Gang, I have a phrase I often use in my analysis, and it’s a bit of a mean one. It’s called “the James Neal test,” and it simply asks whether a player helps his team win when he’s not scoring. If a player fails the James Neal test, you can arguably label them as one-dimensional.

Prior to 2024-25, you could make a strong case that Jonathan Huberdeau would fail the James Neal test. After 2024-25, you can’t bring up that criticism of his game anymore.

Huberdeau joined the Flames in the Matthew Tkachuk mega-deal during the 2022 off-season – also heading to Calgary were MacKenzie Weegar, Cole Schwindt and a conditional first-round pick. You could argue that Weegar, who had far less hype behind him when he arrived, found his niche much more quickly than Huberdeau.

Simply put, Huberdeau struggled under Darryl Sutter in 2022-23. Huberdeau is a dynamic offensive presence who thinks the game at a high level, but taking the player that set the NHL’s single-season record for assists by a left wing and expecting him to figure out how to work within a structured checking system quickly was a tall order. Huberdeau didn’t grasp it right away and seemingly everyone got frustrated with the situation.

In 2023-24, Huberdeau started to figure his game out a bit under Ryan Huska. His offensive production before New Year’s Day was inconsistent, but the effort was obviously there. Once the calendar flipped over to 2024, the production followed. Over the 45 games Huberdeau played from January to April, he had eight goals and 36 points (0.80 points per game), good for third on the club in points and tied for sixth in goals.

In 2023-24, Huberdeau found his scoring touch again and became a player that, while he had to be sheltered in terms of opposition and deployments, could consistently create offence for the Flames.

In 2024-25, Huberdeau became a pretty versatile player for the Flames that didn’t need to be sheltered nearly as much. He had 28 goals and 62 points on the season, sitting second on the team in points and goals. Heck, only Weegar was on the ice for more goals scored by the Flames than Huberdeau in all situations – Huberdeau was fourth in goal differential across all situations, trailing only Matt Coronato, Weegar and Nazem Kadri.

More importantly, Huberdeau was added to the penalty killing mix this season and quietly became a pretty key cog in their special teams group. The addition of penalty killing to his toolbox arguably made him a more astute two-way player at even strength; I’m not a plus/minus guy, but he went from minus-29 in 2023-24 to minus-13 in 2024-25, while playing tough opposition on a team that famously struggled to score.

Huberdeau also ended up playing a lot more than he did in prior Flames seasons. He actually led all Flames forwards in ice time per game (19:33), playing nearly two minutes more per game than he did during his January-to-April 2024 resurgence. He became a trusted player in basically every game situation, and you could argue that (a) he earned that trust and (b) he delivered in those situations.

We’ve seen offensive production from Huberdeau at around 0.80 points-per-game for the last 120-ish regular season games, and that’s probably what he needs to maintain to justify his spot as a fixture in offensive deployments. (We’ll concede that Huberdeau’s point production is pretty decent on a team with a middling power play, and if Zayne Parekh sticks with the big club next season we could easily see Huberdeau playing on the same PP unit and getting a points boost as a consequence.)

It’s easy not to love his $10.5 million cap hit, and since we’re not the ones paying him that kind of dough, we can grit our teeth and see past it. Whatever his cap hit, Huberdeau is a respected veteran in the Flames locker room and someone who cares so much about helping his team win that he basically turned himself into a 200-foot player this year – the affectionate joke in the Flames room was that Huberdeau is a “power forward” now.

If Huberdeau can maintain this level of 200-foot awareness and effectiveness, he could remain a pretty important player for the Flames for awhile yet.