The 2021 World Junior Hockey Championship is upon us! The Calgary Flames have four players involved! Also, training camp for the truncated 2020-21 NHL season begins in a week!

So let’s check in with the mailbag, pals!

The Flames basically had two variations of playing style under Geoff Ward: one from November through March and another for the Return to Play segment.

In the regular season, the Flames were a counter-punch team. They tried to induce turnovers and get odd-man rushes going the other way. In the playoffs, they were a bit more focused on being defensively sound. Being a rush-based team seems to work well with their players in general, but Ward’s focus on them being more defensively sound may help them shore up their main Achilles’ heel: getting hemmed in their own end too often due to their inability to execute on breakouts into their neutral zone.

Based on Geoff Ward’s affinity for the player, I think Elias Lindholm spends a good amount of 2020-21 at centre. If he can take a step forward at that position the way he previously had on the wing, and become a play-driving, tough-minutes pivot, suddenly the Flames are a much deeper, scarier team to face.

He probably starts his time up the middle with Matthew Tkachuk and Andrew Mangiapane, the two players he primarily played with in that role in 2019-20. But if he can find success, Ward might experiment a bit with his linemates.

Presuming Milan Lucic waives his no-move, here’s what I would do for a protection list if Bennett becomes a legit top nine forward and is generally very good in 2020-21:

In short? Mikael Backlund loses his protection spot if Bennett is legit. The gamble would be that Backlund’s age (32) and cap hit ($5.35 million) would scare Seattle away and they would grab someone like David Rittich or Oliver Kylington from the Flames instead.

The trade market is all gummed up right now because nobody has any cap space to work with. A few months ago I broke down prior trades involving really good players and my conclusion was that the Flames would need to get a secondary roster player (someone as good and useful as Sam Bennett), a first round pick and a pretty good prospect in order to make moving Gaudreau or Monahan at all worthwhile. The Flames would be giving up the better player, so they had damn well better be getting a lot of value back in the exchange.

I mentioned this on Twitter: I didn’t expect to like Jakob Pelletier as much as I have. Don’t get me wrong, I was a fan of his selection and I’ve seen a lot of him since Flames grabbed him in the first round in 2019.

But against really good competition, Pelletier has been as noticeable and tenacious as he’s been in the QMJHL. He fore-checks. He back-checks. He steals pucks. He rushes back to support his defenders. He supports breakouts. He’s weirdly good at working the puck and battling in the corners and below the offensive red line, especially when you consider he’s not a big kid.

He’s played precisely zero minutes against grown men, but Pelletier seems really promising.

Defining the Blasty Era as encompassing 1998-2006:

My forwards are Jarome Iginla, Valeri Bure and Craig Conroy. My defensemen are Robyn Regehr and Derek Morris. My goaltender is Fred Brathawaite, narrowly selected over Roman Turek.