Flames have some roster options without TJ Brodie

Calgary Flames defender TJ Brodie collapsed at practice on Thursday afternoon in a scary scene. The good news is it appears he’s going to be okay. The bad news is it appears he’s going to be unavailable to play, at the very least for the weekend.

We’re expecting an update on Brodie’s status from Flames general manager Brad Treliving at 9:45 a.m. before Friday’s practice. Considering he spent much of Thursday in a hospital, it’s somewhat unlikely that Brodie will be available for the weekend’s games (as Sportsnet’s Eric Francis reported on Twitter on Thursday evening).

So if Brodie can’t go on the weekend, what are the Flames options?

Currently the team is carrying six non-Brodie blueliners: Mark Giordano, Noah Hanifin, Travis Hamonic, Michael Stone, Rasmus Andersson and Brandon Davidson. Davidson has been a healthy scratch three times since being recalled and hasn’t played yet, but it seems inevitable that he’ll slot in for the weekend. But with a pair of games with travel, it’s curious to see if they would go with the same six defenders in both games.

If the team wishes to have another insurance body around, that’s challenging. Currently the team is carrying 22 bodies – two goalies, seven defensemen and 13 forwards – due to cap pressures. Right now they’re using the long term injury reserve exemption to replace Austin Czarnik with Alan Quine. Unless they throw Juuso Valimaki on LTIR – and you can’t do it retroactively so they’d have to be confident he’ll be out for at least another month – they’d need to send somebody to the AHL in order to bring up another body.

Currently three Flames are waiver exempt: Tobias Rieder, Davidson and Quine. All three cleared waivers earlier this season and since they haven’t been on the NHL roster for 30 days they can be shuttled back and forth to the minors.

Since the Flames are carrying 13 forwards, any swapping they do would likely be for a defender to slot into the second game. They have a quartet of AHLers under NHL deals that can be brought up: Oliver Kylington, Andrew Nielsen, Rinat Valiev and Alexander Yelesin. If they bring somebody up, it’s almost inevitable it would be Kylington. For a short-notice call-up, he’s the only one of the quartet that has played in the NHL recently and he has the most experience of the bunch.

Stockton is playing at home on Friday and Saturday, so presumably a notable blueline absence on Saturday night would hint at who would be getting a potential recall for Sunday’s game in Vegas.

Either way, the Flames don’t have any cap space but because of their waiver situation and the road trip’s proximity to their AHL affiliate, they have a surprising amount of roster flexibility to help them deal with Brodie’s absence.