2020-21 Reasonable Expectations: Mark Giordano

We’re not quite sure when hockey will return for the 2020-21 season – aside from that it’ll be in 2021 – but several Calgary Flames players are headed towards pivotal campaigns. As we prepare for 2020-21, we’re digging into the likely Flames roster player by player to determine what we can expect from them.

On Tuesday, we tried to project some expectations for one of the Flames’ alternate captains, Matthew Tkachuk. Now, it’s time to go one step further and take a gander at what team captain Mark Giordano could provide in 2020-21.

Giordano’s winding path to the NHL has been the subject of many a retrospective over the years—for good reason. Plenty of players make the big show after being passed over at the NHL Draft, but Giordano overcame more than just that. He also wasn’t drafted into the Ontario Hockey League and he didn’t make his OHL debut until Sept. 20, 2002, just two weeks shy of his 19th birthday.

“Gio” played two seasons with the Owen Sound Attack at the ages of 19 and 20, emerging as a capable two-way OHL defender despite his relatively unassuming pedigree. His play attracted the attention of then-Flames scout Tom Webster, who recommended Giordano to general manager Darryl Sutter. The Flames signed Giordano and six other major junior players to entry level contracts on July 6, 2004 in an effort to address the organizational depth issues that had plagued the team during their run to the Stanley Cup Final earlier that year.

After a decent year with the AHL’s Lowell Lock Monsters as a first-year pro in 2004-05, Giordano broke out as a sophomore with the relocated Omaha Ak-Sar-Ben Knights the following year. He scored 16 goals and 58 points in 73 games to lead Omaha in scoring, earning a seven-game cup of coffee in Calgary along the way. Giordano spent most of 2006-07 in a depth role with the Flames before a contract dispute with Sutter forced him to spend a year over in Russia with Moscow Dynamo.

Thankfully, Giordano’s relationship with the Flames remained intact despite his year in Russia. He returned to Calgary on a three-year deal beginning in 2008-09 and emerged as one of the league’s most underrated defenders over the course of that contract, putting up a nice 43-point season as a bright spot on a very mediocre Flames team in 2010-11.

Despite Giordano’s pending UFA status, the Flames locked him up to a five-year extension in late 2010—a deal that took Giordano through his age-32 season. It turned out to be an extremely good bet by the Flames, as Giordano improved in every year of the deal and became the team’s 15th full-time captain by 2013-14. That season saw Giordano receive Norris Trophy votes for the first time and he’d finish sixth in voting the following year, likely a lower placement than he would’ve received had he not suffered a season-ending bicep injury in late February.

Giordano would receive more Norris votes in 2015-16, 2016-17, and 2017-18 before finally achieving his moment in the sun in 2018-19 at the age of 35. Reunited with longtime partner TJ Brodie after the departure of Dougie Hamilton, Giordano took a sledgehammer to his previous career-highs and posted one of the most offensively dominant seasons for an age-35+ defenseman in NHL history. He clinched his first career Norris Trophy in a near-unanimous vote after posting 17 goals and 74 points in 78 games.

2019-20 wasn’t nearly as kind to Giordano. He failed to hit double-digits in the goals column for the first time since 2012-13, scoring just five in 60 games and going months at a time without scoring. His 31-point season fell very much in line with many of his teammates on a generally slumping Flames team. For the first time as Flames captain, Giordano received zero Norris votes – he did, however, win the Mark Messier Leadership Award.

The Flames effectively substituted Travis Hamonic with Chris Tanev this off-season but they have yet to find a definite replacement for TJ Brodie. Giordano has had some issues in the past playing with non-Brodie partners and it remains to be seen how he’ll play with Tanev or Rasmus Andersson as his partner for consistent stretches of time.

In many ways, Giordano still drove the bus for the Flames in 2019-20, and it’s not all that difficult to see him replicating that performance in 2020-21. His 52.80 shot attempts percentage ranked second on the team and his 53.48 expected goals for percentage ranked first. Isolating for defensive variables, his 53.93 shot attempts against-per-60 ranked first on the team and his 2.07 expected goals against-per-60 ranked second. Sure, those metrics fell apart a little bit in the playoffs, mirroring how Giordano appeared to take a step back in many areas during those games. But that’s a small sample and it was a weird situation for everyone, let alone a 36-year-old veteran.

Still, 2020-21 looks like it might be a weird situation of its own kind, and Giordano isn’t getting any younger. He turned 37 in October and he’ll be five months removed from his last game action if the next season begins in mid-January. That said, Giordano is a fixture at the top of the Flames’ annual fitness testing leaderboards. He’ll do his damnedest to be ready.

Giordano will probably start the season with Tanev as his partner. Having a defense-first presence like Tanev on his flank might give Giordano the confidence to spread his wings a bit more in the offensive zone. It’s also just hard to imagine Giordano shooting 3.2% again, given that his career average is more than twice that: 7.1%. Giordano takes a boatload of shots every year and that will likely continue in 2020-21 as long as he keeps his spot on the power play. He and Rasmus Andersson probably have those roles locked up, at least to start.

His boots aren’t getting any quicker, but Giordano is still a very effective defenseman for the Flames and he’ll probably be relied on just as heavily as usual in all situations. In an abbreviated season—let’s call it 48 games—we can reasonably pencil Giordano in for around 25 points and roughly 24 minutes of ice time each night.