Do you remember Tobias Rieder?
Every week, we’ll look at a forgotten Calgary Flames player in the weekly series “A Flame From the Past.” Of course, the player had to have played a significant number of games for the Flames – at least a full season. Each week, I’ll put every Flames season (since moving to Calgary) in the Wheel of Names. This week, it landed on the 2019-20 season, with the player we’ll look at in today’s article being Tobias Rieder.
Rieder began his career with his hometown team, the Landshut Cannibals – yes, that was the team’s name, they now go by EV Landshut. After playing with their youth teams from the 2005-06 season until the 2009-10 season, Rieder made his debut with the team in 2009-10, scoring 10 goals and 23 points in 45 games
The German forward moved to North America for his draft year, playing with the Kitchener Rangers in 2010 where he scored 23 goals and 49 points in 65 games, with two assists in seven postseason games. This led to the Edmonton Oilers selecting him in the fourth round of the 2011 draft.
Returning for the 2011-12 season, Reider improved to 42 goals and 84 points in 60 games, with 13 goals and 27 points in 16 postseason games. In 2012-13, he scored 27 goals and 56 points in 52 games with the Rangers, with two goals and 12 points in nine postseason games. That season, Rieder’s rights were traded to the Phoenix Coyotes for Kale Kessy, with him signing his entry-level contract a few weeks later.
Getting his first taste of professional action in North America, Rieder played with the American Hockey League’s Portland Pirates in 2013-14, scoring 28 goals an 48 points in 64 games. He also scored four goals and five points in nine games with them in 2014-15 but spent the majority of his season with the Arizona Coyotes.
In Rieder’s rookie season, he scored 13 goals and 21 points in 72 games. The 2015-16 season saw him score a career-best 37 points with 14 goals, followed by a 16-goal, 34-point season in 2016-17. Reider played 58 games with the Coyotes in 2017-18 where he scored eight goals and 19 points before being traded to the Los Angeles Kings before the deadline, potting four goals and six points in 20 games.
After being held pointless in the Kings’ four postseason games, Rieder returned to the Oilers where he was unable to score a goal but picked up 11 assists as the Oilers embarrassingly missed the postseason. Famously, Rieder was blamed by the Oilers’ President of Hockey Operations Bob Nicholson, who said if Rieder scored 10 or 12 goals, they’d be in a playoff spot. News flash: no, they would not have been.
Anyway, Rieder joined a team that treated him much better in 2019-20, the Calgary Flames. In 55 games, he scored four goals and had 10 points as the Flames made the post-season. He also found some playoff success, scoring three goals and five points in 10 games.
Rieder’s final National Hockey League season was in 2020-21 with the Buffalo Sabres, where he scored five goals and seven points in 44 games. He then went overseas to play for the Swedish Hockey League’s Växjö Lakers where he scored 34 goals and 69 points in 118 games. He won the Le Mat Trophy with the team in 2022-23, scoring two goals and six points in 18 postseason games.
Before the 2024-25 season, Rieder returned to Germany and signed with EHC Red Bull München of the Deutsche Eishockey Liga, scoring nine goals and 20 points in 41 games this season. On top of that, he represented Germany in the 2022 Olympics, scoring one goal and two points in four games and has represented the nation in multiple tournaments dating back to when he played in the National Hockey League.
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