Flames sign Jacob Markstrom to six year contract ($6m AAV)

The Calgary Flames have their goaltender for the foreseeable future. The club has reportedly signed goaltender Jacob Markstrom to a six year deal with a $6 million AAV.

Per TSN’s Bob McKenzie, the deal has a full no-move clause included. That’s the first one ever doled out by Flames general manager Brad Treliving and guarantees that Markstrom will be protected in the upcoming Seattle expansion draft.

Markstrom, 30, is a Swedish goaltender who has spent parts of 10 seasons in the NHL – first with Florida (2010-13) and then with Vancouver (2013-20). He’s been a damn fine goaltender for the Canucks over the past few seasons, though, posting save percentages ranging from .910 to .918 between 2015 and 2020. He was 10th in Vezina balloting in 2018-19 and fourth in 2019-20.

Of the available options to upgrade Calgary’s goaltending, Markstrom was probably the best available. But the devil’s in the details, and a six year term brings along some risks. Markstrom is immediately the club’s fifth-oldest player – behind Mark Giordano, Derek Ryan, Milan Lucic and Mikael Backlund – and comes in at fifth-most expensive – behind Matthew Tkachuk, Giordano, Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan.

Aside from Giordano, the team’s most expensive players are pretty young and the risk of them falling off a cliff are relatively low (and Giordano only has two seasons left on his big-ticket deal). Markstrom? He’ll be aging well into his 30s with the Flames, with a flat salary cap likely through at least the first half of that deal.

If Markstrom can be an effective net presence for most of his deal and avoid injuries and the aging curve, this deal will age well. But there’s a ton of question about how likely that is.

Treliving has been searching for a top goaltender since he became general manager in 2014. Well, he’s found one, and he’s going to to have to live with this decision for a long while.