FlamesNation Mailbag: Labour Day kickoff

While the football boys in red, white, and black take the field, we’ll say hello to the hockey boys of red, white, and black again.

Hockey is around the corner, with the Flames and Bruins kicking things off in China in just over a week’s time. Isn’t it a wonderful time of year?

There would have to be some disaster for that to happen.

They already have a pretty solid middle group with Sean Monahan, Mikael Backlund, Derek Ryan, and Mark Jankowski. Adding Elias Lindholm to that list makes it a pretty enviable group, but you have to compare that to the group you’re taking him away from.  If you subtract Lindholm, the Flames have James Neal, Michael Frolik, Austin Czarnik, Spencer Foo, and maybe Curtis Lazar down the right side: a lot less depth at the RW position versus centre. Part of acquiring Lindholm was to bolster the RW depth, not the C depth. That’s a secondary bonus, but not the primary use for him.

I think if Zebulon (one of Lindholm’s middle names, and certainly the best name he has out of four, so that’s what I like calling him) spends the majority of the year at centre, it’s because someone has suffered a major injury. The next likely cause is that either one of Ryan or Jankowski has severely underwhelmed in the bottom six that they have to drop him down the lineup to fix the issue.

I don’t count Lindholm out at C for non-disaster reasons though. It is plausible for them to push Ryan out to the wing instead and drop Lindholm to 3C with Sam Bennett if they feel like reuniting the 3M line (though that would create an all-centre line). There are ways to do it without a disaster unfolding.

I wouldn’t trust either of those centres with the defensive responsibilities Matt Stajan was tasked with last season, no. Both Ryan and Jankowski succeeded in sheltered circumstances, so moving either of them to a defensive role is likely no bueno.

I think the burden will fall on Lindholm, presuming he’s on the first line. I don’t think the Flames will start treating him like Backlund, but perhaps having a better two-way player on that line provides a bit more peace of mind when you have to keep your first line on the ice for icing or other line-matching purposes. Perhaps another argument for making him a centre is so that you can have two defensive lines and two offensive lines, although it’s worth noting that Lindholm has seen a fair amount of sheltering in his career too, which makes the assertion that he’s a two-way player slightly questionable.

I’m going to say Zebulon hitting 50 is more likely. He’s going to have some top notch linemates regardless if he falls on lines one or two. If he is a constant in the top six, 50 points is likely the floor. If Micheal Ferland could pick up 40 last year, Lindholm could probably put up more.

Giving this one to Dougie Hamilton. He’s an elite offensive defenceman who has put up four straight 40+ point seasons. I think he might hit 50 this year. Noah Hanifin has put up one 30-point season and will be partners with Travis Hamonic, who is not famous for scoring points. I would put Hanifin down for about 35. Maybe in a few years they’ll be close in scoring, but I don’t think this year is the year.

One question answers the other.

It has to be Matthew Tkachuk. The NHL fantasy projections say he might get 53 points, which seems low. He was on pace for 59 last year despite not playing on the powerplay for the majority of the season. If he gets special teams time and takes another step forward, he could likely be good for more than that. He’s been tops among the Flames and close to the tops in the league for underlying numbers, so the counting numbers should start piling up shortly. He found his goalscoring gear last year too, so that’s an additional plus.

If you’re in a categories league, Tkachuk will also pick up PIMs and +/- points. He’s an all around good guy, but you already knew that.

Besides Tkachuk, I’m saying Frolik. Despite shooting the puck the most on a per 60 basis and also coming close to the top for high danger chances on the Flames, Frolik’s shooting percentage cratered and he also suffered an injury. Those are two major signs that a player is going to have a bounce back year. If he’s penciled into that offence-first third line role many think he’ll play in, those shooting skills could come in handy despite the diminished role.

Most likely to regress is Mike Smith, which we’ll explore in the next question.

We’ll give it a moderate five, but let’s think of it more as a teeter-totter than a scale.

The Flames’ goaltending is going to be good until it isn’t. Smith has defied heavy workloads, injury, and age to be an average ~.915 goalie for the past three years; it’s not unfeasible that he does it again this season. All the Flames need is average goaltending this year and that should be good enough to push them to the playoffs.

But if Smith goes down or everything catches up with him, that’s going to be very bad. But maybe things are still going to be okay! David Rittich hasn’t been a solid starter, but he’s been a good enough goalie in short bursts that he’s worth a shot. Jon Gillies has improved year over year so it’s not crazy to think that he becomes an NHL regular this season. Maybe that duo is good enough to keep the Flames afloat, even if they’re splitting duties.

That’s optimistic though. If they aren’t good enough, just like they weren’t good enough last year when Smith went down, then I guess the scariness teeters all the way to John Carpenter’s The Thing. I haven’t seen that movie, but I’ll trust you on this one.

The Flames’ disaster plan is likely both things. They’ll ride Gillies and Rittich in the initial wake of a Smith injury. The two are on friendly deals, and you might as well find out what you’ve got before you have to make a decision on at least one of them (which will also inform their plans next season, see below). Brad Treliving will definitely be making calls – I could imagine them trying to pry James Reimer out of Florida – because they’ve invested too much into this season to have it flushed down thanks to goaltending.

I think that it wouldn’t matter. Let me explain.

Assuming the cap goes up to $82M, based on the usual $2M jumps it makes on a non-Vegas year, the Flames might begin next offseason with $16M in cap space. That’s a pretty chunk of change, but the problem being that they will need to extend Tkachuk and Bennett (assuming he earns his keep, a question in itself, but we’ll assume he sticks around). Tkachuk should be around $6M, assuming the usual magic with contract extensions. Bennett might get a slight bump to around $2.5M if he nets 30-ish points next season. That’s already half of that cap space gone.

