The Calgary Flames likely headed into the 2024-25 season looking for a bit of calm after a pretty tumultuous past few seasons.
Here’s a snapshot of the chaos the club had to deal with during the previous seasons:
- 2019-20: The Flames had to navigate the Bill Peters racism controversy, his subsequent resignation, a big step backwards on the ice for the team after finishing second overall the prior season, and the sudden pause of the season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
- 2020-21: The shortened season was played in front of zero fans, with the Flames exclusively playing against Canadian teams. Late in the season, Darryl Sutter returned to the organization as head coach.
- 2021-22: The Flames adjusted to the tactics of Sutter and they worked well, driving the team to a regular season division win. But the team had to play under the spectre of Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau’s expiring contracts (and eventually, their departures).
- 2022-23: In addition to trying to fill the void of Tkachuk and Gaudreau with the arrivals of Nazem Kadri, Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar, the Flames began to bristle under Sutter’s guidance – a coach that was frequently said to have a short shelf life hit his expiry rather quickly – and missed the playoffs by a fair margin.
- 2023-24: After the departures of both Sutter and general manager Brad Treliving, new head coach Ryan Huska and GM Craig Conroy navigated a season where big pieces of the team’s roster were pending free agents (and began being traded away by mid-season).
(This is nowhere close to an exhaustive list.)
Prior to the start of the season, the Flames’ veterans exclaimed that the club was likely better than anyone had given them credit for. Everyone, it seemed, wanted to have a less noisy season after a few years of tumult, and so the team just played. Here we are 61 games later, and the Flames are in a playoff spot despite choosing to make some significant changes to their roster for contractual reasons the year prior.
As the 2025 NHL trade deadline approaches, the Flames are faced with two completely logical conclusions that are in tension with one another:
- The Flames, as constructed, are not a Stanley Cup contender, and so Conroy needs to make moves with the future in mind.
- The Flames have gone through five years of utter chaos, and given that this is the first year in ages where the group has been given the opportunity to just focus on hockey, they should be given the opportunity to see this season through without having their roster dismantled.
Yeah, selling off some players for future-focused assets would make logical sense in the context of the Flames as a team that’s trying to build towards a championship in 3-5 seasons. However, losing key players from their roster would be a gut-punch to the current group, and comes in the context of the group dealing with a lot of gut-punches over the past few years in regards to their roster.
If we’re being blunt here: few, if anybody, in the hockey media sphere felt that the Flames would be anywhere close to a playoff spot this season. But the team’s leadership consistently claimed that their group was better than anybody thought, and they’ve been largely proven right. After what many of the players in the room have dealt with over the past few seasons just in terms of turnover – constantly losing key players while they were in the playoff fight last season – you can understand why management really wouldn’t want to knee-cap the current group.
Building a strong team involves drafting promising players, developing them into NHL players through your farm system, and then transitioning them into good NHL players once they’ve arrived with the big club. While more picks is often better for stocking up a developmental system, there are only so many roster spots with the Calgary Wranglers and only a certain amount of youngsters that can be plunked onto the Flames’ roster before it becomes challenging for new faces to grow into specific roles. You can’t make 10 picks every single year and have the capacity to properly develop everybody.
We’ve frequently cited the Edmonton Oilers and their “decade of darkness” when discussing the challenges of doing a to-the-studs rebuild; promising young players were brought into the NHL as teenagers, placed on an extremely depleted Oilers roster… and lost a lot. For years. A similar situation may be unfolding in Chicago, where Connor Bedard is a bright spot on a Blackhawks team that can be pretty out-matched at times. Seth Jones’ recent trade to Florida came at the end of what seemed to be an existential crisis where he openly pondered during interviews what was happening in Chicago. Yeah, the “decade of darkness” Oilers and the current Blackhawks have high draft choices… but at what cost?
The 2024-25 Flames are better than anybody expected and their results should be seen as a bonus; Dustin Wolf, Matt Coronato, Connor Zary and the other youngsters will be playing in meaningful games through to the end of the regular season at the very least. But Conroy and his management group must find a way to ensure that this season’s success doesn’t come at the cost of greater future success.
The 2025 NHL trade deadline is Friday at 1 p.m. MT.
Get ready, hockey fans! The Daily Faceoff Deadline is happening on March 7th from 11 AM to 4 PM Eastern, and you won’t want to miss it. We’ll be LIVE, breaking down every trade and big move as it happens, with instant reactions and expert analysis from the Daily Faceoff crew. Plus, we’ve got special guests lined up throughout the show, offering exclusive insights from some of the biggest names in the game. From blockbuster trades to surprise moves, we’re covering it all. Tune in to the Daily Faceoff YouTube channel and follow Daily Faceoff socials on March 7th to catch all the action!
