FlamesNation player evaluation: Tanner Glass

Tanner Glass was really good in training camp. Like – really, really good. Certainly good enough to justify signing him to a contract.

Unfortunately, the regular season is not preseason.

Following an impressive preseason in which the effort Glass put in and out each game made him look like one of the better Flames, he received an NHL contract and made the team’s starting roster. He played in six of the Flames’ first seven games, and seven games total throughout the month of October.

However, when Jaromir Jagr was forced to miss time due to injury, the Flames called up Mark Jankowski, who maybe should have made the team to begin with. Though he didn’t score any points, Jankowski looked like he belonged, and when Jagr returned, Glass was the odd man out. The Flames sent him down to the Stockton Heat on Nov. 7, and didn’t bring him back up until Feb. 24, just two days before the trade deadline.

Glass played twice, then mostly sat in the pressbox until it looked extremely likely the Flames would be mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, playing another three games until it was official. He then closed out the year dressing in four of the five meaningless last few games of the season.

During his time in the AHL, Glass played 21 games, scoring two goals and recording five points in total. He had 45 penalty minutes in the AHL (and 19 in the NHL).

Glass split his 2016-17 in the NHL and AHL as well, all within the New York Rangers organization: he played 11 games for the Rangers, scoring two points; and 57 games for the Hartford Wolf Pack, scoring 15 points.

He also played seven playoff games for the Rangers, including scoring the first goal of the playoffs (!) on Carey Price (!!). Glass had four points in seven postseason games, somehow.

He actually had a bigger role with the Rangers, averaging 10:55 a night – so not much bigger, but still, an extra 92 seconds a game. He had a -1.39% 5v5 CF rel in 2016-17 with the Rangers, so… still not great.

Glass, 34, has barely been in the NHL the past couple of years. His penalty minutes were the biggest numbers on his stat sheet, even when he was being regularly dressed as an NHLer. He isn’t there to score or play solid defence: he’s there to drop the gloves and not much else.

If anything, Glass should serve as a cautionary tale for the Flames: be wary of those who earn a spot by playing really well in training camp. Glass genuinely busted ass in preseason, and he looked good probably in part because most everyone else he was either playing with or against didn’t have to try as hard because they knew they had a spot on their teams locked up. Once everyone else was ready to start trying, though – when the games actually mattered – all of the effort in the world couldn’t make up for the sheer lack of talent.

So… maybe don’t do that again in 2018-19. Or any other season. If someone has a previous body of work spanning a decade, listen to its story first, because it’s unlikely a handful of meaningless games are suddenly going to change the script.