Folks, it’s the middle of July. But before you know it – in just shy of two months – glorious ice hockey will return and preparations for the 2024-25 NHL season will begin.

In mid-September, the Calgary Flames will assemble back in town to prepare for the annual Young Stars Classic tournament in scenic Penticton, British Columbia. While the Flames typically don’t announce their roster until right before players report, we can make some reasonable guesses based on recent history.

Typically, the Flames invite everybody from development camp to Penticton, except for those who have playing commitments in Europe or at college. The Flames brought 25 players to Penticton a year ago: three goalies, nine defencemen and 13 forwards, so that’s the ballpark figure we’ll be working towards.

Here’s our best, educated guess at what the roster could look like!

Four goaltenders came to development camp that could vie for the three likely spots in Penticton – typically each goalie gets a game in the tournament.

Medicine Hat Tigers netminder Ethan McCallum and Gatineau Olympiques ‘tender Zach Pelletier seem like good bets to both be there on try-outs. That leaves one spot for one of Matt Radomsky or Connor Murphy. Murphy is on an AHL deal while, as of now, Radomsky is not, so we’d give Radomsky the inside track for a try-out spot, as Murphy is the more established AHL goalie (and the idea behind the tournament is playing younger, less established players).

If we’re assuming nine spots, the Flames had eight internal prospects at development camp that seem likely to return: Hunter Brzustewicz, Artem Grushnikov, Axel Hurtig, Eric Jamieson, Joni Jurmo, Henry Mews, Etienne Morin and Zayne Parekh. On paper, that’s a really deep blueline group – including three of the 10 highest-scoring OHL blueliners from last season (Parekh, Brzustewicz and Mews), two defenders that played European pro last season (Hurtig and Jurmo), and a newly-acquired AHLer (Grushnikov). Heck, three of the eight blueliners (Hurtig, Morin and Parekh) are under consideration for World Junior roster spots.

Guelph’s Rowan Topp is the lone junior player who came to development camp on a try-out, and he seems like a decent bet to fill the ninth spot.

Based on development camp’s Snowy Cup scrimmage, here’s how these blueliners could line up:

A dozen internal prospects seem likely to return for Penticton: Andrew Basha, Jacob Battaglia, Parker Bell, Lucas Ciona, Matt Coronato, Matvei Gridin, Sam Honzek, Hunter Laing, Jaden Lipinski, Luke Misa, Sam Morton and William Strömgren. That includes ‘three recent first-rounders (Coronato, Gridin and Honzek), three recent second-rounders (Basha, Battaglia and Strömgren), and a couple really interesting picks from later in the past two drafts in Lipinski and Misa.

It’s worth noting that players that spent a lot of time in the NHL the prior season don’t usually play in Penticton. Since Coronato played 34 NHL games last season (enough that he’s no longer considered an NHL rookie), he seems like the most likely development camp player to graduate from the Penticton group. Like the blueline bunch, the forward group is pretty stacked, and even without Coronato, it’s still quite stacked.

Three players seem likely to return from development camp on try-outs: AHL signees Trevor Janicke & David Silye, and OHLer Luke McNamara (from Kingston).

Based on development camp’s Snowy Cup scrimmage, here’s how forward lines could look: