The Calgary Flames continue to persist.
While the St. Louis Blues remain red-hot and are pacing the Western Conference wild card race, the Flames won three of four games on their recent swing through Toronto and the New York area, and they’re hanging around the wild card race.
As we prepare for another big week of games, let’s delve into the mailbag!
On Dan Vladar: Yes. Right now he’s a big part of the rhythm of the goaltending tandem and the fabric of the locker room, and moving him for the sake of moving him wouldn’t have made a ton of sense. (If the offers were big or there was a young player waiting in the wings, then I could see it, but not as things stood prior to the trade deadline.)
On Devin Cooley: Also yes. A lot of goaltending is confidence, rhythm and timing, and it can take awhile to get those all back after an injury.
Teams are often hesitant to have college prospects go back for their senior year, so I think that could play into a push to sign Arsenii Sergeev. He’s also been excellent at Penn State and it’s worth wondering what he has left to prove in the NCAA.
For Aydar Suniev, my only question would be if there would be enough of a role for him with the Wranglers next season to justify getting him signed. He’s grown a lot in two years at UMass, and a third year could do him some good. But eventually the Flames will want to get him in-house.
I’ll do a more detailed dive into things later this week, but both Matt Coronato and Connor Zary are on entry-level deals that include performance bonuses. Because Dustin Wolf is no longer on his entry-level deal, he’s not eligible to receive performance bonuses.
I think you bridge Matt Coronato and go long with the others if you can. Zary, Frost and Bahl will all have multiple NHL seasons under their belts as of this summer, while Coronato has just one and so I would prefer to have another year of him in the NHL before going longer.
In terms of AAVs, I would ballpark them at $5 million for Morgan Frost (he’s a centre), a little bit less for Kevin Bahl (he’s a top four defender), and then Matt Coronato and Connor Zary in the same vicinity of each other (somewhere in the $3.5 million range). But that’s mostly back-of-the-napkin math, and I’ll need time to delve into their comparables a bit more to get a better idea of their market value.
If Mitch Marner gets to market I would imagine that the Flames check in to see what the price tag is. But I still have my doubts that he ends up leaving Toronto.
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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