But there’s more! You have to fill three more forward spots and two more defender spots. Those can easily be solved with AHLers for the cheap, let’s say Dillon Dube, Matthew Phillips, Oliver Kylington, and Rasmus Andersson. That’s about $3M more when you add all the salary together. Andrew Mangiapane might also get a raise, so he could land in the $1M range. Add all that together, you have ~$4.1M in cap space.

If Hanifin was on a bridge deal, the cap space would certainly increase, but only by $1.5-2M, which leaves you with ~$6.1M max. That’s a problem when the major draw is Sergei Bobrovsky. If he chooses to leave Columbus, but he’ll come at maybe $9M, and that’s lowballing. Semyon Varlamov is the next big draw, but he’ll also be expensive. That is if he doesn’t slow down due to age and injury (he is also worth avoiding for moral reasons).

After that, it’s a lot of uninspiring goalies. Will 32-year-old Cam Talbot interest you after he finishes another 65+ game campaign? Maybe Robin Lehner, Anders Nilsson, or Michal Neuvirth become starting options, but that seems farfetched. Perhaps Petr Mrazek bounces back. Basically, nothing worth splashing the cash on. Hanifin going long term tightens things up, but the Flames are likely out of the running for the prizes that will actually provide a UFA solution in net.

This is a pretty tough question to answer because the Flames have a very tough opening schedule.

Let’s limit this to the first 10 games. To begin the year, they have a home-and-home series against the Canucks, which should hopefully be two wins. After that, it’s a minor road trip through the Central against Nashville, St. Louis, and Colorado, all three games coming in a span of five nights. That’s three playoff-caliber teams, and if the Flames are as good as we think they are, they should at least win two of those games.

When they return home, they play Boston and Nashville again. That’s going to be two more tough games, and winning one is going to be acceptable. After that, the Flames go on a brief road trip out East, but it’s against the New York Rangers and the Habs, two rebuilding teams. Those should be two wins for the Flames. The 10th game of the year is against Pittsburgh at home, which is a tossup for me, so flip a coin on that one.

Add it all up, and I think we could consider a “good start” to be at least seven wins out of the first 10 games. Against that opening schedule, that’s a pretty strong statement. I wouldn’t at all panic or be surprised if they only won five of those games, however. They are the Flames and they always come out of the gate slow.

Yes and no. When Juuso Valimaki graduates to the NHL (either this year or next year) there’s almost no indisputable bluechip prospects left in the system. There is certainly a gap developing.

The closest Flames comparable is the late Darryl Sutter era of drafting. From 2007-2010, the Flames only drafted four times in the top 50, and only once in those last two years. Of those top 50 picks, the only one that still has an NHL job is Backlund.

But, the Flames also picked up Ferland, TJ Brodie, and Lance Bouma in those picks. Although the quality on those players certainly varies, they all made the NHL. Sometimes it’s more how you draft versus when you draft.

This is Treliving’s bread and butter. He’s found quality picks outside the top 50 in Andersson, Kylington, Tyler Parsons, and Dube, four who stand strong chances to become everyday NHLers in the next year or two. Outside the top 100 you have Mangiapane, Phillips, D’Artagnan Joly, Adam Ruzicka, Milos Roman, and Dmitry Zavgorodniy. Certainly longer shots, but much better than what you can usually find in those rounds.

So I don’t really worry about a developmental gap. The Flames are in a position where a first rounder isn’t going to make a major difference on this team right now, and they have a healthy amount of prospect depth that can step up in times of crisis. A lot of those post-100 players named are going to be filling that gap in the next two-to-five years, so they have clearly put thought into the long term.

I wouldn’t trade away many more picks in the near future, though. A lot of the prospects they’ve found in later rounds came in drafts that many considered to be absolutely loaded. If you compare the 2015 and 2016 drafts to the 2017 and 2018 ones, you can clearly see there’s a lot less talent to be found later. To avoid making the gap wider, they should absolutely keep a few firsts and seconds and stock up on some higher-level prospects.

Yes and no. Again.

This past offseason, the Flames hit on a lot of their pro additions. Hanifin and Lindholm were certainly good adds. They snagged Ryan and Czarnik, two good depth additions in a sea of bad ones, and added one of the better high-end UFAs in Neal. The rumoured interest in Patrick Maroon was also a good look. I would hate to over-praise management over AHL signings, but the crop they did bring in (Alan Quine, Dalton Prout, and Buddy Robinson specifically) are still pretty good adds.

But you can’t ignore the negatives. Lazar might not make the team this year (and if he does, as a sparingly used extra forward) and he was worth a second round pick to the club. Signing Michael Stone to a three-year deal despite having one of the better defensive prospect corps screams tunnel vision. Paying Troy Brouwer for four more years instead of two is pretty damning of the thought process that created that situation. If I have to compliment them for thinking about Maroon, then I must also criticize their rumoured interest in paying Ryan Reaves around $2.5M AAV for two or three years to add nothing but the occasional fight.

And you really can’t divorce the context of how Lindholm and Hanifin got to the team from the qualities of the players themselves. The Flames picked up two good players, yes, but gave away an elite player in Hamilton, a pretty good one in Ferland, and a worthy prospect in Adam Fox. It will remain to be seen if the two can reproduce what Hamilton and Ferland gave the Flames, but until then, it’s a devaluation of what the Flames already had.

So the pro scouting department is hit and miss. They can certainly get a lot of things right that have bolstered the club to where they are heading into the season, but they also have made some baffling mistakes that have cost the team long term.

Well it’s going to be the retros, so you can relax.

In 12 days, yes.