Folks, we’re less than a month away from rookies reporting for the 2024 Young Stars Classic tournament (and Calgary Flames prospect training camp), and a little over a month away from main camp and pre-season kicking off.
Enjoy the remainder of your summers while you can. Hockey is around the corner.
Let’s delve into the mailbag!
I’m of the mindset that the Flames are going to take it easy on big transactions for awhile. On this past week’s 32 Thoughts podcast, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Freidman noted that Flames brass has told its players that nothing’s coming this summer. If you think back on the last few off-seasons, there’s been a lot of change and tumult around the club since the 2022 off-season and now that the things that the Flames need to do to move forward have been handled, they’re probably more than happy to just get a sense of how their current group hangs together.
This is a cop-out answer, so let me explain: my answer is “Yes, But…”
The yes is pretty simple: I think Craig Conroy’s smart and he’s potentially learned from some of the things that undid Brad Treliving’s good work. Treliving did a great job building a young team, and then made the wrong bets at making acquisitions to try to progress the group through its rebuild. I think Conroy understands where things went wrong.
That said, I don’t think we’ve entered a position yet where Conroy would be tempted to veer from his prescribed plan the way Treliving seemed to. In short: Conroy has done a really positive job so far… but we’re just entering the challenging period and it has yet to be seen how he’ll resist temptation at key moments.
The Flames really like Jakob Pelletier for a lot of the reasons a lot of people in hockey like Jakob Pelletier: he’s got a great attitude, he works hard, and he’s got a lot of versatility to his game, as shown during his times in the AHL, QMJHL and World Juniors. That said, at the NHL level, his circumstances have been really weird and his on-ice results have been pretty mixed.
Especially in an environment where there are a lot of talented young forwards entering the Flames system, it’s likely that both sides are trying to hammer out a deal that compensates Pelletier fairly but doesn’t make it challenging for him to fit into an NHL club’s cap structure. This will be the first year that Pelletier requires waivers to go to the AHL: if I’m his camp and I believe in him being an NHL talent, I want him to get a deal that’s tempting for other clubs to claim on waivers.
In short: they’re working on it, but Pelletier’s a unique player in a unique situation and so things take time to hash out.
It would surprise me if Andrei Kuzmenko is not traded before this year’s trade deadline. I can be talked into Rasmus Andersson being traded at some point but I don’t think there’s a pressing time pressure to do it right away. I would be fairly surprised if Nazem Kadri or Blake Coleman are traded sometime in the next 12 months.
No. And by that I mean: I don’t know what the point would be in throwing promising young players into a challenging competitive environment – the betting markets seem to be suggesting the Flames will be 6th-worst in the NHL next season – where they will have a lot of challenging nights and potentially one-sided games. The Flames have enough quality NHL bodies at most positions where they can shelter their most promising kids a bit right now, and I think they’ll take advantage of this depth to protect their kids this season.
From John (via e-mail): Hi Ryan. With the two Oiler RFA signings potentially opening the door to more signings, do you think there are any other interesting potential situations for offer sheet usage this offseason?
If the Flames were further along in their progression and they were one piece away from contention – and had cap space to burn – I’d be targeting Seth Jarvis. He’s a 22-year-old right shot centre who’s coming off a breakout season where he scored 33 goals and received votes for the Selke Trophy (for top defensive forward) and the Lady Byng (for most gentlemanly conduct). The kid’s fantastic, and if the Flames were a Seth Jarvis away from being a powerhouse, I would be all for it.
…but they’re not, yet. But it’s fun to dream, right?
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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