Since the 2022 Battle of Alberta, the Calgary Flames roster has undergone massive changes

The last time the Calgary Flames played a playoff series, it was a hum-dinger, with the Flames facing the Edmonton Oilers in a five game Battle of Alberta back in 2022. (The Flames did not win that series.)

The Flames have yet to return to the playoffs, though, and in the interim their roster has undergone some major reconstruction.

The Flames had 26 players available to them for Game 5 against Edmonton in 2022, plus one injured player.

So what happened to these 27 players?

Still with the Flames are Mangiapane, Backlund, Coleman, Andersson, Kylington, Markstrom and Vladar. The other 20 players have left the organization in various manners.

Leaving as free agents were Gaudreau, Jarnkrok, Lucic, Lewis, Gudbranson, Werner and Carpenter. (Currently on leave, Dube will potentially join this group in the off-season.)

Lost on the waiver wire were Valimaki and Ruzicka – ironically enough, both claimed by Arizona.

Stone retired and join the Flames’ development staff.

Traded were Lindholm (Vancouver), Tkachuk (Florida), Toffoli (New Jersey), Hanifin (Vegas), Tanev (Dallas), Zadorov (Vancouver), Mackey (Arizona), Ritchie (Arizona) and Monahan (Montreal).

The net return for the nine players traded from the 2022 roster was two first-round picks, a second-round pick, two third-round picks, a fourth-round pick, a conditional third-round pick, forwards Andrei Kuzmenko, Jonathan Huberdeau, Cole Schwindt, Yegor Sharangovich and Aydar Suniev, and defencemen Hunter Brzustewicz, Joni Jurmo, MacKenzie Weegar, Daniil Miromanov, Nikita Okhotiuk and Artem Grushnikov. That’s six draft picks, a conditional draft pick and 11 players.

On one hand, in a straight roster-for-roster swap, the Flames got less competitive in the short term and the asset management was less than ideal on the whole. But when you look at the trades – mostly conducted when the Flames went “Okay, let’s focus on asset management now” after the 2022-23 season – that’s a pretty decent haul for a bunch of depreciating assets.

Under the old regime, the Flames won the Pacific Division twice (in 2018-19 and 2021-22). They played a lot of good hockey. But especially after the departures of Gaudreau and Tkachuk, the Flames needed to regroup. They’ve seen a major overhaul to their roster since the 2022 Battle of Alberta playoff series, and they’ll likely continue to make changes.

Time will tell if the overhaul will result in the Flames becoming a playoff powerhouse like they desire, but early returns seem fairly promising. We’ll see if they bear further fruit.