On Wednesday night in Vancouver, Sam Honzek played his first-ever National Hockey League as a member of the Calgary Flames.

Honzek, a 2023 first-round selection, made his first NHL appearance at the tender age of 19 – he turns 20 in mid November. By playing as a teenager, he became just the 34th player in Flames history to play games as a teenager, joining a really eclectic mix of all-time franchise greats… and some players that didn’t pan out quite as well.

Let’s delve into the history.

The breakdown of the 34 players, positionally, is two goaltenders, 11 defencemen and 21 forwards.

A lot of these teenagers were players, like Honzek, that made the Flames’ roster out of training camp. Several of them were eventually assigned back to either junior or the minor leagues, depending on the rules at the time. (Before the advent of the Canadian Hockey League’s modern agreement with the NHL, teams had a bit more flexibility in terms of where players could go in the farm system at different ages.)

Trevor Kidd was drafted by the Flames in 1990 out of the Western Hockey League. He debuted with the NHL club at the end of the 1991-92 season, but he actually spent that year with the Canadian National Team preparing for and then playing in the 1992 Winter Olympics in Albertville, France. Kidd was the backup, playing behind Sean Burke, and won a silver medal. Once the Olympics were complete, Kidd joined the Flames.

Robyn Regehr was involved in a bad car accident during the 1999 off-season that saw him break both of his legs. Not only did Regehr fully recover from his injuries and play again, he played in the NHL just a few months after his accident. His wreck was on July 4; he made his NHL debut at the end of October after a brief AHL conditioning stint. That”s downright miraculous, and earned him strong consideration for the Bill Masterton Memorial Trophy for perseverance and dedication to hockey.

Mikael Backlund made his NHL debut in January 2009 because he happened to be in town at the time. Backlund played in the 2009 World Juniors for Sweden, capturing a silver medal. There had been some frustrations for Backlund and his Swedish club team up to that point, and Flames management facilitated a move for Backlund to the Western Hockey League’s Kelowna Rockets. Backlund had stopped off in Calgary for a few days after the World Juniors prior to joining the Rockets, and an injury to Todd Bertuzzi meant that the Flames needed a forward for a game against the New York Islanders. Backlund filled in, made his debut, and then headed off to Kelowna. (He won a WHL Championship with the Rockets that season.)

Sven Baertschi’s NHL debut also came under unique circumstances during the 2011-12 season. At the time, the Flames had lost forwards Tim Jackman, Mikael Backlund, Lance Bouma, Mike Cammalleri, Blake Comeau, Blair Jones and Lee Stempniak to injuries. They had already called up several forward from the American Hockey League’s Abbotsford Heat, so they enacted a provision that allowed the team to bring up a junior player in the event of a roster emergency – Baertschi, the team’s most recent first-round selection. He played five games and scored three goals in that span.

19 teenagers have scored goals with the Flames. Nobody scored more goals as a teen in a Flames uniform than Dan Quinn, who potted 39.

Behind Quinn, four teens scored 20 goals or (slightly) more: Jarome Iginla (22), Sean Monahan (22), Sam Bennett (21) and Robert Reichel (20). Matthew Tkachuk scored 19 goals, including two in his final game before he turned 20 in 2017. Kevin LaVallee scored 17.

Furher back, in terms of players scoring multiple goals as teenagers there’s Richard Kromm (10), Derek Morris (9), Oleg Saprykin (7), Robyn Regehr (5), Brian Glynn (5), Paul Reinhart (4), Sven Baertschi (3) and Bobby Simpson (3).

And in the “at least you got one” club, there’s Guy Chouinard, Al MacInnis, Denis Cyr and Jim Peplinski, with one apiece.