The Calgary Flames have brought up one of their most promising young defencemen, at least for a little while. The club announced on Thursday morning that they’ve recalled defender Ilya Solovyov from the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers.

Solovyov, 23, is a left shot shutdown defender who was the Flames’ seventh-round pick in the 2020 NHL Draft. Since being drafted, he’s spent a season in the Kontinental Hockey League with Dynamo Minsk and two seasons in the Flames’ system with the Wranglers. He really had a big step forward in his game last season, serving as one half of a really strong shutdown pairing alongside Nick DeSimone. He has two points in four games to begin this AHL season, and he carries an $828,333 cap hit.

With Rasmus Andersson unavailable for the next two games, adding an extra blueliner makes a lot of sense for the Flames. It gives them two extra available skaters – a defender and a forward – in case they want to mix things up line-up wise, and if nothing else it’s a great reward for a young player who’s put in the work and progressed rather nicely.

With the call-up, the Flames’ active roster is now at 23 players – including Andersson, who’s suspended. The Flames’ total cap commitments are now $86,771,833 (between their active roster and three injured players). While not announced by the club, we’re presuming that Kevin Rooney has moved retroactively to the long-term injury reserve list to join Oliver Kylington (who was placed there to begin the season), which would increase the Flames’ available cap spending to $87,243,500 until one (or both) of those players are activated from LTIR. They have $471,667 left in that pool after recalling Solovyov, so any further additions would require them to flex Jakob Pelletier (and his $406,000 season-opening IR cap hit) to the LTIR.

The Flames are back in action on Thursday evening when they host the St. Louis Blues.