Good news, everybody! The Calgary Flames are mostly back!

The hockey club announced their training camp roster on Wednesday, as players went through their entry medicals for the year – fitness testing was abolished in the new collective bargaining agreement – then hit the ice for the first time on Thursday morning.

Via our pal Pat Steinberg of QR Calgary, here is how the Flames’ lines and pairings shook out on Thursday.

Matvei Gridin – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Sam Honzek/Chase Harrington – Mikael Backlund – Joel Farabee
Connor Zary – Ryan Strome – Yegor Sharangovich
Maxim Tsyplakov/Alex Nylander – Martin Pospisil – Adam Klapka

Kevin Bahl – Simon Nemec
Jacob Middleton – Zayne Parekh
Yan Kuznetsov – Zach Whitecloud
Joel Hanley – Brayden Pachal

Dustin Wolf
Devin Cooley

(Jonathan Huberdeau is listed as part of Team Red, but he’s not quite back skating with the full group yet as he works his way back from hip resurfacing surgery.)

The main reaction we had to seeing the lines after Steinberg shared them on socials was “Oh, yeah, that’s sort of what we had in mind.” It’s a shorter training camp and a very short pre-season – last year many of the NHL regulars played in five games, this year it’s capped in the CBA at two games – so there’s going to be an emphasis on building that continuity and reinforcing systems in practices to compensate.

In terms of looking at potential battles: it appears that Connor Zary will be (a) on the wing and (b) elevated into Jonathan Huberdeau’s anticipated spot to start. It also appears that Chase Harrington is getting a really nice reward for a good prospects camp by getting to skate with the gosh-darn captain of the Flames. We don’t expect him to hang around past the weekend, as it’s unlikely that the Flames want him to miss many WHL games with Spokane, but the second-round pick is a player to keep an eye on going forward.

Is there a top nine spot available for Alex Nylander? Well, perhaps not. But if he’s going to be with the Flames, at least some of it probably would be as part of that fourth line mix. So it does make sense that he’s starting with that group, as the Flames try to find a way to get a little bit more offensive oomph out of every unit this coming season.

The Flames begin their truncated exhibition schedule on Sunday night at home against the Seattle Kraken.