Considering the potential team being iced this year, what type of goalie numbers from Vladar and Wolf would you call a success?
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FlamesNation Mailbag: Looking ahead to the fall with your questions!
Photo credit: Mike Gould
Folks, we’re about two months away from the start of the 2024-25 NHL pre-season schedule. And while we’re all doing our best to squeeze the most we can out of our summers, before too long we’ll be back in a rink enjoying the best sport on the planet.
While we enjoy July – and try to avoid Calgary’s wacky heat – let’s dive into the mailbag!
So, remember how last season when a lot of pundits were pointing to Jacob Markstrom’s goals saved above expected (GSAX) metric as a sign he was playing well? That’s probably something to bear in mind next season for Dustin Wolf and Dan Vladar. (And even Devin Cooley, if/when he gets NHL reps.)
If you’ve paid attention to the pundits, prognosticators or the betting sites, the Flames are expected to be… not great. It’s the first year of the re-(verb), and the team is going to have some long nights. So based on that, if Wolf and Vladar can show some progression and have decent GSAX numbers, that’s a positive. For your own sake, don’t focus on wins, shutouts, goals against or save percentage numbers.
I double-checked recently, and here’s the gist of this year’s firsts:
- The Flames get Florida’s 2025 first unless that pick is in the top 10 – it’d slide to 2026 if that happens.
- The Flames get New Jersey’s 2025 first unless that pick is in the top 10 – that would also slide to 2026 if that happens.
- If Calgary gets Florida’s first, then Montreal gets either (a) Florida’s first if Calgary’s first is in the top 10 or (b) the earlier of the two firsts if Calgary’s first is not in the top 10.
- If Calgary doesn’t get Florida’s first, then Montreal gets Calgary’s first unless it’s first overall, in which case they get Calgary’s 2026 first.
In other words, the Flames have an incentive to have another top 10 pick in 2025 because it would ensure they keep the best first-rounder they can have next year. (We’re reasonably confident that Florida won’t drop to the bottom 10 in the league standings.) Based on everything going on, it would make sense for the Flames to aim to be not amazing in 2024-25 and then perhaps a bit better in 2025-26. None of their potential 2026 picks have any conditions attached to them, so the incentive to be low in the standings is diminished.
What’s your take on a possible Blake Coleman trade to Buffalo? And if would happen, what would the Flames want in return? And is a Coleman trade linked to other teams, too?
Blake Coleman’s pretty great. Y’know how Flames fans have adored a lot of the little things that Mikael Backlund does for a long while? Well, Coleman does a lot of those same things. Having Backlund and Coleman on the roster allow the Flames to use them in the tough minutes – defensive zone starts, penalty killing and match-ups against the other team’s top lines – and allow the team’s youngsters the ability to get eased into NHL action a bit. And by all accounts, he’s a big contributor off the ice, too. With the Flames into the meat of their re-(verb) process, I’m a big fan of holding on Coleman for as long as he would like to be a Flame.
If somebody makes you a crazy offer for Coleman, you listen to it. But he’s one of the guys that will help get the team to the other side of their re-(verb) process smoothly.
In your opinion, what kind of player is Pelletier and where do you see him fit on this team? Furthermore, how many games does he get to show his skill level, before he becomes trade bait?
Remember the 2021 World Juniors? Most of us might not, because it was that awkward bubble World Juniors that was held in Edmonton before the start of the 56-game 2020-21 NHL season. Jakob Pelletier and Connor Zary played for Canada, Dustin Wolf played for the United States, and then they drove down to training camp together after the tournament was over.
Anyway, Pelletier made that Canadian team as a sort of utility player, and he was awesome. I don’t think he’s amazing at anything and he’s not big, but he’s got the type of smarts, hockey sense, mobility and motor that make him incredibly versatile. I’d point to how impactful Paul Byron was with the Flames and Montreal Canadiens – before his injury challenges – and I can see how Pelletier could fit into that sort of role. He might not be the key piece of a future championship team, but he’s the kind of player that can fill in a lot of gaps and elevate a potential championship team to where it needs to be.
If Pelletier’s back to feeling like he wants to feel physically and can get his confidence back during pre-season, I think you give him a chance to play NHL games to start the year and basically give him an opportunity to play his way off the roster over the first 30-40 games of the season. He’s a player they have high hopes for and he requires waivers this season, so it changes the risk parameters around potentially sending him to the AHL. If Pelletier can be anything close to what he was in the AHL in 2021-22 or 2022-23 – before his shoulder injury – I think he can help the Flames moving forward.
My big question with Andrei Kuzmenko is how he fits in the lineup long-term. He’s great offensively and great on the power play. But he’s not a particularly strong two-way player, so he’s a guy that needs to be sheltered in terms of opposition and deployments. If it’s up to me, I probably sell him at the trade deadline; he’s the type of player that can really help a contender that needs a boost to their power play… and the type of player that the Flames could get some nice future assets from selling.
Why did the Flames buy a new arena scoreboard for only a few years? It feels like an egregious waste of funds and as a tax payer in Calgary, it's frustrating to see them spend that much after their sweat-heart arena deal. Was there an issue with the old one?
There was an issue with the old one, in that the previous one was no longer supported by its manufacturer, so if it broke or malfunctioned they would be stuck without a scoreboard. My understanding is that the new arena design already includes a scoreboard, so it wouldn’t be feasible to lug over the new one to the new building in three years. It’s definitely odd to buy a new scoreboard for three seasons, but it’s a pretty unique situation and seems like it couldn’t be avoided.
Got a question for a future mailbag? Contact Ryan on Twitter/X at @RyanNPike or e-mail him at Ryan [at] TheNationNetwork.com! (Make sure you put Mailbag in the subject line!)
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