Breaking down the trade chip triage list

The National Hockey League’s trade deadline is a couple weeks away and the Calgary Flames could be very, very busy. With an eye towards potential swaps, here’s a rundown of which Flames assets could be moved and which are likely staying put.

There are a group of players you can probably consider the team’s core bodies. They’re signed for awhile and unlikely to be headed elsewhere any time soon. (Almost all of these guys were signed, traded for, or drafted by Brad Treliving.)

(Backlund has a full no trade clause, so he’s locked in here regardless.)

You can add two names to this list of nearly-untouchables: G Cam Talbot and F Milan Lucic. Talbot is the best fit the Flames have had as a secondary goalie in over a decade. Lucic isn’t quite as amazing, but he has a full no move clause and it’s unlikely he’d waive after already doing so back in July.

If you wanted to shake up the Flames locker room, there are two players I could see Brad Treliving moving in a hockey deal. Those players are F Johnny Gaudreau and F Sean Monahan.

Now, I don’t think it happens right now. But neither guy was drafted or acquired by Treliving, neither has really set the world on fire this season, and both have been relegated to secondary roles with the emergence of Lindholm and Tkachuk as top line talents this season. Moving Monahan or Gaudreau would be a pretty seismic deal in terms of swapping out top six forwards (albeit under-performing ones) with term left, so making the swap during the off-season would be the Flames’ best chance for actually getting good value for them by maximizing the number of teams who could make pitches for their services.

These are the things other teams are calling about first. The Flames may consider moving these pieces, but they’d need to get something good back in the swap.

It’s a good draft and a second round pick is valuable. Dube, Mangiapane and Kylington are young controllable assets. Bennett is arguably the best forward that the Flames could move that still has upside; he’s super young and a case can be made that he could produce more in another setting where he can get top six time. Brodie’s an expiring asset, but he’s still a great skater and a minutes-eating top pairing defender that someone would pay a premium to get for a playoff drive.

These assets are less valuable than the “A” assets, but also would get the Flames less in the market. You can split these assets into two groups: untested prospects and expiring NHL assets.

The untested prospects are F Glenn Gawdin, F Jakob Pelletier, F Emilio Pettersen, F Matthew Phillips, F Dmitry Zavgorodniy and G Dustin Wolf. The expiring NHL assets are D Travis Hamonic and F Austin Czarnik. We’ve bundled Hamonic in here because he lacks the offensive upside of Brodie, and Czarnik here because he hasn’t done quite as much at the NHL level as Bennett (or Dube or Mangiapane, for that matter).

Finally, these assets have some buzz, but haven’t done as much as the players in the “A” or “B” categories to generate much scout excitement yet. You could use them to spice up a swap, but you wouldn’t build a trade around them.

F Luke Philp, F Ilya Nikolayev, F Mark Jankowski, G Tyler Parsons, G Jon Gillies and G Artyom Zagidulin fit in here. Unless a team has fallen in love with one of these players and really wants them, it’s unlikely that they’d be moved.