I noticed on the nhl advanced stats that the Flames shot speed was in the bottom half of the league last year. Do you think this relates to the lack of scoring? How does the team address this? edge.nhl.com/en/team/CGY
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FlamesNation Mailbag: Discussing advanced stats, puck luck and wings
Photo credit: Mike Gould
We’re into August, friends, and we’re at the point of the season where everyone in the hockey world is trying to squeeze the last enjoyment out of summer before they have to head back to the rink to start prepping for the upcoming season. Heck, the Calgary Flames’ amateur scouts are already headed to Slovakia and Czechia for the Hlinka Gretzky Cup to start scouting for the 2026 NHL Draft.
As summer continues on, let’s check in with the mailbag.
I would say that you – and the NHL’s advanced stats via NHL EDGE – are onto something there. The Flames are not a hockey club bereft of skill, but if you compared their roster on paper last season to the rest of the NHL… yeah, you could probably understand why they were ranked so low league-wide in terms of goals for and shooting percentage.
I will say that I think the Flames’ coaching staff put together a playing system that did a nice job of working within the roster’s limitations and giving them a chance to win. And as the team moves more and more of their young players into their big league roster, I don’t think it’s unfair to expect the skill quotient to see an uptick. Will that result in more goals? We shall see. And we’ll have to see if the 200-foot checking focus changes as the team gains a bit more skill and foot-speed over time.
How do you think ticket prices will change when the new building opens? Heard so many stories of price jumps when arenas open in other cities.
I mean, they’re definitely going up. That’s pretty much what always happens when a team moves into a new arena.
Rogers Place, for example, featured more premium offerings by design – Oilers execs said in interviews that’s what their ticket-holders said they wanted – and because the composition is different, an apples-to-apples comparison is tough. But while prices for a few seats stayed flat or close to flat, generally-speaking there were increases – some of them by 60% or higher. But part of the justification was it was a nicer, newer building, and the same seat in Rogers Place would have better sightlines and amenities than the same seat at Rexall Place.
The same logic will probably hold true at Scotia Place. But I suspect that Flames brass is well-aware of how poorly-received the price increases were in Edmonton, so we’ll see how things unfold here in 2027.
Which players are bouce-back candidates for next season and which players are more likely to regress?
I was curious about this myself, so I went over to Natural Stat Trick and took a look at which players had particular high or low PDO – percentage driven outcomes – which is calculated by simply adding a player’s on-ice shooting and save percentage together. In theory, it evens out at 1.000, so having a high PDO means you’re a bit lucky and having a low PDO means you’re unlucky.
Those with notably low PDO at five-on-five in 2024-25 include Joel Farabee (.970), Rasmus Andersson (.972), Morgan Frost (.982), Kevin Bahl (.985), Blake Coleman (.985) and Connor Zary (.988). Andersson, in particular, played a ton of hockey and so his rough PDO combined with his ice time to produce an ugly plus/minus. The list of players with higher PDO is pretty short: just Justin Kirkland (1.109).
So if you’re trying to remain optimistic about the Farabee/Frost acquisition… well, if their puck luck bounces back, maybe it could turn out OK.
Can you get good wings in Calgary? And is it blue cheese or ranch dressing as dipping sauce?
Calgary has developed a pretty fun food culture over the past few decades – a nice byproduct of an influx of people moving to town from all over the place – and a nice outcome of that is there are so many good places to get wings in town. There are few bad choices when it comes to wing night. Generally-speaking, most places will have both blue cheese and ranch dressing available upon request, but your mileage may vary.
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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