Garnet Hathaway reassigned to Stockton Heat

There had to be a casualty of just trading picks for Michael Stone. 

That casualty, evidently, was the only player on the roster who doesn’t require waivers: Garnet Hathaway, who has been returned to the Stockton Heat. 

It’s not necessarily an indictment on him that he got sent down, it’s just the easiest move to make for the time being – that and, well, he only averages 9:08 a game.

Hathaway had been up with the Flames for a while, playing 26 games to date for the Flames this season. His first was way back on Nov. 15, the 1-0 win over the Minnesota Wild in which Johnny Gaudreau had his finger broken (even with Hathaway’s grit in the lineup? Suspicious); his last came in the Flames’ 5-0 loss to the Coyotes, Stone’s former team, on Feb. 13.

It’s kinda like Hathaway just lost twice to the Coyotes, if you think about it too much.

Hathaway is a decent fourth line guy, but that’s about it. And unfortunately, between him and Lance Bouma, he’s never shot at a 15.4% clip, so he hasn’t been signed to a massively overpriced deal, so he’s the one who has to go down – for the time being.

There could be future moves, after all, especially with the trade deadline about a week away – and the Flames carrying eight defencemen, which is hard to see lasting.

Hey, speaking of overpriced deals! Have we finally hit the end of the Dennis Wideman countdown?

Let’s hope this is a continuing trend. Wideman likely is un-tradable at this point, and parking him in the pressbox for the rest of the season is probably the Flames’ best bet going forward. It’s not necessarily that Matt Bartkowski and Stone are significant upgrades, they’re just plain regular upgrades on a very, very low bar. (Plus neither has ever assaulted any officials that I can recall.)

We’ll see how this new configuration works, but for the time being, it’s minor roster moves for the Flames.