The Calgary Flames have a lot of contract and salary cap flexibility moving forward
By Ryan Pike
4 days agoIt’s safe to say that Craig Conroy’s first off-season as general manager of the Calgary Flames was pretty hectic. In addition to prepping for the draft and hiring a brand-new coaching staff, he had to deal with juggling seven prominent pending 2024 unrestricted free agents.
Life looks a lot simpler this off-season.
The most prominent remaining bit of business is probably hashing out a new contract with Oliver Kylington, who’s slated to become a UFA on July 1 but really doesn’t feel like somebody that’ll get that close to doing so based on what we heard from Kylington and Conroy during their exit interviews.
But aside from that, and figuring out which of the nine pending restricted free agents fit into the club’s plans, the Flames’ contractual situation – and salary cap situation, for that matter – seem pretty clear-cut. Heck, the team has a lot more flexibility than they’ve had in awhile.
A quick 2024-25 contracts and cap snapshot
Via our pals at Cap Friendly, here’s a list of players on one-way deals… and Connor Zary, who’s on his entry-level deal but… c’mon, he’s on the team now.
| Player | Cap Hit |
| F Jonathan Huberdeau | $10.5 million |
| F Nazem Kadri | $7 million |
| F Andrew Mangiapane | $5.8 million |
| F Andrei Kuzmenko | $5.5 million |
| F Blake Coleman | $4.9 million |
| F Mikael Backlund | $4.5 million |
| F Yegor Sharangovich | $3.1 million |
| F Kevin Rooney | $1.3 million |
| F Martin Pospisil | $1 million |
| F Connor Zary | $863,333 |
| F Walker Duehr | $825,000 |
| D MacKenzie Weegar | $6.25 million |
| D Rasmus Andersson | $4.55 million |
| D Daniil Miromanov | $1.25 million |
| D Joel Hanley | $787,500 |
| D Brayden Pachal | $775,000 |
| G Jacob Markstrom | $6 million |
| G Dan Vladar | $2.2 million |
If we assume all these gentlemen are on next year’s team, that’s two goalies, five defencemen and 11 forwards with. combined $67.1 million of salary cap commitments. If the salary cap rises to $87.7 million, as is the current expectation, the Flames have $20.6 million in cap space available to fill five roster spots (two defenders and three forwards).
That’s a lot of cap space. And when you combine that with the many, many draft picks Conroy acquired over the last while, they have all sorts of ability to explore different options in the draft, trade or free agent markets.
If you’re thinking that perhaps Conroy might start working ahead on some upcoming expiring deals, Zary and Pachal are slated to become restricted free agents after the 2024-25 season, while Mangiapane, Kuzmenko and Sharangovich are the most prominent pending unrestricted free agents in a year.
We’re obviously not 100% sure what the Flames roster will look like when the 2024-25 season begins – we don’t have those levels of magical predictive powers (yet). But suffice it to say, the Flames have more flexibility in shaping their roster than they’ve had in several years. We’ll see how they end up using that flexibility.
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