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Flames and Rasmus Andersson ‘not even close’ on contract talks: Friedman
Photo credit: Stephen Brashear-Imagn Images
Gang, the Calgary Flames are playing well right now and riding a three game winning streak. They are also, by virtue of their rough October, pretty far out of the playoff picture. The club’s standings reality, combined with some impressive performances from younger players in the organization, have led to increasing conversations in fan circles about the club potentially moving on from some older players.
First and foremost in that group? Rasmus Andersson, who’s on an expiring contract and is slated to become an unrestricted free agent on July 1.
On Monday’s edition of the 32 Thoughts podcast, Elliotte Friedman chatted with Kyle Bukauskas about Andersson’s situation.
“Rasmus Andersson is at the end of his contract, right? And we’ve talked about this before. One of the things I’ve heard about Andersson is he changes his mind staying or going like you and I change socks, which is like every six weeks. So like, like last year, like last year at the end of the year, he was like, I don’t think I should come back. And he showed up at training camp and he was like, I think I might want to stay, but he’s got to find a deal that both sides are comfortable signing. And right now they’re not. They’re not even close from what I understand.”
Friedman’s update on Andersson’s status is roughly consistent with everything we’ve heard to this point. The Flames and Andersson’s camp reportedly exchanged contract proposals over the summer and they weren’t especially close to each other’s offers. And while Andersson is off to a fantastic start to the 2025-26 season and has made an impressive bounce-back from a tough 2024-25, he still may find himself out of Calgary’s plans simply because of his age and his contract terms not fitting in with the club’s age scheme going forward.
We’ll see how that plays out.
Meanwhile, Friedman also provided a big picture snapshot of where the Flames are at more generally in terms of trading prominent assets:
“Like, look, like the trade deadline isn’t until March. There’s not a lot of great offers flowing right now. Like I can tell you right now, even if the Flames wanted to trade Nazem Kadri as of Saturday, there was no offer there that was making them say, ‘Hmm, maybe we should trade Nazem Kadri.’ And the same case was for Blake Coleman. And the same case was for MacKenzie Weegar. The same case was for Rasmus Andersson. The same case was for anybody else on that team you might want to throw into that list. There was no trade offer. Like, even if the Flames wanted to tear it down to the studs, there wasn’t anything on their desk last week that was going to say, ‘Oh boy, if we reject this deal, we might really regret it in five years.'”
Friedman summarized the whole situation fairly succinctly: “It’s way too premature to know where the Calgary Flames are going.”
The Flames are back in action on Wednesday when they face the Tampa Bay Lightning in the second game of a five game road trip.
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