A couple of familiar faces have been called up to the Calgary Flames from their American Hockey League affiliate.
The club announced on Tuesday morning, in advance of morning skate, that they’ve summoned forward Adam Klapka and defenceman Tyson Barrie from the AHL’s Calgary Wranglers.
The 24-year-old Klapka is a pretty big dude, listed at 6’8″ and 230 pounds. He’s a winger who shoots right, which makes him practically a unicorn in the Flames’ system – they don’t have many right shot forwards. Klapka made the NHL roster out of camp but was sent down to the AHL when everyone got healthy at the end of October. He was also up for much of the month of November. All-told, he has zero points in six NHL games this season and 25 points over 29 AHL games this season.
The Flames are looking for the right forward mix right now. With Andrei Kuzmenko getting his offensive mojo back, he’s moved up to the third line. With Rory Kerins’ skill-set arguably ill-suited to fourth line duty, he went down to the AHL on Monday. Klapka, arguably much better suited to fourth line minutes given his size and play style, is up to see if he can fix chemistry with the likes of Clark Bishop, Ryan Lomberg and Kevin Rooney.
The 33-year-old Barrie returns after a pretty productive weekend with the Wranglers. He was sent down on a conditioning stint before the weekend, as he hasn’t played an NHL game since November as he’s slid into the eighth spot on the defensive depth chart. He played two games with the Wranglers on their top pairing, and had three points over two games. With Kevin Bahl’s injury against Minnesota, bringing Barrie back up gives the Flames a healthy extra defenceman with NHL experience… and doesn’t involve the Flames having to do anything odd with roster moves otherwise.
As of this writing, Bahl remains on the active roster. The Flames are currently carrying 23 players: two goaltenders, eight defencemen and 13 forwards. They’ll host the Washington Capitals on Tuesday night at the Saddledome.
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