FlamesNation mailbag: low danger chances and trade talk

The bad news is the Calgary Flames aren’t having a great November. The good news is they’ve snapped their losing skid. Let’s dive into the mailbag!

This is fundamentally the case. Compared to last season, looking at the stats at Natural Stat Trick, the Flames have the puck less and are doing less dangerous things with it. That equates to fewer shot attempts overall, fewer shots on net, fewer scoring chances and fewer high danger chances.

If you want to boil it down to one thing, it’s not getting to the “high rent” district of the home plate or Royal Road areas nearly as frequently. They’re settling for low percentage chances from the perimeter, which leads to lower percentages and fewer goals.

We’ll see if they can find way to disrupt defensive schemes and get back to the slot.

Lucic has a no-move clause in his contract that stayed intact when he was traded to Calgary. (We checked.) So if he’s going to be exposed to Seattle, he’d need to waive that clause. If he was going to be traded to Seattle in order to convince them to take somebody else (or not take somebody else), he’d need to waive that clause.

Now, if he were willing to do so, the question would be what the price tag would be in terms of picks and what it would do to the Flames’ prospect base. Moving a couple high picks to jettison an expensive asset only makes sense if the Flames have a concrete idea of what they’ll be doing with the freed up cap space and only if they have enough prospects waiting in the wings that they can afford the hit to their depth.

It doesn’t make a ton of sense right now, but maybe it’ll make a bit more sense in 2021. Buying Lucic out might be easier and tidier from an asset management respective, though.

Talbot’s been very useful for the Flames in sporadic uses. The question of his future with the Flames is two-pronged.

One one hand, the Flames really don’t have anybody knocking on the door at the AHL level. Jon Gillies is what he is at this point while Artyom Zagidulin still needs AHL reps to refine his game. Bringing back Talbot makes a ton of sense.

On the other hand, the question is why would Talbot take a cheaper deal than the one he has now? The conversation with Talbot’s representatives would probably begin with another one year, $2.75 million deal, but that would probably depend on what else is available in the backup goalie market.

The minute Miikka Kiprusoff decides he want to fly over here, they’ll retire his number. Kiprusoff was always very soft-spoken and seemed not to like being the center of attention. As far as I know, he’s back in Finland and has shied away from the spotlight. If he was willing, though, they’d put his number in the rafters in a snap.

Maybe not so much a “do something to prep for a trade” move, but Dillon Dube was one of the offensive drivers in Stockton and more than made up for a rather “meh” training camp. Bringing him into the lineup was likely an effort to add more speed and skill to the mix – similar to how they’ve used Andrew Mangiapane.

In other words? It’s not so much a precursor to a trade, but definitely something intended to inject some speed, youth and energy into the mix.