Flames acquire Oscar Fantenberg from Kings
By Ryan Pike
5 years agoThe Calgary Flames have made a trade on deadline day. They’ve reportedly acquired depth defender Oscar Fantenberg from the Los Angeles Kings in exchange for a conditional fourth round pick in 2020.
(Sportsnet’s Ryan Leslie had it first.)
The condition on the pick is that if the Flames make the conference final AND Fantenberg plays in half their playoff games, the 2020 fourth rounder becomes a 2020 third rounder.
Fantenberg, 27, is basically what the Flames hoped to get for blueline depth before the playoffs. He’s a Swedish puck-mover who plays the left side. He’s a pending unrestricted free agent with a league-minimum cap hit of $650,000. He’s played 73 NHL games since joining the Kings organization a season ago. Playing in a secondary role, he’s got four goals and 12 points as an NHLer. He was a teammate of Mikael Backlund’s with Team Sweden at the 2016 World Championship.
Friend of the site John Hoven (of Mayor’s Manor) had this scouting report on the defender last year:
On the ice, he isn’t the biggest of defenders. Standing 6-foot tall, he is thick though, unlike a normal 18-year-old recently drafted player would be. Fantenberg is also an offensive guy – a good puck mover — and that’s where he will eventually contribute more. There are other areas of his game he still needs to work on, and that’s where coach Mike Stothers and the team in Ontario will help round out his potential.Prior to being signed, scouting reports came in on him all over the board. Some saw him as a speedy puck mover, some as a stay-at-home type of defender. He’s never been a big producer on the score sheet and likely won’t develop that part of his game at this point. He was usually a plus-player (for what it’s worth) in Sweden, but never extraordinarily high. He’s also older than the organization’s top defensive prospects; yet he’s also in his fifth year of professional hockey, having played in Sweden’s top league before moving on to the KHL last year.
Is he a big, burly guy? Nope. But if the idea is to not need to throw Oliver Kylington or Juuso Valimaki into the deep waters of the playoffs right away, he’s an insurance policy. He’s cheap, he’s been reasonably effective, and has been alright playing primarily with Dion Phaneuf on a pretty bad Los Angeles team. He gives them options.
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