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FlamesNation Mailbag: Answering reader questions on Zayne Parekh, trades, the draft and more!
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Photo credit: Mike Gould
Ryan Pike
Jan 12, 2026, 14:00 ESTUpdated: Jan 11, 2026, 21:49 EST
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The Calgary Flames are in the midst of a lengthy eastern road trip, buddies, and they just won their first game of the 2026 calendar year. Things are trending… very much in the same direction they’ve been trending since their rough October: probably towards favourable odds in the draft lottery.
As we ponder the 37 games left on the regular season schedule, let’s check in with our wonderful readers in this week’s mailbag!
On Zayne Parekh: I don’t know if I would play him every night. Given he’s still a big physically slight, I’d try to use games as part of a fitness plan to help bulk him up and build up his game. If it were up to me, I’d send him down to the Wranglers on a conditioning stint and once he returned, I’d use him on sort of a college schedule, playing maybe half of the Flames’ games and allowing him to build up his game a bit. By the end of the season, I’d want Parekh to feel confident at the NHL level.
On Martin Pospisil: when Craig Conroy spoke to the media after Devin Cooley’s contract extension, he indicated that Pospisil would be skating on his own while the team was on their current road trip. If that’s gone well and he keeps progressing, maybe he joins practices when the team returns to town and then they can work towards getting him back into games. He’s trending in a positive direction, but he’s still a little bit away from playing again. (Fingers crossed for Pospisil that everything goes well; he’s had to deal with so many wonky injuries that he deserves some good luck.)
At this point, I would put the odds at Rasmus Andersson being traded at 90%, of Blake Coleman being traded at 60% and Nazem Kadri being traded at 20%.
Andersson is the biggest and best asset the Flames have, and moving him is their last chance of getting oodles of assets as they try to stockpile picks and prospects in an effort to move their project forward. They have more time to do the same with Coleman, so I don’t think it’s as much of a sure thing. Kadri’s hefty cap hit and the amount of time left on the deal complicate things, and so I don’t think the Flames will get good enough offers to go through with it right now.
If Gavin McKenna is off the table, I would strongly lean towards Swedish winger Ivar Stenberg. My reasoning is that Stenberg is a pretty mature left shot forward who can play either wing. He’s one of the older players in the draft as a Sept. 30 birthday, but he’s already played 50 games in the Swedish Hockey League, one of the top pro leagues in the world, and he’s scoring at just shy of a point-per-game pace as an 18-year-old.
He’s moving the needle really nicely playing against grown-ass men. When he plays against his peer group, as we saw at the World Juniors, he’s really strong. For a Flames team that has some centres on the way in the form of Cole Reschny and Cullen Potter, Stenberg could compliment their skills really nicely.
Someone else sent me a note asking about my thoughts on some of the 2026 NHL Draft eligible performances at the World Juniors. I didn’t watch every game of the tournament, so here are my limited thoughts: I like Gavin McKenna but thought Keaton Verhoeff was merely fine, though he didn’t play a ton. I really liked the USA’s Chase Reid, Latvia’s Alberts Smits and Slovakia’s Tomas Chrenko in the games I saw them in.
Going back through starting goaltenders in Hockey Reference, and completely ignoring injuries and focusing just on goaltender depth charts, the Flames have faced 24 starters and 21 backups. When you compare that to how the Flames have used their goaltenders – 34 starts for Dustin Wolf and 11 for Devin Cooley – that’s disproportionately skewed towards backups.
But let’s be blunt here: if you’re facing one of the teams that’s lingering near the NHL’s basement, it’s a great time to spell off your starter and give your backup a game. Generally-speaking, cellar-dwelling NHL teams see more backups, and… that’s what the Flames have been for big chunks of this season.
It depends what you mean by “significantly” different. I think it’s likely that Rasmus Andersson is moved before the Olympic roster freeze on Feb. 4. I don’t think the Flames want to leave that move until the nine days between the end of the Olympic freeze and the actual trade deadline.
I think the Flames are going to “strategic sell.” Aside from Rasmus Andersson, there’s no pressing time pressure to move anybody else to get value from an expiring asset. Beyond Andersson, though, I think the Flames will listen on a lot of other assets, but they’re not going to make trades just to make trades.
Got a question for a future mailbag? Contact Ryan on Twitter/BlueSky at @RyanNPike or e-mail him at Ryan.Pike [at] BetterCollective.com! (Make sure you put Mailbag in the subject line!)

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