Folks, the Calgary Flames made a big trade last week, acquiring forwards Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee from the Philadelphia Flyers. The trade definitely upgrades the Flames’ roster depth on paper and potentially makes them a more formidable team not just this season, but moving forward, too.
As we enter the final week of action before the 4 Nations Face-Off break, let’s check in with the mailbag!
I won’t speak for Craig Conroy – both because it’s unfair to do so and I’m not a mind-reader – but he’s been pretty adamant about wanting to build a situation in Calgary around players that want to be here. Both Conroy and head coach Ryan Huska have praised their six-man leadership core – Mikael Backlund, Blake Coleman, Nazem Kadri, Jonathan Huberdeau, Rasmus Andersson and MacKenzie Weegar – for how well this season has gone. That leadership group helped navigate the chaos of last season, and they’ve really set the tone inside the locker room and on the ice for the club’s young up-and-comers.
Unless (a) veteran players request a departure or (b) a team makes a crazy offer for one of those core veterans, we suspect the Flames’ desires are to keep the veterans around to help guide the young players through the next few seasons.
It sure seems like Dustin Wolf has gone from the Flames’ goalie of the future to their goalie of the present. With Dan Vladar a pending unrestricted free agent – and potentially departing this off-season – I suspect the Flames may look at some veteran options to provide an option as Wolf’s backup.
I don’t think the Flames want to necessarily hand the backup role to AHL All-Star Devin Cooley – much like they didn’t want to arbitrarily hand the NHL starter job to Wolf – but rather create a competitive environment where Cooley has to win the job. So you’re potentially looking for a goalie that you’d be comfortable as AHL starter or NHL backup. We’ll get a better sense of who’s available after the trade deadline, but there will likely be some interesting options out there.
(We’ll delve into pending UFA options that could be fits for the Flames during the 4 Nations break.)
The Flames really like Blake Coleman and Mikael Backlund. They’re smart veteran players that can be thrown out in tough-minutes deployments against the opposition’s top players and they give you good minutes. Heck, having Coleman and Backlund allow the more offensive-minded players to get easier deployments.
I think before we can declare anybody the heirs apparent to the Coleman/Backlund roles, they need to prove that they can take on the tough minutes those two do. I don’t think anybody’s there yet, but the nice thing about having Coleman and Backlund around is that you can groom players for those roles and have that duo mentor them. That’s a big plus.
I don’t think the Flames are shooing Backlund and Coleman out the door because of the arrivals of Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee, is what I’m trying to say. Heck, I’ll go as far as saying that Backlund is probably a Flame for as long as he wants to be.
We’ll delve deeper into the implications of the salary cap numbers later this week, and we’re getting deep into the nitty-gritty of cap comparables for the Flames’ pending free agents over the 4 Nations Face-Off break.
That said, I’ll throw out some guesses: $4 million for Dustin Wolf (on a bridge deal) and $8.75 million for Rasmus Andersson (on a long-term deal).
From the e-mail inbox from David: “If Zary is back after the 4 Nations Face-Off; what are your ideal lines?”
I’ll go one further: here are my ideal lines/pairings once Connor Zary and Kevin Bahl are back:
Jonathan Huberdeau – Nazem Kadri – Yegor Sharangovich
Connor Zary – Mikael Backlund – Blake Coleman
Joel Farabee – Morgan Frost – Matt Coronato
Ryan Lomberg – Clark Bishop – Martin Pospisil
Sharangovich on the top line gives Huberdeau two shooters to pass to. Zary on the Backlund line gives them a puck distributor to help set up Coleman. And Farabee-Frost-Coronato seems like a fun mix of grit, distribution and shooting. (And they’re all young!) I struggled with the fourth line a bit; you have to keep Lomberg and Pospisil in the lineup because they’re useful players, but I struggle with the centre for that line.
Kevin Bahl – Rasmus Andersson
Joel Hanley – MacKenzie Weegar
Jake Bean – Brayden Pachal
We’ve seen various defensive combinations over the season, and this group of six seems to have been the best configuration they’ve tried this season.
It’s been awhile since we’ve had a trade break during a game. It was pretty unique given that our insider pals started breaking pieces of the trade, but we didn’t really have the full picture of things until after both Philadelphia and Calgary’s games ended. So the night was spent trying to piece together the story and build out an idea of what both teams were trying to accomplish with the swap.
And I’ll give a shout-out to the Flames’ PR staff: they had a tough job balancing everyone’s needs for game coverage with really not being able to acknowledge the trade until the trade call had happened and everything had been squared away with the league. It was a longer night at the rink than usual, but I would say from a media standpoint it turned out pretty well. (And it gave all of us plenty of things to write about!)
Got a question for a future mailbag? Contact Ryan on Twitter/BlueSky at @RyanNPike or e-mail him at Ryan [at] TheNationNetwork.com! (Make sure you put Mailbag in the subject line!)

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