Friends, when the 2026-27 begins for the Calgary Flames, all indications are that their centres will include 37-year-old captain Mikael Backlund, pending unrestricted free agents Morgan Frost and Ryan Strome, and a to-be-determined fourth person.

We’ll get to the free agency part of it all later on, but right now, let’s focus on their fourth centre for the coming season.

In short: who will it be?

Based on previous seasons, we more or less know what the roles will likely be for the three incumbents. Backlund has been a two-way centre for ages and he’s good at it, so he’ll likely anchor the Flames’ shutdown line. Frost and Strome are more offensively-oriented players, so they will probably be centring lines that try to generate offence. (Strome could probably do a capable job in a two-way or checking role, but he hasn’t really done it much in the NHL.)

That leaves the fourth spot probably for someone to be used in a checking role on the fourth line. And based on what we’ve seen from the Flames and their prospects in the last couple of seasons, there are five players we think could be vying for the job during the truncated pre-season.

Alright, we’ve already seen the Flames try to use Martin Pospisil, Connor Zary and Yegor Sharangovich as centres in recent years. Of the three, Pospisil’s play-style probably lends itself the most to a fourth-line, energy role, while Zary and Sharangovich are arguably better utilized on the wing on a more offensively-oriented line. Pospisil played centre most recently for Slovakia at the World Championships and looked pretty effective in the role, so perhaps that could be a precursor to him tackling that job for the Flames.

Aside from the trio of NHL veterans, there are a pair of less-experienced players we could see taking a run at the gig: Tyson Gross and Sam Morton. Both players had short-term auditions on the fourth line last season. Morton got three games in the role in November, but John Beecher was claimed off waivers and grabbed the role instead. (Morton was really good in his first outing, but wasn’t quite as effective in subsequent games.) Late in the season, Gross suited up six times after joining the Flames as a college free agent signing. He was generally pretty good, but all of his outings came with the Flames playing out the string, so it’s tough to really assess his performance in a more competitive context.

Gross and Morton both have way less NHL experience than Pospisil, Zary and Sharangovich. But they’re both natural centres. And with the Flames fully into evaluating their prospects, it might make sense to give Gross and Morton extended auditions to see if there’s a long-term fit.