The Calgary Flames play their 21st game of the 2025-26 regular season on Tuesday night in Chicago. They’re hoping to bounce back from a frankly dreadful first quarter.

On Monday, we kicked off our look back at the first 20 games on an individual player level with a breakdown of the forward group. We conclude our report cards with the defensive group and the club’s two goaltenders, with everyone who played four games or more getting a letter grade.

Andersson and Kevin Bahl are pretty much joined at the hip at five-on-five. They’re the team’s “tough minutes” pairing, and Andersson being merely minus-1 considering the club’s overall situation is pretty good all things considered. Knocking his grade down a peg is the Flames’ rough special teams performances. [3 goals, 7 points in 20 games]

As mentioned, Bahl plays primarily with Andersson and mostly against top lines. He’s a plus-7. His offensive impacts are somewhat minimal and the Flames’ penalty kill hasn’t been great, but we’re only really holding the PK against him because you wouldn’t expect Bahl to be a big offensive driver. Considering his role and expectations, Bahl may be the team’s top defender this quarter. [2 goals, 4 points in 19 games]

Parekh played on the second power play unit and the third pairing, then got injured. It’s safe to say that in terms of usage and deployments, he was sheltered reasonably well. Was Parekh a huge offensive threat in the games he played? Not especially. Did he look occasionally lost defensively? Sure. Did he make progress before his injury? Yeah, a bit. We’re sympathetic to the kid because he’s undoubtedly in a challenging position, but we don’t think it’s unfair to say that he struggled. [0 goals, 1 point in 11 games]

We know that Bean isn’t the most exciting player on the Flames roster, but he’s been a perfectly serviceable third pairing defender for the Flames this season. He doesn’t really factor into special teams at all and his offensive output is muted, but he’s been decent enough for his limited role. [1 goal, 2 points in 12 games]

Kuznetsov had one game of NHL experience under his belt prior to his recall, and he’s played most of his recent tenure with Weegar. You wouldn’t know that he was a rookie based on how calm, poised and predictable he has been. We’ll ding him ever-so-slightly for the penalty kill’s struggles, but he’s been quite good. [0 goals, 1 point in 6 games]

So, y’know how we gave Bean a C- because he was perfectly adequate in a limited role? Well, Hanley’s been asked to do a bit more on the blueline, functionally becoming their utility man on the back end. He’s been what they’ve needed him to be, and his recent absence from the lineup feels more about giving Kuznetsov a run of games than about anything negative in Hanley’s game. [0 goals, 3 points in 18 games]

Is Weegar as bad as his league-worst minus-16 plus/minus? No. He’s on the ice a ton, in every game situation, and he doesn’t get wrecked whenever he’s on the ice. But he may have the absolute dirt-worst puck luck on the team. Case in point? Remember that Chicago game when he was a minus-3 and on the ice for every goal against? He was the lone guy back on two odd-man rushes. Not his fault, necessarily, but perhaps he could’ve found a way to disrupt those opportunities before they get to the back of the net. We know that a lot is asked of Weegar, but he hasn’t been especially good. [0 goals, 4 points in 20 games]

Miromanov played one game. He was fine. [0 goals, 0 points in 1 game]

As with Bean and Hanley, Pachal has been perfectly fine in a depth role. We’ll ding him a bit for the penalty kill’s struggles, but otherwise we have no real big qualms with his game. [0 goals, 3 points in 13 games]

Cooley has started three times and played twice in relief. His numbers are strong but he hasn’t picked up a win yet, primarily due to a lack of run support. Given what’s been asked of him, we have no real criticisms of his game. [0-2-1, 1.75 goals against average, .935 save percentage in 5 games]

We lump Wolf in the “better than his numbers indicate, but…” category with Weegar because of how much he’s been leaned on. Wolf was asked to cover up a lot of holes in the Flames’ game over the first few games of the season, and he struggled at times. He’s been much better lately and has kept the Flames in a lot of close games. We’ll split the difference between his rough earlier outings and his stronger recent outings. [5-10-2, 3.01 goals against average, .896 save percentage in 17 games]