. Sharangovich is the only fifth-round draft pick on their roster, and they haven’t had one of their own fifth-rounders play as much as a single NHL game since the days of Micheal Ferland and, uh, Matt Keetley. But it’s looking a lot like Ethan Wyttenbach will change that narrative once he turns pro. The Quinnipiac freshman has been on an absurd run since making the leap from the USHL to the NCAA a year ahead of schedule. Wyttenbach scored his 13th goal with the Bobcats in a 4-0 win over Cornell on Saturday, putting him up to 33 points in just 24 games this season. That’s good for third in the nation — tied with Canadiens first-rounder Michael Hage — and stands as the ninth-most productive 18-year-old season on a per-game basis in the last decade, immediately behind Clayton Keller at Boston University in 2018-19 and Brock Boeser at UND in 2015-16. Pretty good!

5. It’s crazy to think we’re barely three months removed from the Flames being hesitant to give Devin Cooley so much as a single NHL start after an underwhelming showing in training camp. But here we are, just over halfway through the 2025-26 regular season, and Cooley has all but fully established himself as a bona fide tandem option for this Flames team. Through 15 appearances this year, Cooley boasts a 6-4-2 record, a 2.20 goals-against average, and (most impressively) a .921 save percentage. The Flames rewarded Cooley for his stellar play with a two-year contract extension earlier this season, and there’s a chance it could work out for both sides in more ways than are initially clear. While the 28-year-old Cooley had initially been slated to become an unrestricted free agent this coming summer, the Flames have now kicked that can down the road until 2028 — at which point Cooley should have a much larger body of work to draw from, possibly helping the Flames in any potential trade discussions at that time. Until then, the Flames have the luxury of being able to choose from two goaltenders who give them a chance to win on a nightly basis.

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