Every summer, the FlamesNation writing staff compiles our top 20 Calgary Flames prospect rankings. And every year, despite our best efforts, there’s one prospect we really missed the boat on that makes us, collectively, look pretty foolish.

One player that fell outside of our top 20 that could make us look foolish this coming season is blueliner Brady Lyle.

A product of North Bay, Ontario, Lyle is a 24-year-old right shot defenceman.

He spent five seasons in the Ontario Hockey League with North Bay (and later Owen Sound), arriving in 2015 as a fresh-faced 16-year-old and aging out in 2020 just a few months before his 21st birthday. After scoring a single goal as a rookie, he progressed to 22 goals (and over a point-per-game) in his overage year.

Moving into the pro ranks, Lyle signed an American Hockey League deal with the Providence Bruins prior to the 2020-21 season. He spent two weeks in Slovakia playing in the Tipsport Liiga, Slovakia’s top league, then had 14 points in 25 games as an AHL rookie. His performance earned him an entry-level deal with the Bruins.

The challenge for Lyle within the Bruins system was just the sheer number of defenders they had. While he performed well in 2021-22, he was traded to St. Louis at the 2022 AHL trade deadline to ease the log-jam. He ended up fitting in really well with the Blues’ AHL team in Springfield, posting 31 points in 51 games in 2022-23, but he wasn’t qualified and became a free agent. (Again, this was probably because of the Blues having a bunch of defenders in their system.)

Yeah, Lyle’s bounced around a bit, but take a look at his progression.

He gets a lot of shots and he gets a lot of points. He’s built a reputation as a player that can run an AHL power play and plays a smart, up-tempo brand of hockey. Because of some injuries last season in Springfield, he played just about anywhere and everywhere on their blueline and performed quite capably. Does he have NHL upside? That’s debatable. But the Flames have a pretty young, developing group of blueliners with the Wranglers – Jeremie Poirier, Yan Kuznetsov and Ilya Solovyov specifically – and Lyle is somebody that’s a bit further along his developmental path that can help them along, and play with just about anybody in all three zones.

Lyle is probably closer to his perceived developmental ceiling than a lot of the Flames’ crop of prospects, which probably contributed to him not finding a place in our top 20 prospect ranking. But he’s the type of player that should be able to help his younger teammates develop, and he could surprise and work his way into the NHL. If he performs offensively for the Wranglers, there aren’t many right-shot blueliners in the system standing between him and a potential call-up.