In 2022, Jonathan Huberdeau registered 102 points.

He was not that productive offensively for the Calgary Flames in 2024.

But man, he sure did look a lot closer to what onlookers imagined they would see when the Flames acquired him from Florida. When fans come to a Flames game these days, they see a lot of Huberdeau on the ice as he’s playing quite a bit and playing quite well. And it’s a welcome return to form for a player who had, to be blunt, a pretty rough transition to the Flames upon his arrival at the beginning of the 2022-23 season.

Huberdeau was acquired along with MacKenzie Weegar from Florida in the Matthew Tkachuk trade. In the same 2022 off-season, the Flames functionally replaced Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau with Huberdeau, Weegar and Nazem Kadri. Talented players? Sure! Virtual clones of the players they were replacing? Nope. Perfect stylistic matches for what Darryl Sutter wanted from his group? Most definitely not.

The 2022-23 season, particularly in regards to Huberdeau, was a lengthy exercise of trying to fit a square peg in a round hole, and then seeing everyone involved become frustrated when it didn’t work. A superb finesse player and a gifted passer who had just set the single-season record for assists by a left winger, Huberdeau couldn’t immediately figure out the Flames’ structured checking style and bounced around the Flames’ lineup as a result, never really finding a fit.

The other result: the largest season-to-season drop-off in points in NHL history, a 60-point cliff between his 2021-22 and 2022-23 outputs.

In 2023-24, under new head coach Ryan Huska, Huberdeau started to figure it out. Huska favoured a similar but not identical style of game as Sutter, and Huberdeau seemed to start grasping the nuances as the season went along. His 2023 closed out, unfortunately, with just a solitary point that December – his line had strong underlyings and the Flames out-shot their opponents 140-102 with Huberdeau on the ice, but nothing went in for them.

In 2024, while he didn’t play that much differently than he did in late 2023, pucks started going in when Huberdeau was on the ice. In 2023, Huberdeau had 12 goals and 46 points. In 2024, he has 21 goals and 61 points, good for second on the team behind Nazem Kadri.

Huberdeau’s December 2024 performance has been an example of how far his game has come: he’s averaging 20 minutes of ice time per game, leading Flames forwards overall and at even strength, and he’s chipping in on both sides of special teams – after a summer chat with Huska, he was added to the penalty kill rotation. He’s led the Flames with five goals and 11 points this December.

Moreover, December showcased a lot of the things that have become staples of the 2024-25 edition of Huberdeau. He’s a much more noticeable player away from the puck, often using his stick and positioning to disrupt opposition cycles and sending play moving up ice. And his awareness of offensive zone positioning has made him a pretty useful penalty killer for the Flames in a secondary role.

He capped off the pre-Christmas schedule with a superb shorthanded goal against Chicago – his first since joining the Flames – and also had an unsuccessful penalty shot opportunity in the game.

“He’s just got his swagger back,” said teammate Blake Coleman after the Chicago game. “I think he’s feeling good. He looks, I think I said it in my first period of intermission. I didn’t know he had the turbo button like that on the PK. He just left me in the dust. And it’s fun to watch. You can tell he’s feeling it. He’s making really strong plays. And it’s the Huby that, I don’t want to say we expect, but we know he’s capable of playing this way. And our team becomes a much more dangerous group when he’s playing like this.”

Speaking prior to the Christmas break, Huska compared Huberdeau’s commitment to two-way hockey – and the offensive opportunities that provides – to what he’s seen from youngster Matt Coronato. He had praise for how Huberdeau’s played this season.

“I’ve seen it all year,” said Huska. “For me, you know the way he ended last year, there seemed to be a little bit of swagger back in his game. He’s got that again now. So I think he’s enjoying who he’s playing with right now. I feel like probably more so for him, he feels like he can impact the game again the way he knows that he can. So what I like about him over the last couple of years is he has really committed to his play away from the puck, similar to what Matt [Coronato] is. And I think he’s a really good all-round player now. And it’s nice to see him getting rewarded again at some points too, because that’s important for him as well.”

It seems unlikely that we’ll see Huberdeau return to 115-point form in his career – that type of output was the product of a really specific set of circumstances. But if 2024 is any indication, we could see Huberdeau continue to play some really good hockey and be a really effective player for the Flames in the coming years.