Over the course of the Calgary Flames’ illustrious history, they’ve made big moves at the NHL Draft.

Not only have they made some dandy draft picks over the years, but they’ve also made some pretty impressive trades.

Here are their four best draft weekend trades in chronological order.

First off: Kent Nilsson ruled with the puck. Offensively, he’s in a very small grouping of the most talented players in Flames franchise history. Defensively? Uh… limited. By 1985, the Flames had attempted to work around his limitations and after they experienced the 1984 playoffs without an injured Nilsson, they perhaps had realized what life would be like without him.

So at the 1985 draft, they flipped Nilsson and a third-rounder to the North Stars for a pair of second-rounders. The 1985 pick turned into Joe Nieuwendyk, the 1987 pick turned into Stephane Matteau. That’s very nice value.

On July 1, 2009, both Flames blueliner Jordan Leopold and Florida blueliner Jay Bouwmeester were slated to become free agents. Flames GM Darryl Sutter, thinking Bouwmeester was a good player that he wanted to have on his team, sent Leopold’s signing rights and a third-rounder to Florida to get four days head start on signing Bouwmeester.

It worked. And a third-rounder, given the circumstances, wasn’t a big price to pay for a securing the player they felt they wanted.

At the time, Dougie Hamilton was a highly-touted, offensive-minded pending restricted free agent. The Flames were coming off a 2014-15 season that saw them win a playoff round for the first time since 2004. We can argue about the merits of making this sort of big swing that early in the club’s rebuilding process – the 2015 team was an analytics darling, but also relied on a lot of favourable bounces and puck luck – but you can’t thumb your nose at the boldness.

If you’re going to try to make a big add at the draft, a young roster player in a year where your team has oodles of picks already makes a lot of sense.

Hamilton had term left but wasn’t quite fitting as optimally as the Flames had hoped. Ferland was coming up to the end of his deal and was going to be due a raise. Fox was a college player that informed the Flames that he wasn’t keen on signing with the club. And that trio was sent to Carolina for a pair of pending restricted free agents in Lindholm and Hanifin who both had a lot of controllable years still left in them.

From a pure contract years and asset management perspective, this was some very tidy work. (Made even tidier by the Flames eventually flipping both Lindholm and Hanifin for even more assets in 2024.)

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