In about a few hours’ time, we’ll be covering hockey that is at least slightly meaningful. Oh, wonderful day.

With a few training camp sessions and preseason (and very quickly, the regular season) approaching, there’s been quite a bit of excitement. This is not unexpected; there is hockey about to happen. There’s been nearly two months of silence followed by a week or so where lots of information and details come out all at once. It’s certainly overwhelming to the hockey-deprived mind, and it’s hard not to talk about everything and anything.

But it’s definitely a bit premature. There are still plenty of questions bouncing around about the hard-to-predict next couple of weeks, based on preliminary looks and workshopped ideas. What we’re looking at is pretty much three full hockey rosters being combined into one and then pruned without prejudice over the next week. Everything we say today could go out the window tomorrow.

But we’ll have to make do with what we have, so let’s chat about what the future, near or far, holds for us.

That would be extremely likely. Given that he moved from the first line to fourth line over the span of a season, the writing’s on the wall. The team is in contender mode already and to remain a contender as long as possible, you need to keep cheap, quality players. Brouwer doesn’t fit any of those descriptions, and there’s likely someone on the farm that could do the same job with better results. He has one year to prove that he’s at least worth more than what they have to pay to buy him out.

The only thing that could possibly spare Brouwer this fate (besides playing well) is team stinginess. They have around $900,000 in cap space for 2018 committed to buyouts already (Lance Bouma, Ryan Murphy), and adding Brouwer would be an extra $1.5M, according to CapFriendly. That’s over four years too, which is hard to digest for any team. It saves you $3M over the next two years, but costs an extra $3M the two years after that. I’m sure the team will fret over that come next summer.

There’s no real point to sending Jankowski back to the AHL. He had as good a season as you could ask from him and he’s probably not going to get any better at that level.

But is the fourth line going to be an ideal landing spot? Probably not. That line is the only glaring weakness in the forward group, and it will be a mess of old guys (Brouwer, Matt Stajan), grinders (Garnet Hathaway, Ryan Lomberg maybe, Luke Gazdic [please no]), AHL tweeners (Hunter Shinkaruk, Morgan Klimchuk, Emile Poirier), reclamation projects (Curtis Lazar), and Freddie Hamilton (he doesn’t really fit into any category). No matter how you mix and match it, it’s going to likely be a disaster. Giving a guy with eight minutes of NHL experience the crap end of the stick while placing first round expectations on him is going to work out for nobody.

If you believe Jankowski can be a prospect of consequence, throwing him into the trenches with little hope of success doesn’t seem to be an optimal development plan. Neither does sticking him in the AHL, but you could at least argue that he can stay away from the mess, perfect his game, and come back next year in a less dreary situation when the Flames can really clear out deadweight and move to the next level (see above). Being waivers exempt could make this option more feasible for the Flames as well, as they don’t have to risk the potential of losing. I don’t think they do this, though; a lot would have to go wrong for them to consider this plan.

(Although not within the scope of the question, I’d like to point out that a potential third line of 93-77-10 would probably be the ideal landing spot, but, again, a lot would have to go wrong to get there. The Flames probably want to push Bennett at centre first and Foo/Poirier on the right wing [at least according to training camp lines] before moving to this. Third line or bust is a weird way to approach the issue, though.)

I guess we can’t avoid an arena question.

Despite Gary Bettman’s wink-wink-nudge-nudge, it’s unlikely the arena is the deciding factor for the election, and certainly throwing money at it is not going to win votes. By judging rough social media reaction to this past week’s events, I would have to say that many thought the City’s proposal was a fair one and the Flames’ a bit ludicrous. If the attempt was to unsettle Nenshi’s base and present an opportunity for another mayoral candidate to step up with a better, team-friendly plan, it seems to have backfired.

Given some reactions to the potential of new or higher taxes, it seems unlikely someone pledging more public money will ever win the day with the Calgary voters.

Given what we saw from Tkachuk last year, it’s certainly an option. If he can fully unleash the power forward game we saw in London (or the same we saw from his dad), the rest of the league should take notice.

