Folks, our pals Ryan Pinder and Dean “Boomer” Molberg of the Barn Burner podcast represented FlamesNation at the Young Stars Classic tournament in scenic Penticton, B.C. over the weekend.
On Sunday, Pinder and Boomer sat down for 45 minutes with Calgary Flames general manager Craig Conroy to discuss the rookie tournament and tee up the start of main training camp later this week.
Here are five takeaways from their (lengthy) conversation.
Samuel Honzek will (probably) be playing pro this season
The first player ever drafted by Conroy as a GM, Honzek had some rough injury luck last season between getting hurt in his last NHL pre-season outing and then suffering a facial injury after he returned to the WHL’s Vancouver Giants after the World Juniors and being stuck wearing a face shield for several weeks. Heck, between injuries and his trip to the World Juniors, Honzek played just 33 of Vancouver’s 68 games in his Draft+1 season and suited up for a combined 46 regular season and playoff games overall across all levels.
Despite missing time, Conroy’s envisioning Honzek as a pro this coming season.
“You’re gonna see how the whole camp goes, I mean, I guess if I was going into it this year, we’d like to see him in the American League or NHL or wherever he kind of fits in there. For him to go back to junior, is that going to be enough of a challenge for him? He was hurt a lot last year so maybe it could be, but I think in my first mind… over the summer we all talked about it, I can see him, it’s going to be pro hockey somewhere.”
Hunter Brzustewicz will also (probably) be playing pro this season
On the other hand, there’s Brzustewicz. While Honzek had a challenging 2023-24 season, Brzustewicz dominated the OHL. He, too, is someone Conroy sees as a likely pro in 2024-25.
“Yeah, I mean, you want to see it, but 92 points… I don’t know how much more you can do. We want to challenge these guys, too, and we want to give them an opportunity to come and say ‘hey, you know what, pro hockey is where I need to be.’ When you get a chance to do that, it probably makes more sense. But again, we talk about we don’t want to put guys in a position where it sets them back, if they’re in way over their head and it doesn’t go and then they lose all their confidence. I don’t think that’s Hunter at all, though. I don’t think Honzek is like that either. So, that’s why, you never want to 100%, hey, this is where he’s going to be, but I would be leaning towards that.”
‘Almost everybody’ should get into the early pre-season games
If you look at the pre-season schedule, you’ll notice that the Flames have three on-ice days to open training camp and then play three pre-season games over two days: Sunday night in Seattle and then a pair of split squad games on Monday against Edmonton. Three pre-season games provides the opportunity for as many as 54 skaters and six goaltenders to dress early on. (In a similar set-up last season, 43 different skaters and five different goalies dressed in the first three games.)
Expect Conroy and his group to try to get a lot of different players game reps early.
“You’re trying to get guys into games. To have three games in two days, we’re going to be able to get a lot of guys in. It’s too bad we can’t watch both games, all three games, but I do think having the split squad gives you an opportunity to get almost everybody in camp into a game, which is great, just to give them some experience. Camp’s so short nowadays. We used to come into camp and have two weeks and then you have a game, you really could kind of get going. Now it’s three practices…”
Connor Zary and Martin Pospisil will get looks at centre in camp
Zary played centre for a few weeks late last season. Pospisil played at centre for Slovakia at both the World Championships and their Olympic qualification tournament. Expect to see both line up at centre at various points over the next month.
“I know looking at Ryan’s lines the other day, definitely both of them are going to get centre time. They need to. We need to find out where we’re at. And it was nice to see Pospisil play centre with his national team. You’re thinking if he was a centre or Zary’s a centre, those guys, it’ll make a big difference for us. That’s the one position… I do think we felt like we were a little thin on defence, and you saw all the moves we made, and we brought in a bunch of defence. Probably the one area that we felt that we weren’t able to touch or really help at the time was centre. So if one of these guys can do it, that would make life a lot easier for me and our staff.”
There’s going to be competition for goaltending slots
Conroy wasn’t tipping his hand about which goalie has the inside track, and it sure sounds like they won’t be leaning on one guy necessarily in net this coming season, noting that the days of the 70+ game goaltender are probably over.
“Is it more 50/30? Is it more 40/30/10? I don’t know how it’s going to go. That’s the one thing, these guys are going to dictate how this is going to go. And talking to Jordan, he feels very good with all three guys.”
Check out the full interview below or at the FlamesNation YouTube channel!
