The Calgary Flames have put pen to paper with one of the more exciting members of their 2024 draft class. On Sunday, the club announced that they’ve signed forward Andrew Basha to a three year, entry level contract. Per the club’s release, the deal carries a cap hit of $897,500.
Basha, 18, was selected by the Flames with the 41st overall selection in June’s entry draft, their third selection following Zayne Parekh and Matvei Gridin in the first round. A Calgary kid who’s a left shot winger, Basha had a tremendous season with the Western Hockey League’s Medicine Hat Tigers in 2023-24, posting 30 goals and 85 points over 63 games. Scouts often came to Medicine Hat games to scout teammate Cayden Lindstrom and came away with tons of enthusiasm for him as a prospect.
Basha came to Flames training camp and played two pre-season games. The best thing we can say about Basha is that he did not look like a tentative 18-year-old kid at an NHL camp, but rather looked like, well, Andrew Basha. Basha’s game is a mash-up of high-end skill and a lot of tenacity, and it requires confidence and aggression to really work well – opponents in the WHL hate playing against him. Well, that’s how he looked in the NHL pre-season, which bodes well for his future.
Basha is a potential double beneficiary of the CBA’s “slide rule” for entry-level contracts. We discussed this earlier this month regarding Sam Honzek, so I’ll recycle my rundown of how that rule works:
In a nutshell, here’s how the slide rule operates. If an 18 or 19-year-old player signs their entry-level deal but doesn’t play 10 NHL games in their first season, then their ELC gets extended by a year – functionally they receive their annual signing bonuses as originally scheduled, but their salary and performance bonuses slide back by a year. If they signed as an 18-year-old and their deal slid once, it can slide a second time if they don’t play 10 NHL games in their second season. Again, in this case, their salary and performance bonuses would slide back a year but their signing bonuses would remain as originally set.It’s important to note that Section 9.2, part of the CBA section that governs ELCs, defines age as how old a player is on Sept. 15 of the calendar year they sign their ELC, regardless of how old they actually were when they signed their ELC. The exception is players who sign in their 19-year-old year, but would turn 20 between Sept. 15 and Dec. 31 – they don’t get the slide.
Basha turns 19 in November but because he was 18 on Sept. 15, this counts as an 18-year-old signing and he would be eligible for two slide years – 2024-25 and 2025-26. Because he’s a 2005 birthday he’s eligible to play in the AHL next season (2025-26), so potentially he could get a free developmental year in the AHL if he plays there and doesn’t play 10 NHL games. In that case, the first year of his ELC wouldn’t start running until 2026-27 instead.
Basha’s a player that a lot of people throughout the scouting community – and Flames hockey ops – are enthusiastic and excited about. We’re fascinated to watch his continued development, especially given the contractual flexibility the Flames have with him due to the slide rule.
