Handicapping the Flames 2021 first round targets

It’s draft weekend, friends! The 2021 NHL Draft is finally upon us, with the first round running Friday night starting at 6 p.m. MT! The Calgary Flames draft 13th overall in the first round and are poised to get a pretty good young hockey player.

Here’s a breakdown of who the Flames might select on Friday night.

The Flames select 13th overall. (But since Arizona won’t select at 11th overall due to forfeiting the pick, they’re nominally the 12th team to select in the draft.)

Based on a collection of 11 prominent rankings – Elite Prospects, FC Hockey, Sportsnet, HockeyProspect, TSN (Bob McKenzie and Craig Button), The Athletic (Corey Pronman and Scott Wheeler), Dobber Prospects, The Hockey News and McKeen’s – nine players were ranked top 11 on eight of the lists or more: Owen Power, Matthew Beniers, William Eklund, Brandt Clarke, Dylan Guenther, Luke Hughes, Mason McTavish, Kent Johnson and Simon Edvinsson. The Flames likely won’t be able to select any of these players. Another player, Jesper Wallstedt, was ranked top 11 in seven of the surveyed rankings so he’s probably out, too.

That effectively knocks 10 players off the draft board. Here’s my personal preference ranking of the remaining high-end available prospects based on the Flames’ needs:

The Flames need offense. The good news is that, unless the consensus rankings are way, way off, one (or both) of Lucius and Sillinger are likely going to be on the board at 13th overall. Even if the draft boards are a bit wacky, though, it’s likely that the Flames will also have Coronato and Svechkov to choose from, so if you’re thinking that the Flames need to get a goal-scorer… well, there are going to be a few players that meet their needs available when they select.

(Based on the Flames’ somewhat spotty history drafting goaltenders early, don’t expect them to opt for Jesper Wallstedt – if he falls to them – or Sebastian Cossa at 13th overall.)

Since Brad Treliving came to town, the Flames have selected five times in the first round. Those five selections were from: the OHL (Sam Bennett), the OHL (Matthew Tkachuk), the WHL (Juuso Valimaki), the QMJHL (Jakob Pelletier) and the WHL (Connor Zary). They haven’t necessarily avoided taking players from the United States or Europe, but they’ve really tended to skew towards Canadian junior stars. All things being equal, there’s probably some manner of comfort there that they keep steering back towards.

We’ll see if that trend continues this year.