Friedman: Flames are looking for forward help (and have been for awhile)

There was some Calgary Flames related news on the 32 Thoughts intermission segment on Saturday night’s edition of Hockey Night in Canada. Rather than anything really definitive, it was Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman confirming a longly-held belief among those who follow and/or cover the Flames.

They need forward help.

Here’s Friedman:

Heck, Flames general manager Brad Treliving quipped during training camp in September that there was a forward spot available and he’s since mentioned in media appearances that the Flames could probably use another forward. The Flames invited Cody Eakin and Sonny Milano to training camp on pro try-outs and neither impressed, nor did the Flames’ top forward prospects such as Jakob Pelletier and Matthew Phillips.

At present, the main constraint for the Flames in their pursuit of a forward is cap space: they don’t have very much, and they seem primed to make a deal like last season’s February acquisition of Tyler Toffoli. Treliving’s seeming strategy of assessing his team’s needs and then maximizing his remaining cap space worked well in 2021-22, which probably feeds into that strategy being repeated.

Either way, the Flames need to score more goals, and they probably don’t have too many qualms about where those goals come from.