Ever see the classic 1989 motion picture Major League, where a team is purposefully built to be bad and rally together to prove everyone wrong – especially their greedy owner? It’s an amazing movie, and we’ve seen various incarnations of the Calgary Flames embrace that sort of “us against the world” mentality throughout their history.

Nobody expected the 2003-04 Flames to make the playoffs, or to do a damn thing once they battled their way in. They finished a goal (or a goal review) away from a Stanley Cup. In 2014-15, the general expectation was a Flames team that finished fourth-from-last in the prior season would be even worse. They became the “Find A Way Flames.” And last season, a Flames team that had sold off a slew of regulars was expected to be quite poor… and ended up missing the playoffs on a tiebreaker.

What we’ve seen in the past is a yearly pendulum swing of external expectations, with the 2014-15 breakthrough followed by higher expectations, a regression, lower expectations, a rebound, and then higher expectations again, a crash back down to earth, and so on. But that doesn’t seem to be happening this year, as the Flames’ leap forward in 2024-25 has been met with continued external skepticism and an expectation that, nah, they’ll crash back down to the NHL’s basement in 2025-26.

And while we definitely don’t think that the club’s success in 2024-25 was entirely the group having a chip on their shoulder and embracing that nobody believed they would do anything except themselves, you can’t ignore the notion that it was a big part in creating a cohesive team identity.

Based on some recent interviews with Flames, the “us against the world” mindset seems to be intact.

MacKenzie Weegar, speaking with Sportsnet’s Eric Francis:

“It’s just one of those things that pisses me off, because I know the kind of team we have, and I want those expectations to be higher,” said Weegar.
“There’s still that ‘no respect’ thing for Calgary.”

Dustin Wolf, at the NHL North American Player Media Tour (via Daily Faceoff):

[Speaking about being left off the U.S. Olympic orientation roster]
“You know, I think it just creates fire. I’ve been the guy that’s been looked over so much in my career. You know, I don’t think going or not going to the orientation means that they don’t like them. But, you know, the start of the season, first two months of the season, it’s critical for an opportunity to go over to the Olympics. And, you know, that’s the goal. You want to prove people wrong. I’m going to, I know myself, our group, are continuing to prove people wrong on a daily basis in Calgary. And, you know, that’s just another side of it.”

Mikael Backlund, speaking after signing his extension:

“I know the outside expectations are still low, but I know other teams, I’m talking to Coach, I know he said that a lot of teams have a lot of respect for us now, more than we had a year ago, and they expect a hard game against us. So, it’s going to be hard for us to win games. So, everyone’s going to have to bring a little bit more if it’s going to be better than last year. So, of course, we love to some of those young guys to have big years this year and push this team over the hump to make the playoffs.”
[Asked if he minds the low external expectations]
“No, it’s fine. It is what it is. I believe in the group, and yeah, we just got to go out there and prove everyone wrong again. We know how good we can be, and we know how fun it was at the end of last year, until that last game, our second last game, but I am really excited about the group.”

Simply put, the Flames have been listening and reading and watching all the things that have been said about them – for the second consecutive summer – about how they’re going to be bad and there’s nothing they can do about it and they might as well not even show up.

And for the second consecutive fall, they seem to have shown up to training camp pretty determined to make a lot of people look quite foolish for the things they’ve said and written about their hockey club over the off-season.

We’ll see if that mentality, that motivation, is enough to nudge them over the cut line after 82 games and get them into the post-season.

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