Flames sign Tanner Glass to one-year deal

Every season, the Calgary Flames tend to have a veteran player on their roster to provide some grit, toughness and the ability to fight a handful of times per year. This season, that man is Tanner Glass.

The Flames have announced they’ve signed Glass to a one-year, one-way deal worth $650,000.

Glass, 33, was one of the best players in Flames camp. I turned the corner on him as a limited minutes fourth line option primarily because he was crashing around and creating some energy during his preseason shifts. Can he do that in regular season against NHL players? We’ll see.

The deal has very limited downside, in that it’s a league-minimum deal for a veteran player that probably won’t pout if he’s a healthy scratch – and he probably will be often, given his age and role. (Compare that to the Brandon Bollig deal, which involved giving up a draft pick for a player with a contract paying him north of $1 million.)

And if he’s not a fit and doesn’t really work, they can always send him to Stockton. The one-way deal is really the only thing here that gives me pause. He’s not a great possession player, nor would you expect him to be, but if the Flames keep insisting on having a pugilist on their roster as a deterrent, this is probably the best version of that acquisition: a low dollar figure and they didn’t have to give up any assets to acquire him.

In other news, the Flames have sent Luke Gazdic down to Stockton. Gazdic and Garnet Hathaway cleared waivers, but Hathaway remains at camp.