Barn Burner: Frank Seravalli talks Flames free agency plans, rushing the rebuild, and next season’s goaltending tandem

On Thursday’s episode of Barn Burner, Boomer, Pinder and Rhett were joined by Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli after he sat down with Calgary Flames GM Craig Conroy at the GM Meetings in Florida this week.

Frank kicked off the conversation with a surprising bit of information he discovered in his interview with Conroy on the Flames free agency plans.

“I was certainly surprised to hear this when Craig Conroy said it, but he’s excited and looking forward to free agency,” Frank started. “I think we’d all be sitting back and saying okay, retooling, rebuilding, whatever R-word you want to use for the Calgary Flames, spending money in free agency isn’t typically one of those avenues that you see teams take. I think that they’re not going to be big game hunting in free agency this summer, but I think they’re going to be all over a bunch of mid-tier guys to try to keep this team as competitive as they possibly can.”

On rushing the rebuild – Boomer: I think this is a fanbase that is tired of overpaying guys or paying guys too much just to be here. I’m cautious to hear that you have the cap space, but depending on the market, I almost feel we need to hang on. There’s no rush.

Frank: “Let’s rewind a little bit to the conversation we were having a year ago, which was this team is never actually going to bottom out,” Frank started. “Not with Markstrom here, probably not with Wolf if he plays well, not with Kadri, Weegar, Huberdeau. They don’t have the ability to get to the studs to tear it down to the studs. There’s no chance that they can do that. So, do you at least – if you don’t get yourself in trouble with term – try and go from being a team that played at a 93 point pace for the last 70 games of the season, maybe bump that up a little bit so you can be a 7 or 8 seed in the meantime of where you are trying to continue to develop these players and prospects and also drafting for the future.”

“They’re not going to be tanking. That part isn’t really a surprise. I think they needed to turn things over to the young guys and what you’re seeing from Connor Zary, Pospisil, and the rest of the group, like, that’s been the big shot in the arm this season. That’s not going to change, but when you’ve got 18 or 19 million bucks to spend and you could have a couple guys come in on two, three, or four year contracts that can sort of prop you up in between? That seems like that’s the target that the Flames want to go through.”

On next season’s goaltending tandem – Boomer: One thing that we agreed on is that Wolf has to be on the NHL roster. Whether that means losing Vladar on waivers, you have to do whatever you can. I don’t think you force a Markstrom trade, that’s going to work itself out, but you need to find a way to get Wolf on the roster at the start of next season.

Frank: “Yeah and I don’t care whether it’s Wolf and Vladar or Wolf and Markstrom, he needs to be the constant. I think you watch these games that he’s played this month and you’re like, ‘okay yeah, progression in the NHL isn’t always a straight line,’ but, it’s abundantly obvious that this guy is your goalie of the future and could be an absolute star in this league with the right continued development and patience.”

Watch Thursday’s episode in full here:

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