There are only two shopping weeks left until the 2022 NHL trade deadline, so rumours are flying, speculation is rampant, and few if any trades have been made quite yet as teams try to maximize their cap space.
As we bide our time until the action unfolds two Mondays from now, let’s check out the mailbag!
I had heard nothing about this until Sunday and I’ll say this: I don’t think building an 18,000 seat arena on the Tsuut’ina lands makes sense for the City, the Flames or the Tsuut’ina.
  1. I don’t think the Tsuut’ina have $287.5 million sitting around to spend on an arena.
  2. The Grey Eagle event centre does really good business and having an 18,000 seat arena right down the road would probably eat into its revenues big-time. (If the hypothetical deal for an arena on Tsuut’ina land is anything close to what the Flames previously got with the City, presumably the Tsuut’ina wouldn’t operate the facility or get much of the revenue… and they’d eat into Grey Eagle business.)
  3. The transportation connections to Tsuut’ina aren’t great right now, and traffic on game nights would be a nightmare.
  4. The public transportation connections to Tsuut’ina are almost non-existent, particularly when it comes to C-Train connections. (Compare that to Victoria Park, where there are currently two nearby train lines and will soon be a third.)
It really doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for any of the parties involved.
Retaining Johnny Gaudreau is the Flames’ top priority. And what probably happens to keep their key core players together is either gutting their depth – rather than having $2 million depth players, they’ll be leaning on league-minimum guys – and/or they could end up losing guys like Dillon Dube or Sean Monahan. (Monahan could end up being a buyout if they can’t find a trade that works.)
The challenge with Sean Monahan is he’s a fourth line centre at five-on-five, but he’s still pretty useful on the power play. I can’t see the Flames moving Monahan in-season, and his cap hit is pretty hefty enough to possibly scare off most trade partners. Oh, and he has a no-trade clause that allows him to block trades to 10 teams.
Yes. He’s a veteran who’s played in over 100 playoff games, including a trip to the 2012 Stanley Cup Final where his New Jersey Devils lost to Darryl Sutter’s Los Angeles Kings. He’d help the Flames shore up their Old Guy Without A Cup (OGWAC) bonifides. It would be better if he played centre, though.
I kinda like this proposal. Moving Dillon Dube now helps solve the cap issues next year, Andrew Copp is likely an upgrade over Dube on-ice, and the Jets get a couple assets. It would be better if the Jets were able to retain half of Copp’s $3.64 million cap hit for the remainder of this season. If so, it seems like good value for both sides.
On one hand, there’s just $6 million of actual salary left on Shea Weber’s deal (that runs through 2025-26). On the other hand, it has a $7.857 million cap hit and is clunky and ugly. To initial acquire him, the Flames would likely need to tuck Adam Ruzicka and two other players (probably Brett Ritchie and Michael Stone) into the AHL to get under the daily cap limit in order to enact Long-Term Injury within their cap structure, at which point they could gain $7.474 million in cap space to work with.
But LTIR sucks, really limits what teams can do with their cap space and how they can accumulate cap savings, and the Flames probably wouldn’t want to add something that cumbersome onto their cap calculations.
Sure! I don’t think he’s first in line – I’m more of a Mikael Backlund for captain guy myself – but Elias Lindholm’s been a great Flame, plays in every situation, and plays well. I don’t think it would be a hard sell.
The casualty of paying Johnny Gaudreau north of $9 million next season (and Matthew Tkachuk, too, probably) is the Flames won’t be able to afford a nearly $6 million third pairing. Unless one or both of those guys is willing to take a haircut, we probably see a cheaper tandem. (If you’re going to keep one, I lean towards Erik Gudbranson because he’s so great at killing penalties.)
If it’s up to me, I try to add Calle Jarnkrok. And not just because his name is fun to say, but because the bottom six right now lacks versatility. Adding somebody who can play in different configurations depending how a game or playoff series unfolds would allow Darryl Sutter and his staff the ability to mix and match and adapt as things go along. Right now, they don’t really have that option.

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