A year ago, the Calgary Flames were the proverbial main character of the trade market. Seemingly everything went through them, and general manager Craig Conroy was one of the busiest people in hockey for much of the season.

Flash forward to the 2025 trade deadline: in the first year of their rebuild, the Flames are competing for a playoff spot. And following on the heels of their late January swap with the Philadelphia Flyers that brought Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee into the fold, the Flames made precisely zero trades prior to the deadline.

“Everybody looking to do something or making a splash, but we kind of made our deal maybe a month ago,” said Conroy, on the phone from Dallas following the deadline. “And that was the thing, age-appropriate guys that fit into what we’re trying to do. And as much as I know you’re always trying to help your team and improve it, there was definitely, when you see what’s out there, what makes sense and what doesn’t. I mean, whether it was the prices and that, but it’s not so much the prices, it’s got to be the right fit. It’s got to make sense and it’s got to make us better now and in the long term.”

As the deadline hit, the Flames sat with a record of 29-23-10, with their 68 points putting them one point ahead of Vancouver for the final Western Conference playoff spot. Conroy praised the club’s young players for their growth – name-dropping Dustin Wolf, Matt Coronato and Connor Zary – and also commended the club’s veteran leaders for setting the tone with their performances.

Between the team’s focus on their plan for progressive growth over several years and the possibility of a potential playoff appearance, Conroy was probably destined for a quiet Friday. While he was obviously aware of the price tags out there for teams selling off pieces, that wasn’t something he was overly interested in pursuing, nor were short-term rentals. Opportunities to put together a “hockey trade” or to serve as a third-party salary cap broker also didn’t materialize.

“If you’re just jetting guys out of here, that sends the wrong message to the team,” said Conroy. “I mean, the team’s done such an amazing job to put themselves in this situation, to just be selling and maybe not bringing back anything. Everybody loves draft picks and draft picks are great. But still, they’re not something that’s going to help you today, they’re going to help you in the future. So I think for us, the mindset was going in, hey, if we can help ourselves, if there’s a hockey trade, if there’s something that we can upgrade on, we’d definitely look at that. I mean, we would, but I don’t feel like we were just in the rental market this year to get older players that might only be here for a short amount of time. That didn’t make any sense.”

The lone move the Flames made on Friday was assigning forward Adam Klapka to the American League’s Calgary Wranglers, following on the heels of a similar move on Thursday involving defender Ilya Solovyov. The assignments keep the duo eligible to play in the AHL during the remainder of the season, but they might end up getting into AHL game action depending on whether they’re needed for the Flames’ game against Montreal on Saturday.

“We get the four recalls and we’re just going to see, again, if they’re not going to play maybe on Saturday, they get to play a couple of games down [against] Manitoba in Winnipeg,” said Conroy.

Klapka played just one game during the road trip (Mar. 2 in Carolina) while Solovyov was a spectator for the final three games of the road trip.

The Flames’ focus has been on preparing for the trade deadline, and now things will pivot towards other matters. But this was a much different type of deadline for the Flames than in recent years, with the quiet tone very much in keeping with the lack of noise around the club throughout this season.

With very little trade chatter around the Flames this season, the club’s players have been able to simply focus on playing hockey.

“Right from even the Stanley Cup playoffs, when I first took over the job, all the way through, we weren’t even in the playoffs, and it was about us every day,” said Conroy. “So, you know, I think to quiet that, to just have the team come together and have some success. I mean, I think that quiets everything, too.And I think for me personally, it’s the guys. The guys have quieted that down more than anybody.’

With 20 games to go, we’ll see if the Flames can return to the Stanley Cup playoffs for the first time since 2022. The Flames continue their quest to lock down a playoff berth when they host the Montreal Canadiens on Saturday at the Saddledome.