Assessing the Calgary Flames’ trades under Brad Treliving

Treliving sold off a pair of diminishing assets at the 2015 trade deadline: pending unrestricted free agent Glencross, and Baertschi, who had requested a trade. (He did this despite the team being in the playoff race.)

Prior to 2016’s trade deadline, with the team out of a playoff spot, three pending UFAs were traded by Treliving.

You could argue this was a lateral move, but Kulak was a rock-solid third pairing blueliner who was traded to the Habs for two minor-leaguers after a contentious arbitration hearing.

Frolik had fallen out of favour with head coach Bill Peters, was playing on the fourth line, and had requested a trade. Treliving found him a new address.

Treliving traded down twice in the first round of 2020’s draft, adding a pair of third-round selections in the process.

With the Flames outside of the 2021 playoff picture, the Flames sold off pending UFA Rittich and pending restricted free agent Bennett for a prospect and a draft pick.

The Flames traded back in the third round in 2021, adding a sixth-rounder in the process.

With Tkachuk indicating that he wasn’t going to stick around long-term, the Flames sent him to sunny Florida for four assets (including a complicated conditional selection).

Treliving had been on the job for about seven weeks when the 2014 draft came around. With a young, raw team set for 2014-15, he flipped a previously-acquired third-rounder (acquired from Pittsburgh for Lee Stempniak) for Bollig, an established depth forward who could give them minutes right away.

Remember how Treliving added two seconds and a third from selling off Glencross and Baertschi? That allowed him to (a) trade three picks for RFA Dougie Hamilton and (b) trade up from the third round to draft Oliver Kylington.

If there was a thing Treliving liked to trade picks for, it was goaltenders with a year or two left on their contracts. He made four separate swaps like that, with the Vladar deal arguably aging the best. (The seventh-rounder they acquired in the Eddie Lack trade, though, was used to select Dustin Wolf.)

If there’s a second thing Treliving liked to trade picks for, it was physical, stay-at-home blueliners. You could argue that both of these swaps were overpays relative to the level of scoring output each defender contributed.

At the time, Dave Cameron (Lazar’s old coach from earlier in his Ottawa tenure) was with the Flames and the thought was that due to that familiarity, the Flames could unlock Lazar’s full potential.

This is arguably the tidiest work of Treliving’s run. Hamilton didn’t click with the Flames defensive systems fully and had requested a trade. Ferland was a year away from free agency (and a big, big raise). Fox had told the Flames he wouldn’t sign with them. And so the Flames more or less swapped three diminishing assets for two younger players with many controllable years ahead of them.

If there’s a third thing Treliving liked to spend picks on, it was pending free agents at the trade dealdine.

During the 2021-22 season, Treliving made three trades which sent futures elsewhere in exchange for players with controllable years left (or, in Toffoli’s case, players that were already under contract).

Finally, Treliving needed to get out from under Monahan’s cap hit in order to sign free agent Nazem Kadri, so he sent the conditional pick he acquired in the Tkachuk trade from Florida to the Habs along with Monahan. It was the only pure cap dump of his tenure.