With Team Canada losing at the national championships and at the olympics, what do you think is the issue or is it just a bad stretch?
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FlamesNation Mailbag: Kicking off a crucial June with reader questions!
Photo credit: Mike Gould
Aside from the Stanley Cup Final – which begins on Tuesday night in Raleigh, North Carolina – the 2025-26 hockey playing season has largely ended, with the Memorial Cup and World Championship tournaments both concluding on Sunday. Now all that’s left is to hand out the Stanley Cup and head to the NHL Draft at the end of June.
As we prepare for a pretty huge month for the future of the Calgary Flames, let’s check in with the mailbag!
For the curious, here are the medal-winners at the last four major men’s hockey tournaments:
- Olympics: United States (gold), Canada (silver), Finland (bronze)
- World Championships: Finland (gold), Switzerland (silver), Norway (bronze)
- World Junior Championships: Sweden (gold), Czechia (silver), Canada (bronze)
- Under-18 World Championships: Sweden (gold), Slovakia (silver) Czechia (bronze)
On one hand, Canada got two medals across the four tournaments. On the other hand, zero golds. I think one of the things that’s happened over the last couple decades is, well, the gap between Canada and everyone else has been narrowed. I think it also helps that, well, Switzerland’s best players all play together pretty consistently across big international events over several years, so their team between Worlds and Olympics and other tournaments is always much of the same players and they have continuity.
For Canada and the United States, and other NHL-heavy nations, who plays at Worlds depends on who’s not playing in the Stanley Cup playoffs. There’s not nearly as much continuity, even if the skill level may be higher for them than their European counterparts. Having consistent national team rosters does seem to make a difference.
Will we ever get the return of the Young stars tournament??? With Vancouver and Calgary picking high abd often the talent would be amazing!
Right now, I kind of doubt it. It’s such a great event, but from a logistics and planning side, it’s a bit of a headache. One team has to take the lead in organizing everything, figure out hotels and ice times and staffing, and then all the teams involved need to basically bring their entire training camp somewhere else for a week. And it happens right before main camp opens, so the poor equipment and training staff has a ton to juggle, and if I’m the teams involved, I wonder if there’s a way to get my prospects in competitive games that’s not as disruptive to training camp as a tournament in another province would be.
With San Jose being on the cusp of the playoffs, it seems like an unusual situation for them to hold the number 2 pick. Is there a reasonable scenario where the Flames could move up with the 6th and a roster player?
Do we think the flames will trade up for 2nd overall? Or is it probably they make a trade for Mason McTavish?
Based on the speculation of the draft board, is it absolutely necessary to move up to get the player you want?
I think the Flames have the assets to potentially move up to second overall – I wrote about it in some detail recently.
That said, I don’t know if it would be all that necessary or prudent. If you accept Craig Conroy’s statement at face value that there’s six players they like at the top of the draft, unless they really value one above all others, it might just be easier to take whoever is left for them at sixth overall.
I’d rather use their glut of second-round picks to move into the first round for a third time (e.g., move up to add a third first-rounder) than try to move up from sixth spot.
Is the 2026 draft deep enough to have all these picks?
Honestly, it sounds cliche, but if your scouting staff is good, every draft is one you want to have a bunch of picks in. The Flames have a lot of confidence in their ability to find good players these days, especially with how well their last two or three draft clases are shaping up.
The other nice thing is they have several picks in future drafts, too, which gives them flexibility to potentially make trades if the team works through the rebuild more rapidly than they expect.
Long look ahead, once the Flames are competitive who's the head coach?
Honestly, I have no idea. I hope Ryan Huska gets a chance to coach this team in the Stanley Cup playoffs at some point.
Smash Burger or regular burger, and what sides?
Smash burger with yam fries. You can feel less guilty about the yam fries because they’re “healthy,” and then you can go heavy on a chipotle mayo to dip them in. Win-win.
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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