Calgary Flames ranked 12th in McKeen’s league-wide prospect pool rankings

The 2024 NHL Draft is less than two weeks away, and around the league teams – and media outlets – are taking stock of the state of their prospect systems in advance of the big event.

Over at McKeen’s Hockey, they’ve recently concluded their rankings and team-by-team rundown of the NHL’s 32 prospect systems. The Calgary Flames landed at 12th in their rankings.

McKeen’s definition of prospect was a player that won”t have turned 26 as of Sept. 15, 2024, and appeared in fewer than 60 NHL games overall (30 for goalies) and fewer than 35 games in one season (25 for goalies).

The top five prospect pools in the league by their rankings are Detroit (the best), Buffalo, Utah, Montreal and Minnesota. The worst is Edmonton’s.

Here’s McKeen’s top 10 Flames prospects, with each player’s placement on FlamesNation‘s summer 2023 rankings in brackets.

Miromanov and Brzustewicz were acquired during the 2023-24 regular season, so they weren’t included in the 2023 FlamesNation prospect rankings. Our rankings are restricted to players who are still eligible to win the Calder Trophy, so Pelletier and Miromanov wouldn’t be eligible. By both McKeen’s and our definition of what’s considered a prospect, Connor Zary and Martin Pospisil both graduated from consideration by virtue of playing so many games for the Flames during the 2023-24 campaign.

Back in January, The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler conducted his annual prospect pool evaluations and rankings – this was after the Flames acquired Brzustewicz and Joni Jurmo from Vancouver, but before they acquired Artem Grushnikov from Dallas. On his rundown, the Flames came in at 15th, up from 20th in 2023. This small sample size suggests two things: the Flames are on the upswing, as far as building their prospect base goes, and that they sit somewhere in the league’s mid-point in terms of prospect pool quality.

The 2024 NHL Draft takes place June 28 & 29 in scenic Las Vegas, NV at the Sphere. The Flames have nine picks in this year’s draft, including two selections in each of the first four rounds. For a team trying to kick-start their retooling process and return to on-ice relevancy, they seem fairly well positioned.