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Martin Pospisil and the season that could have been

Photo credit: Candice Ward/Calgary Wranglers

By Paige Siewert

May 29, 2023, 12:00 EDTUpdated: May 29, 2023, 10:51 EDT

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Martin Pospisil was one of the longest absent players from the Calgary Wranglers lineup in the 2022-23 season. He was meant to be a regular forward for the team that was projected to spend a lengthy amount of time on the top two lines. Instead, he only played in 20 games with the team and missed the majority of the season due to injury. Not an unusual story for Pospisil who also missed a large chunk of games for the Stockton Heat in 2021-22.

By the numbers

Regular season

Pospisil played his fourth season with the Flames’ AHL affiliate this year and was averaging about half a point a game with four goals and six assists through 20 games. He started the season with the Wranglers and played for about two and a half months before his season ended out of his control. His role was mostly centring a line of Jakob Pelletier and Matthew Phillips when putting Connor Zary up with them at the start of the season wasn’t producing the results they would have hoped for.

He suffered a lower body injury in Flames training camp so his opportunity to make a lasting impression with the big club was not as memorable as he probably would have liked it to be. It’s tough playing the what if game, but what if he would’ve been the next person on the call up list and got a similar opportunity that Jakob Pelletier or Walker Duehr did this season? It’s interesting to think about what the actual call up needs were this season and what other players could have fit that role.

Post-season

Martin Pospisil was listed on the post-season roster but did not play in the Calgary Wranglers’ 2023 postseason run.

Next season

Martin Pospisil signed a one year contract extension back in the summer of 2022 and will become a restricted free agent this off-season. The Flames will likely take his injury history into consideration before pencilling up another deal for him and may try to leverage him as a piece for another player addition.

That is also assuming his injury is not something that will prevent him from playing professional hockey moving forward. Pospisil has yet to play an NHL game in his career but with injuries holding him back, who knows if he ever will. The organization has got to have a better idea of how bad his injury actually was and if the offseason months allow adequate recovery time to participate in training camp again. His future with the Wranglers seems very uncertain at the moment.

Rating

For the games Pospisil did play, I’d give him a B rating. However, overall, his absence was missed for the remainder of the season and if you take the macro view of the year, losing him to injury would put things closer to a C. It would have certainly been nice to have one more guy on your roster that can score and set up goals. Maybe that would’ve been enough to reverse their postseason fate.