Oh man, where did May go, everybody? This is the final mailbag for the month of May, and pretty soon it’ll be June and the 2025 NHL Draft, the awards and free agency will be looming.

As we all go through our own personal existential crises regarding how quickly time is passing, let’s dive into the mailbag!

I love this question but it’s a tough one to really answer because Zayne Parekh is kind of a unicorn. I would suspect that if he’s on the Flames roster in October, it’s because he’s earned himself a spot in their top two pairings and on one of their power play units. It’s probably unfair to say “He needs to be Lane Hutson-level good as a rookie,” but if he’s a full-time, full-year NHL player, you’re probably hoping for a Pavel Mintyukov level of offensive production – Mintyukov had four goals and 28 points for Anaheim in 2023-24.

If he’s not with the Flames, I think he probably decimates the OHL once again. But my gut says he’s with the Flames.

The Flames have drafted goalies in consecutive years – Yegor Yegorov in 2023 and Kirill Zarubin in 2024. I don’t think it’ll necessarily be a priority, but if there’s a goalie the Flames like in a spot they think there’s value, I think they grab one. They have more pressing organizational needs than goaltending, but I wouldn’t rule drafting a goalie out.

If you’re the Flames, you definitely want to get Dustin Wolf signed to an extension this summer – he can be signed anytime after July 1 – because if you wait until the season, or when Wolf hits restricted free agency, that cap hit for his deal is probably going up. The big challenge is figuring out the exact right value for Wolf, because Wolf is a hockey unicorn. (Yes, the Flames have a couple unicorns in their organization right now.)

My guess is the Flames do very little. Pat Steinberg and Eric Francis discussed this a bit on Friday’s Flames Talk: the Flames don’t really want to block their kids, so they probably end up doing less this year in free agency than they did a year ago. Maybe they grab a backup goaltender if Dan Vladar goes elsewhere, but it could be pretty quiet otherwise.

I don’t see it happening. Nothing against Anthony Mantha, but seemingly the idea behind signing him last summer was to buy Matt Coronato (and/or others) a bit of time to develop at the AHL level… and then to likely sell off Mantha at the trade deadline. There’s just no logical spot on the NHL roster to put Mantha, especially if you don’t want to block kids from moving up.

Do I think Rasmus Andersson is traded this off-season? My gut says yes. Do I think it could be part of a play to (a) get more picks in this year’s draft and/or (b) move up in this year’s draft? Potentially, but it depends on what trade offers are out there. I don’t hate this trade structure, though, especially given that the Flames have oodles of left-shot forwards in their system and not all of them are going to be able to fit on the NHL roster. We could see something like that.

So here’s our current understanding: under Article 8, Section 6 of the CBA, if a player becomes a “bonafide college student” prior to the second June 1 after being drafted, the club that drafted them holds their NHL rights until either August 15 after they leave college or the fourth June 1 after being drafted, whichever happens last.

2023 pick Jaden Lipinski has committed to play at the University of Maine and has done so before the second June 1 after being selected by the Flames. Based on our understanding of the CBA and how it’s been interpreted in the past, we’re operating under the understanding that the Flames hold Lipinski’s rights until June 1, 2027 or the August 15 after he leaves college, whichever is later. (As evidence of this being the case, we’ll cite Mitchell Mattson, a 2016 Flames pick that spent two seasons in the USHL before going to Michigan State; the Flames held his rights straight through until his graduation from college.)

We’re fairly confident in our interpretation, but the CBA is always full of odd surprises, so we’ll see if there are any in this situation as the NHL muddles through the brave new world with expanded NCAA player eligibility.