Friedman: Carolina checked in with the Flames on Elias Lindholm prior to the trade deadline
By Ryan Pike
1 year agoFile this under “yeah, that makes sense.” In the post-trade deadline edition of 32 Thoughts over at Sportsnet, Elliotte Freidman passed along some info that aligns very much with what everyone sort of expected: the Carolina Hurricanes touched base with the Calgary Flames on the availability of centre Elias Lindholm.
Here’s Friedman:
The Athletic’s Michael Russo confirmed what had been suspected: that Carolina made an inquiry to Calgary about Elias Lindholm. There’s almost zero chance the Flames would have considered it now — too soon and still coming to grips with this season. But they’ve got six interesting players with one year remaining on their current contracts, so the calendar dictates this will be a direction-defining summer. All of a sudden, they are four points back of Winnipeg.
Lindholm has another season remaining on his current deal with the Flames, which carries a scant $4.85 million cap hit. He was, ironically enough, originally drafted by Carolina and traded to the Flames in 2018. Lindholm has been the Flames’ top-line centre this season, alongside Tyler Toffoli and a rotating cast of characters on their left flank – a cast which has included Jonathan Huberdeau, Dillon Dube and more recently rookie Jakob Pelletier.
The Flames are a calendar year away from being forced to make some tough decisions on which personnel to bring back and which to divest themselves of, and with the looming league-wide cap crunch, it seems likely that they’ll try to get ahead of the game and make some of those tough decisions this coming summer.
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