Friends, if there’s one change in the new collective bargaining agreement between the NHL and players’ association, it’s the trimming down of the pre-season schedule. Currently, teams play as many as eight pre-season games over three weeks. Under the new agreement, that’s cut down to four – and presumably will be over in half as long.

So as we enjoy-slash-endure the start of the final marathon exhibition calendar, let’s delve into the mailbag!

As of right now, our current understanding is that Flames head coach Ryan Huska is in the final year of his three year contract that he signed when he was hired as head coach in 2023. However, given public comments from general manager Craig Conroy at the end of the season and over the summer, we’re not overly concerned about his future. We suspect at some point in the future – we have no clue on timeline and aren’t going to venture a guess – he’ll get re-upped. We would suspect he gets another two or three years to continue to guide the Flames’ youth movement.

Disclaimer: I haven’t been to every on-ice session, so take my observations with the requisite amount of salt. I’ve liked what I’ve seen from Sam Honzek, Matvei Gridin, Parker Bell, Mace’o Phillips and Lucas Ciona. I tend to pay a bit more attention to the youngsters, though, as the NHL regulars are more established and thus don’t really need to go all-out in camp to make an impression.

If we’re being honest, this is probably the biggest battle in training camp. Both Devin Cooley and Ivan Prosvetov are contenders to back up Dustin Wolf on the NHL roster, and I would suspect we see more of them during the pre-season games than just about anybody else. At this point, I’m leaning towards Prosvetov because of his edge in NHL experience, but I don’t think anybody has the gig sewn up yet.

Heading into training camp, my assessment was that the Flames had 13 of their 14 forward spots almost locked up. If a young forward impresses, I could see them getting that 14th spot, but the challenge would be figuring out if they could displace one of the established regulars in the starting lineup – would you rather have Matvei Gridin and Sam Honzek playing every night with the Wranglers or sitting and watching with the Flames as the 13th or 14th forward? That’s the big challenge for me.

We’ll see how it plays out as the pre-season schedule unfolds.