There are a lot of interesting Calgary Flames milestones looming
By Ryan Pike
1 year agoThe Calgary Flames are a pretty veteran-laden team, and one side effect of having a veteran-filled team is sometimes milestones bunch up. Simply put, a bunch of Flames players could be hitting pretty significant career milestones pretty shortly.
We’ve already witness Milan Lucic hit 1,100 NHL games. Here’s a rundown of the other looming milestones.
A Saddledome milestone
Saturday’s game against Edmonton is the 1,498th regular season NHL game ever at the Saddledome. Game 1,500 will be this coming Thursday when the Flames host Nashville.
For comparison’s sake, the Flames played 120 regular season games at the Stampede Corral and 318 regular season games at the Omni in Atlanta. (They’ve played way more at the ‘Dome than those two buildings combined.)
Player milestones
A lot of players are coming up on big individual regular season milestones in their careers. Heck, a few of these could get rattled off in a single game at this rate:
- Jonathan Huberdeau’s next goal will be his 200th career NHL goal.
- Nazem Kadri is two assists away from 300 in his career.
- Tyler Toffoli is two points away from 400 in his career and four goals away from 200.
- MacKenzie Weegar is three assists away from 100 in his career.
- Elias Lindholm is five games away from reaching 300 with the Flames.
- Nikita Zadorov is nine games away from 500 in his career.
- Blake Coleman is 12 games away from 400 in his career.
- Jacob Markstrom is 17 appearances away from 400 in his career.
There are a few players looking at moving up the all-time regular season leaderboard, but most of them are way down that leaderboard:
- Rasmus Andersson, currently at 304 games played with the franchise, will tie Bob MacMillan for 60th all-time in four more games. (If Andersson plays out the rest of the season and avoids injury, he’ll finish the year around 380 games played and vault into the top 40.
- Lindholm has 119 goals with the Flames, and he’s three goals away from catching MacMillan for 26th (with 122 goals). From there, he’s pretty close to surpassing Daymond Langkow (123), Curt Bennett (126) and Ken Houston and Gary Suter (128). He could climb up to 22nd on the all-time list this season. Lindholm has 263 points and is tied with Carey Wilson on the all-time leaderboard for 33rd place. He’s coming up on Curt Bennett and TJ Brodie (both at 266 points), among others.
- Andrew Mangiapane’s next goal ties him with Doug Gilmour at 44th all-time with 81 goals. Then, like Lindholm, Mangiapane should climb further up the ladder this season. He’s chasing Gilmour, Bill Clement (85), Alex Tanguay (86), Eddy Beers (87), and all three of Rene Bourque, Colin Patterson and Rey Comeau (88). So yes, #88 can reach 88 career goals this season.
- Mikael Backlund is six assists away from catching Tom Lysiak for 11th all-time. Lysiak had 276 helpers with the Flames. Backlund is also seven points behind Paul Reinhart for 13th all-time (445 points).
- Jacob Markstrom is currently in a three-way tie for seventh in Flames goalie wins with 63, sharing the spot with David Rittich and Roman Turek. He’s chasing Trevor Kidd (72) and Phil Myre (76). He’s tied with Turek for fourth in shutouts, with 12. He’s one behind Mike Vernon for third place.
- Darryl Sutter is 19 wins behind “Badger” Bob Johnson for the all-time Flames franchise lead for head coaches. He’s 72 games behind Johnson for the most games coached by a Flames head coach. (He’ll tie longtime Atlanta coach Fred Creighton for second place in 20 more games.)
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