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The Flames have all sorts of flexibility after signing Simon Nemec
Photo credit: Jerome Miron-Imagn Images
The Calgary Flames took care of a big piece of short and long-term business on Monday, locking up defenceman Simon Nemec to a five year deal carrying a $7.25 million cap hit.
The deal locks up a talented young blueliner through the 2030-31 season, and allows the Flames to maintain flexibility in a few key ways going forward.
How the Flames maintain short-term flexibility
Here’s the projected lineup and roster we cobbled together following the Blake Coleman trade for the upcoming season. We’ve added cap hits.
LW1: Matvei Gridin $953,750 | C1: Morgan Frost $4,375,000 | RW1: Matt Coronato $6,500,000 |
LW2: Sam Honzek $909,166 | C2: Mikael Backlund $3,250,000 | RW2: Joel Farabee $5,000,000 |
LW3: Jonathan Huberdeau $10,500,000 | C3: Ryan Strome $5,000,000 | RW3: Yegor Sharangovich $5,750,000 |
LW4: Maxim Tsyplakov $2,250,000 | C4: Connor Zary $3,775,000 | RW4: Adam Klapka $1,250,000 |
LD1: Kevin Bahl $5,350,000 | RD1: Simon Nemec $7,250,000 | G1: Dustin Wolf $7,500,000 |
LD2: Jacob Middleton $4,350,000 | RD2: Zayne Parekh $953,750 | G2: Devin Cooley $1,350,000 |
LD3: Yan Kuznetsov $812,500 | RD3: Zach Whitecloud $2,750,000 | |
ExD1: Joel Hanley $1,750,000 | ExD2: Brayden Pachal $1,187,500 | ExF1: Martin Pospisil $2,500,000 |
Add in the two retained salary slots for Blake Coleman ($2,450,000) and Nazem Kadri ($1,400,000), that’s a full 23-man roster with cap commitments of $89,366,666. With a $104 million cap ceiling, that means the Flames have $14,633,334 in cap space.
In other words: from a financial standpoint, the Flames have oodles of financial flexibility for the coming season (and beyond).
Additionally, two things to bear in mind for the back half of the 2026-27 calendar:
Ryan Strome, Morgan Frost, Maxim Tsyplakov, Joel Hanley and Brayden Pachal are all potential unrestricted free agents on July 1, 2027, meaning there’s the potential for possible trades prior to the trade deadline. (Adam Klapka and Yan Kuznetsov are prospective restricted free agents on July 1, 2027 as well.)
Because they would be joining directly from college hockey, if the Flames sign the collegiate quartet of Carson Carels, Ethan Wyttenbach, Cole Reschny and Cullen Potter and they report to the Flames, they would not count against the Flames’ limited number of post trade deadline call-ups, there’s also no roster limit after the trade deadline and as noted, the Flames have tons of cap space, so the foursome would essentially be free additions to the NHL roster in March or April.
The Flames would not need to move anybody out or open up cap space to add these four prospects to their roster. That’s pretty huge.
How the Flames maintain medium-to-long-term flexibility
We alluded to this in the prior section, but think about this: the Flames have staggered the expiration of most of their important players over the next few seasons.
We already discussed the 2027 off-season, with Frost being potentially the only “big” expiring deal. Looking forward, things are spread out fairly well.
- After the 2027-28 season: Matvei Gridin, Sam Honzek, Zayne Parekh and Connor Zary are potential RFAs; Mikael Backlund, Joel Farabee, Zach Whitecloud and Devin Cooley are potential UFAs.
- After the 2028-29 season: assuming they sign their ELCs this spring, Cole Reschny, Cullen Potter and Ethan Wyttenbach are potential RFAs; Jacob Middleton and Martin Pospisil are potential UFAs.
- After the 2029-30 season: assuming he signs his ELC this spring, Carson Carels would be a potential RFA; Yegor Sharangovich would be a potential UFA.
- After the 2030-31 season: Jonathan Huberdeau, Simon Nemec and Kevin Bahl would be potential UFAs.
- After the 2031-32 season: Matt Coronato would be a potential UFA.
- After the 2032-33 season: Dustin Wolf would be a potential UFA.
Even just in terms of the top younger players in the system, they’re split across three different summers, which allows the Flames to not be overwhelmed by, say, seven prominent players becoming UFAs in one off-season.
The Flames know how they want the next few seasons to go, but rebuilds are rarely without bumps in the road. Given that, it’s pretty savvy that the Flames have tried to build this much flexibility into what they’re doing.
We’ll see if it pays off.
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