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FlamesNation Mailbag: Getting through the dog days of summer with reader questions
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Photo credit: Mike Gould
Ryan Pike
Jul 21, 2025, 12:00 EDTUpdated: Jul 20, 2025, 19:09 EDT
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Friends, we’re into the meat of July. The Calgary Stampede is over and the impending Calgary Folk Fest signals the end of July. We’re into the dog days of summer, with NHL news few and far between.
As we enjoy the calm, let’s check in with the mailbag!
I like this question a lot, so I’ll try to highlight a few interesting weekends of games at the ‘Dome:
The New York Rangers visit on Sun., Oct. 26, but the Wranglers host the Coachella Valley Firebirds, their most bitter rivals, the prior Friday and Saturday (Oct. 24-25) so this could be a really fun opportunity to enjoy the Flames’ present and future. And since it’s October, the weather should still be fairly decent if you want to sneak away to the mountains in-between games.
The Flames host the Winnipeg Jets on Sat., Nov. 15, but the Hitmen also host the Saskatoon Blades the night before. With the current expectation being that prospects Hunter Laing (Saskatoon) and Axel Hurtig (Hitmen) will return to the WHL for the coming season, this could be another present Flames/future Flames themed weekend.
The Flames host the New York Islanders on Sat., Jan. 17, but the Wranglers have a pair of games against the Edmonton Oilers’ AHL team, the Bakersfield Condors, on the Friday (Jan. 16) and Sunday (Jan. 18). If you want a taste of the AHL Battle of Alberta and a clash between the Flames and their 1972 expansion cousins, this is your weekend.
And one more for you: the Washington Capitals visit on Fri., Jan. 23 for perhaps Alex Ovechkin’s final trip to Calgary… and it’s also a rare trip to town for the AHL’s Laval Rocket, Montreal’s farm team.
But I’m incredibly biased, as I think everyone who hasn’t had a chance to see a game at the Saddledome should get one or two in before the building closes at the end of the 2026-27 season.
Mikael Backlund is entering the final year of his current deal. He turns 37 in March, so he’s eligible for performance bonuses since he’s over 35. I would suggest we would see a one year deal for Backlund, probably with around a $2 million base salary, and escalating games-played bonuses. I would point at Claude Giroux’s recent deal in Ottawa –$2 million base salary and $2.75 million in potential bonuses – as a template.
I posted about this on social media recently after Lukas Dostal’s signing with Anaheim was announced: Dustin Wolf has played fewer games than Dostal, but has better numbers. I would suggest that Dostal’s deal – five years at a $6.5 million cap hit – is a good starting point. The risk for both sides of Wolf signing now is that he could play really well and drive the cap hit up… or struggle and drive the cap hit down.
Wolf’s past six seasons of hockey suggests that he may not struggle, though, so if you’re the Flames, do you bump the cap hit up a little bit (and maybe see if you can get the deal to six years) and call it a day? I think, when it comes down to it, Wolf’s deal ends up looking quite similar to Dostal’s… but probably with a slightly higher AAV.
I think the biggest challenge is market size, particularly in terms of having enough of a corporate community able to absorb the increasingly large cost for suites. With the cap moving past $100 million in the next couple seasons, the name of the game for NHL clubs, for better or worse, is generating revenue, and you can’t really do that just by hitting up your regular fanbase repeatedly or raising ticket prices. The big challenge with smaller places like Winnipeg and Quebec City that are really reliant on government jobs is that you might not have the corporate sector robust enough to support those sorts of premium offerings on a local level.
I have no idea if the Flames are talking Jason Robertson with Dallas. On paper there seems to be a fit for Rasmus Andersson with the Stars, and so if I were them, I’d be curious about Robertson’s availability. (If you add Robertson, then a pathway towards cementing Connor Zary as a full-time centre becomes more clear, which probably helps with the slotting of the forward group.)
And yeah, I would argue that figuring out the succession plan for the Flames’ centres over the next few years is a big concern for the red team. Nazem Kadri and Mikael Backlund average out to 35 years of age, and Cole Reschny and Cullen Potter are probably a few years away. How do you bridge the gap?
From the DMs: Why do the Flames appear to be overly confident in their goaltending at this time? Cooley & Prosvetov are unproven in the NHL should Wolf go down. Meanwhile, James Reimer & Ilya Samsonov remain free agents. Is there something we as fans are missing?
The answer is basically “Dustin Wolf” for both questions.
Why are they so confident? They have Dustin Wolf, who was one of the top goaltenders in the WHL, then one of the top goaltenders in the AHL, and last season was one of the top young goaltenders in the NHL. That’s a great track record.
Why were James Reimer and Ilya Samsonov not signed by the Flames? If you were them, wouldn’t you want to sign somewhere you’ll be able to play regularly? And with Wolf in the fold, would Calgary be that place? Devin Cooley and Ivan Prosvetov are fairly unproven at the NHL level… and that means they would be willing to land in Calgary for an opportunity to prove themselves, but not necessarily a guarantee. If you’re a more established veteran, unless there’s a big payday involved, I don’t know if you’re signing in Calgary under the premise that maybe Wolf will falter and then you’ll get to play more often.
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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