Friends, we’re just over 24 hours away from the National Hockey League’s annual roster deadline. By 3 p.m. MT on Monday, clubs have to be down to salary cap compliant rosters of between 20 and 23 players.

As a consequence, we’re going to see the annual gigantic waiver list on Sunday at noon MT as teams scramble to sneak their best roster-adjacent waiver eligible players into the AHL. The Calgary Flames are among those teams that have some shuffling to do with their lineup, and they’ll have some moves to make on Sunday.

Here’s where things stand as of Sunday morning and where things go from here.

At present, the Flames have 27 players on their camp roster:

If everyone’s healthy and nobody’s going to be starting on the injury reserve list, then the Flames need to send four players to the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers to get down to their roster minimum. The Flames have four waiver exempt players left (Wolf, Coronato, Klapka and Honzek), so the Flames could get down to 23 players without placing anybody on waivers. That said, we’re pretty sure Wolf makes the team based on how often he was used in pre-season and his overall performance during training camp, so it feels unlikely that he would be sent down.

The X-factor is the status of Sharangovich, who had Jets forward Vladislav Namestnikov fall on his leg awkwardly in the late stages of Friday’s game.

There has been no official update on his status, as the Flames had an off-day (with a season ticket members event) on Saturday and an off-day on Sunday. It seems probable that we won’t get an update on how he’s doing until Monday’s practice.

What could we learn from what happens with waivers on Sunday?

If Devin Cooley isn’t placed on waivers, then the Flames will likely be carrying three goalies to start the season. As noted, Wolf is waiver exempt but we’re strongly doubtful that he gets sent down.

We would be extremely surprised if a defencemen isn’t placed on waivers. The most likely 23-man configurations involve seven blueliners (three goalies, seven defenders and 13 forwards or two goalies, seven defenders and 14 forwards).

Assuming Sharangovich is available to start the season, the Flames would need to send down two forwards to get to 14 and three forwards to get to 13. They can do this without placing anybody on waivers, but that would mean demoting all three of Coronato, Honzek and Klapka. Considering that Honzek and Klapka were in the final pre-season game, it feels unlikely that they both get sent down. (Heck, we’d bet against either of them getting sent down.) Which is to say: if Sharangovich is available, it feels inevitable that a forward will be waived on Sunday.

But if Sharangovich ends up being unavailable to start the season – if he misses seven days he’s eligible for an injury reserve list placement – then placing him on the IR would count as one of their final forward cuts, and then that changes the dynamic a bit and makes it more likely that they can avoid placing a forward on waivers. (If no forwards are placed on waivers we would suggest it’s a bad sign for Sharangovich’s availability, but a forward being waived wouldn’t necessarily be a good sign for him, if that makes sense.)

Suffice it to say, we won’t have all the answers by the time waiver placements are revealed by the various hockey insiders later on Sunday, but we’ll have a lot more information about the final few moves the Flames will be making to solidify their season-opening roster.