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FlamesNation Mailbag: Diving into reader questions three weeks before the NHL Draft
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Photo credit: Mike Gould
Ryan Pike
Jun 9, 2025, 12:00 EDTUpdated: Jun 9, 2025, 16:01 EDT
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Gang, we’re just shy of three weeks away from the 2025 NHL Draft. The Calgary Flames have oodles of cap space, four picks in the first three rounds of the draft, and having designs on finishing above the playoff cutline in 2025-26 after missing out on tiebreakers this season.
As we wait for the hustle and bustle to begin, let’s dive into the mailbag!
My understanding is that Ryan Huska is under contract for the 2025-26 season, the final year of his initial three year deal. I also am of the understanding that general manager Craig Conroy is a big fan of Huska, and when asked about Huska’s contractual status on exit interview day, Conroy was upbeat on the possibility of extending him.
I would probably give Huska a two year extension (through 2027-28) so that he’s guaranteed a year in the new building and then you can see if he’s still a fit for the team in another couple seasons. Huska’s gig has been to help navigate the team’s transition and growth period, and he’s done well so far.
I’ll add a disclaimer that I like Vancouver, and it’s a pretty town with lots of positive qualities.
However…
  1. Calgary’s in a river valley and while we hardly have any beaches whatsoever, I would argue that the Bow River valley is prettier than Vancouver’s waterfront. (I love the oceanfront in Vancouver, but we don’t have to deal with the weather swings that the coast does, and so the Bow River area is much more pleasant most of the year.)
  2. Because of Calgary’s different geography – we don’t have to deal with mountains barging into town – the road system is a bit more logically laid out than Vancouver’s and, as a consequence, the traffic isn’t as horrible.
  3. You can dress like a cowboy in Calgary whenever you want and there are no social consequences. Heck, we have two weeks a year where we flat-out insist that everyone pretend to be a cowboy.
Devin Cooley has a one-way contract for 2025-26 worth $775,000. A one-way deal just means that he makes $775,000 no matter if he’s with the Flames or Wranglers. He’s still eligible to be placed on the waiver wire, and if he clears he can be moved to the AHL roster and his cap hit disappears.
Heck, up to $1.15 million of any contract can be buried if that player is assigned to the AHL – for example  if I’m on a deal worth $1.5 million per season, if I’m sent to the AHL the cap impact on the NHL books drops by $1.15 million to $350,000. This CBA quirk often influences how teams structure short-term deals with players that might be on the roster bubble.
So lately there’s chatter that (a) Dan Vladar might not be back with the Flames and (b) the Flames might be looking at other options, such as Ivan Prosvetov. We’d recommend checking out a recent edition of Flames Talk, where Pat Steinberg laid out the whole situation.
The third-string netminder for the Flames last season was AHL starter Devin Cooley, who suffered an injury in January and just wasn’t nearly as effective when he returned. I don’t think the Flames are necessarily looking to replace Vladar with somebody that would block Cooley from moving up, but I do think they would want to create a competition in camp so that Cooley, coming off a rough second half, would not be given the NHL backup gig by default.
I would expect we see two members of the 2024 NHL Draft crop to suit up for the Wranglers in 2025-26: Andrew Basha and Matvei Gridin.
Basha is a late birthday and since he was born in 2005, he’s old enough to graduate from the CHL system to the AHL. And Gridin is eligible to go up, despite being a year younger than Basha, because he wasn’t drafted from the CHL system (and therefore isn’t held up by their aging-out rules).
Honestly? I think the Flames just need to keep getting draft choices for future drafts. Draft picks work in two ways for a team on the rise. First, they allow the Flames to keep building up their farm system. Second, if the Flames do get in a situation where they feel like they’re a big trade away from getting to where they want to be, draft picks can be great currency to spend.
Long story short: getting high picks – first or second-rounders, ideally – can help the Flames keep nudging this project of theirs along.
At this point the chatter from smart people that know the draft better than I do is that the 2026 class is a bit better than the 2025 class. Also, at this point, teams know what draft slot they’ve gotten for 2025 and so they may have a player in mind, while the 2026 pick is much more conceptual and so teams might be more prone to moving it.
So far, so good. They’re in the middle of foundation work right now – pouring gigantic amounts of concrete – and they’re expecting to be working on installing structural steel as summer turns into fall. There’s a ton of work being done, primarily below grade, right now.
I would suspect the most likely additions would be a goaltender to replace Dan Vladar in the system. Beyond that, I really wouldn’t expect very many free agent signings.
Let’s break this into chunks:
Sam Bennett: I think he was the victim of the Flames changing coaches so many times. Matthew Tkachuk was never expected to play centre, so he was left on the wing and allowed to just do his thing and build his game in one spot and with a clearly-defined role. As a result, Tkachuk became really great at his role. Bennett was flipped to and from centre so often that it was tough for him to find a niche, which made it tough for his many, many coaches to lean on him the way they did other players.
Matthew Tkachuk: Tkachuk was great. Had he stayed, the Flames would’ve kept a great player. I don’t hate the value the Flames got for him in the trade with Florida, though, Huberdeau contract notwithstanding. (I love Huberdeau as a player, but I don’t love his contract.)
Flames scouting: I think the Flames have gotten better with their amateur scouting in recent years, and I think a good part of that has been because of the melding of their data apparatus with their scouting apparatus, and the continuing influence of the late, great Chris Snow. I think the scouting staff are better equipped with data than they have been in the past, and I think the scouting intelligence is being melded together with data with better efficacy than in the past. We’ll see if things continue on this path, but the 2023 and 2024 draft classes have aged well so far.
Mikael Backlund. He’ll probably wear the C until he retires.
Typically things start to pick up league-wide after the scouting combine, which just wrapped up over the weekend. So I would surmise that we’ll start seeing some movement from a few teams as we inch closer to the draft at the end of the month.
I know it’s a deeply unsatisfying answer, but every team is trying their best to win, and sometimes they don’t reach their goals. In the case of the Flames, I’ll say this: the team was flat-out trying to financially survive for much of the 1990s – older fans may remember the “Save the Flames” days – and I think that sort of existence leaves its mark and subconsciously conditions you to focus on short-term priorities and objectives over longer-term thinking. (I don’t have the background or expertise to get into the nuts and bolts of it, but experiences are often the thing that moulds or cements the risk tolerance for individuals and organizations.)
Now that Scotia Place is almost a reality – it opens in two more seasons – and there’s new leadership in place for the organization in the form of president/CEO Robert Hayes and COO Lorenzo DiCicco, I’m very curious to see if we see the organization embrace more of a long-term view of things.
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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