The Calgary Flames and the 2012 Free Agent Market

 

 

With the draft in the rearview mirror, the fun and horror of the 2012 free agent season awaits. Starting this upcoming Sunday, GM’s will fight with each to other to make their teams better (or, in may cases, make terrible errors they will spend the next few years trying to undo).

Calgary has needs everywhere, but the market is relatively limited. Ideally, the Flames could use at least one more top-4 defender (two more, if they decide to trade Bouwmeester) and as many forwards who can efficiently drive the play north as possible. The Flames were one of the worst possession teams in the league last year and one of the reasons is pretty much every top-six guy on the team was well underwater in terms of possession measures. If the wish to contend for a playoff spot isn’t merely lip service, Jay Feaster will have to find a way to get this club on the positive side of possession somehow.

The good news is – Calgary has almost $20M in cap space to work with (assuming the team will continue to spend to the cap, which isn’t completely certain at this time). That number will be lessened once we know how much RFA’s Jones and Backlund are making. Also, the Flames may choose to retain some of their own pending free agents, including Blake Comeau who will likely be re-upped on a lesser ticket. 

For now, let’s assume the Flames have about $15M to play with. That would be enough to conceivably add at least one high-end free agent in the Parise/Suter mold and then at least one ot two more from the second tier.

Of course, Calgary’s problem this summer isn’t really money or cap space – it’s the relatively shallow UFA pool and the difficulty they will have convincing high-end free agents to commit to the Flames. The club hasn’t made the dance since 2008-09, hasn’t won it’s division since 2005-06 and hasn’t won a playoff serie since 2003-04. Calgary’s core including, Kipper and Iginla, is storied, but aging. The cache of playing with a guy like Jarome is slowly dissolving with his advancing years and the team’s inability to scramble out of the lower-middle class of the league.

So while Feaster can offer the dollars, his team will be a tough sell to any high-end FA who is interested in winning sooner rather than later. The unfortunate catch-22 of mediocre or worse teams is that they need to add better players in order to improve – but quality free agents are often attracted to good teams that are already winning.

This week, FlamesNation will continue to profile the Flames own pending UFA’s. In addition, we will start to look at general options from the UFA pool. For now, here is a list at some of the interesting names:

We plan to profile some of these guys in detail prior to July 1, while others will be given the "brief blurb" treatment. Let us know which ones interest you in particular (or if you would add any other names to this list) and we’ll see what we can do.