Report: Flames prefer long-term additions to rentals
By Ryan Pike
4 years agoAfter the Michael Frolik swap, the Calgary Flames have some cap space to work with. What they plan on doing with that cap space was one of the subject’s of Saturday’s edition of Headlines on Hockey Night in Canada.
Elliotte Friedman noted that the Flames appear to have a preference for how they’ll spend their cap space.
I think the question is what are they going to do with it. From what I understand they’re not really that interested in rentals, they’d prefer somebody with term. That’s what their preference is if they try to add someone.And the second thing is I think guys, it depends on where [Elias] Lindholm is going to play long term. If he’s a center, I think they look for right wings. I think if he moves back to right wing, they’ll look at some other options that they could possibly do.
Depending on whether Juuso Valimaki stays on long-term injury reserve all season, the Flames have either $3.8 million in cap space or $4.6 million in deadline cap space.
So, uh, the Flames have a bit of a structural problem with their roster construction. They have just 13 right shot skaters under contract right now. That’s four defensemen (Travis Hamonic, Rasmus Andersson, Michael Stone and Alexander Yelesin) and nine forwards (Lindholm, Derek Ryan, Austin Czarnik, Glenn Gawdin, Luke Philp, Byron Froese, Dmitry Zavgorodniy, Eetu Tuulola and Buddy Robinson).
If you’re talking long-term big pieces, the list is basically Lindholm and Andersson (with Hamonic perhaps on this list depending on how free agency fares for him). It makes a lot of sense that getting more right shot forwards (or defenders) might be a smart idea for the Flames moving forward.
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