Flames extend qualifying offers to a dozen players

In advance of July 28’s opening of free agency, the Calgary Flames have extended qualifying offers to 12 of their 14 pending restricted free agents.

The 12 players receiving offers were:

All of these players become restricted free agents… except for Valimaki, who only has two pro seasons under his belt for CBA purposes and cannot receive an offer sheet from other clubs. Kirkland, Kylington, Lerby, Mackey, Philp, Poolman and Yelesin are eligible to file for salary arbitration in August.

Not receiving offers, and becoming unrestricted free agents on Wednesday at 10 a.m. MT, are forward Dominik Simon and goaltender Artyom Zagidulin.

It’s interesting, to me at least, that the Flames extended offers to Lerby and Yelesin. Lerby signed with the SHL’s Malmo Redhawks and Yelesin with the KHL’s Lokomotiv Yaroslavl earlier this summer, and so neither will be playing in the Flames system. But by extending offers to them, the Flames retain their NHL rights at basically zero cost. You never know if a player will suddenly become in demand based on their play in Europe, so in a big picture sense keeping their rights does makes some sense.