The Athletic ranks the Calgary Flames’ prospect pool the 15th-best in the NHL
By Ryan Pike
5 months agoOver at The Athletic, their prospect analyst Scott Wheeler is in the midst of publishing his annual rundown and ranking of each NHL organization’s top prospects. He’s about halfway through, and he’s reached the Calgary Flames. According to Wheeler, the Flames have the 15th-best prospect pool in the NHL.
Here’s Wheeler:
The Calgary Flames’ pool is defined by its quantity of B-plus prospects, which runs arguably 9-10 deep (a couple more than any other team so far and comparable to several of the teams in front of them, for sure) thanks to a good 2023 draft, strong results in the late-first round, a find in the seventh round, and the acquisition of Hunter Brzustewicz from the Vancouver Canucks. They’re missing a true star prospect, but they’ve built a strong pool and there should be multiple solid NHLers coming.
Wheeler had the Flames’ prospect pool ranked 20th when he did his rankings last year.
Wheeler’s assessment aligns pretty well with our summation of the prospect pool from the fall: they have a lot of prospects that project to be consistently good NHL players, but not necessarily anybody that is a game-breaker or consistent difference-maker.
For the curious, Wheeler’s top five Flames prospects are Matt Coronato (1st), Connor Zary (2nd), Samuel Honzek (3rd), Dustin Wolf (4th) and Hunter Brzustewicz (5th). In FlamesNation‘s summer 2023 rankings – done before Brzustewicz was acquired – our top five were Wolf (1st), Coronato (2nd), Jakob Pelletier (3rd), Honzek (4th) and a tie for 5th between Zary, Etienne Morin and Jeremie Poirier.
Head over to The Athletic for Wheeler’s full breakdown!
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