Flames don’t sign 2017 NHL Draft picks D’Artagnan Joly and Zach Fischer

The annual deadline came and went and the Calgary Flames have cut bait with a pair of their selections from the 2017 NHL Draft. The club has not agreed to contracts with forwards D’Artagnan Joly and Zach Fischer and has lost their NHL rights.

(We tweeted the Joly aspect of this story yesterday.)

Fischer was the Flames’ fifth round pick (140th overall) in the 2017 draft. He was originally selected out of the Medicine Hat Tigers in his third year of draft eligibility after an impressive season where he was able to generate a ton of points crashing the net. Fischer was traded to the Spokane Chiefs early in his overage season and put up a respectable 36 points in 46 games in an injury-addled year split between the Tigers and Chiefs.

He signed an American Hockey League deal with the Stockton Heat, hoping to impress Flames brass enough to earn an entry-level deal. He ended up playing just a pair of AHL games, spending the bulk of the season with the ECHL’s Kansas City Mavericks and Rapid City Rush – where he was a depth body on minor league squads.

Joly was the Flames’ sixth round pick (171st overall) in the 2017 draft. A tall and lanky forward, Joly was selected after a pretty strong season with the Baie-Comeau Drakkar. But the following season he dealt with a back injury and some inconsistency… and still put up 68 points in 55 games. The thought was that this season would see him take another step forward with a full off-season of training and some experience under his belt.

It didn’t work out that way. He never really got his feet under him in Baie Comeau – to the point where he was a healthy scratch and his head coach openly questioned his work ethic – and he was a bit lost in the shuffle after a mid-season trade to the stacked Rimouski Oceanic. Some of the finger can be pointed to the Drakkar coaching staff potentially for not maximizing his development while he was there, but Joly hasn’t really progressed beyond his initial “Hey, he’s big and tall and could be really good” potential from draft day.

Fischer becomes a free agent. Joly will be available in the 2019 NHL Draft as a re-entry prospect.