Way, way back on May 23, 2023, the Calgary Flames announced the hiring of their eighth general manager, elevating assistant general manager Craig Conroy to the big chair.

At the time, there was surprisingly little chuckling at the Flames ending an exhaustive hiring process by hiring someone already in-house – in addition to doing so with Conroy, they previously did so with the hirings of Doug Risebrough, Al Coates, Darryl Sutter and Jay Feaster. In Conroy’s case, becoming GM came after a 1,009-game NHL playing career and 12 years in hockey operations. After he retired as a player in February 2011, he spent three years as special assistant to Feaster, then nine years as assistant GM under Brad Treliving. Conroy had a pretty strong resume, all things considered.

If nothing else, Conroy came to the job with a strong understanding of the fanbase and market, and a pretty clear vision of what the team needed to do to move forward. In his introductory press conference, Conroy mentioned the need for the team to get younger and the necessity for the team to get assets for players exiting the organization.

Friday marked three years for Conroy on the job. And through the three year mark, Conroy has guided the hockey club through a lot of changes.

Under Conroy, the Flames have gone 113-105-28, missing the playoffs all three seasons – they missed out in 2024-25 on the regulation wins tiebreaker – but they began to lean into the reconstruction of their roster. Conroy has made 20 trades as GM, involving 10 established Flames regulars being moved out for futures – goaltender Jacob Markstrom, defencemen Chris Tanev, Noah Hanifin, Nikita Zadorov, Rasmus Andersson and MacKenzie Weegar, and forwards Tyler Toffoli, Elias Lindholm, Andrew Mangiapane and Nazem Kadri.

These moves out have coincided with youngsters joining the organization. The Flames have made 24 draft choices under Conroy, and signed 22 players to entry-level deals – including 10 of Conroy’s own draft picks. Nine different players have graduated from the developmental system onto the NHL roster: Dustin Wolf, Connor Zary, Matt Coronato, Martin Pospisil, Adam Klapka, Yan Kuznetsov, Matvei Gridin, Zayne Parekh and Samuel Honzek. (And a case can be made that Hunter Brzustewicz is on the cusp of being considered a graduate, while Devin Cooley joined the Wranglers at a later stage of development and made the jump to the NHL, too.)

The Flames are a work in progress. Three years outside of the post-season – four when you include Treliving’s final season – is obviously not where they want to be. But through three years with Conroy at the helm, they seem to have a direction and a plan for how to move things forward. Obviously there are worlds of difference between having a plan and actually executing it, but so far, things seem to be moving along.

With two more years left on his current contract, we’ll see if Conroy can follow through on his vision.