But it’s hard to call what Tkachuk does with Backlund and Frolik a “reduced role.” Sure, he doesn’t get the prime scoring opportunities Monahan and Gaudreau get, but he’s still doing important, meaningful work. Tkachuk was the final piece for that line to become one of the best in the NHL, and his puck possession and distribution skills pretty much brought that line to the next level. He can certainly grow his game, as he’s already taken on and excelled in the stressful responsibilities of that role. The scary thing about Tkachuk is that he’s already excelled in a situation where many NHL veterans cannot.

The one thing missing from Tkachuk’s game is shooting (142 total shots, or 1.87 per game) and scoring, consequentially, but I don’t think he’ll be able to inflate that number with Monahan (199, 2.42/g) or Gaudreau (182, 2.52/g). He’d be in that same distribution role as he is on the 3M line (Backlund and Frolik had similar shooting numbers). Tkachuk was more of a distributor than a scorer in London too, so perhaps we can live without the shooting.

They need warm bodies for two reasons. First: they need people to run drills. Second: they need a full AHL team.

Stockton’s roster as of this moment is empty. Their first source of players is Flames prospects who get cut, which is 20 players (12 F, six D, and two G). Early guesses suggest that at least two forwards make the jump and two defencemen will certainly join them. That brings the Heat down to 10 forwards and four defencemen. They could also pick up Marek Hrivik too, so 11 forwards, but given that Daniel Pribyl is already out for the long term, they’re stuck at nine. That’s anywhere between three to five spaces that need to be filled at forward, and what do you know, the Flames have three to five forwards at camp looking for any pro hockey job.

Perhaps you could wonder why give jobs to less than qualified players, but given that the Flames like using the AHL as a staging ground for prospects, I assume they don’t really care which former goon is patrolling their fourth line. It’s better than having Linden Vey take major minutes away from a guy who needs them to be successful.

It is looking less and less likely my friends.

I’ve said it a bunch in this mailbag, but a lot would have to go wrong before they sign Jagr. Every single one of their penciled in RWs (Foo, Poirier, Shinkaruk, Lazar, Hathaway) would have to underwhelm so significantly in less than a month’s time frame that they choose to sign a guy who would be anywhere between $1 to $2.5M more expensive than any of these solutions. Perhaps it is bold to take a bet on guys who haven’t been much at the NHL level versus a bet on the sure scoring 40-point guy, but it’s a bet the Flames are willing to make.

We’ll assume you meant “or” because the chances of all three making it is zero.

I’d rate Shinkaruk as the guy with the highest odds of the three. He’s getting an NHL look in camp, playing with Stajan and Lazar on what could be a fourth line. They also have the choice of playing him on the left or right side, so there’s some flexibility there. The fact that he was traded for Markus Granlund also looms large, as does his waiver status, so the team would probably be a bit more inclined to keep him around.

Klimchuk is a bit of a dark horse. He’s really only had one good season as a pro and it wasn’t spectacular by any means. His NHL upside is likely bottom six defensive guy, so he could snag that 4LW spot, but he’s got a lot of competition for it. He’s working with Hrivik and Michael Frolik on a shutdown line, but only one of those guys has a guaranteed NHL job, so I’d say the outlook isn’t great. Klimchuk is waiver exempt, which definitely helps the team’s decisions.

Poirier is an interesting case. Certainly, he’d be the best story, but his hockey skills are still a mystery. It’s true that his last two seasons, both of which were not great by any standard, were plagued by his off-ice issues but it’s still a stretch to say that he is immediately or even close to NHL ready just because he has taken time off. It’s easy to assume that he can be one of the best AHL kids with all things being equal, but it’s something we have to see before believing. There’s still a lot of question marks surrounding the 2013 first rounder.

Poirier is getting the best look out of all three (not a permanent thing) and will likely last late into camp. He is not waiver exempt, but it’s hard to see any other team who could give him an NHL chance if the Flames don’t, so there’s likely no worry there about cutting him. Without seeing the reinvented Poirier in a game situation, I’d really have to give him a coin flip chance right now.