A year ago, the Calgary Flames went into the trade deadline and didn’t do a thing.

With their group pushing for a playoff spot, and having gone through a ton of changeover in the season or two prior, the decision was made to stand pat. The Flames ended up finishing strong, but missed the 2025 Stanley Cup playoffs on tiebreakers.

The 2026 edition of the trade deadline was about as different as you could get from 2025’s for the Flames.

The Flames continued Craig Conroy’s roster overhaul on Friday. Following on the heels of Rasmus Andersson’s move to Vegas in January, and MacKenzie Weegar’s departure to Utah earlier this week, the Flames shipped Nazem Kadri to Colorado in another trade replete with picks and prospects.

Kadri is the 10th established NHL veteran traded by Conroy during his tenure as general manager.

Speaking with the media following the conclusion of deadline day on Friday afternoon, Conroy was asked if the day was a massive step in the right direction for the future of the hockey club.

“Well, I don’t know if a massive step in the right direction,” said Conroy. “I mean, we’d love to be doing here adding players and being a playoff team, but we are where we are right now, so this was the path we needed to go down. And we thought by doing this, this is hopefully..  The whole thing is to get back in the playoffs, to get going in the right direction and have these assets and the picks. And whether we make the picks or, like I said yesterday, if we could just use the pick to get players, we’re going to look at all options. So I think this is important to continue to bring in assets and, yeah, we’re trying to get this thing going in the right direction as quick as possible. Right now we’re not where we want to be.”

The 2025-26 season has been a challenging one for the Flames on and off the ice. The club has traded out three big parts of its leadership group, with Andersson, Weegar and Kadri all wearing As as alternate captains. Conroy was asked if the club was rounding the curve towards becoming an acquiring team in the future.

“I hope this is it,” said Conroy. “Really, I do hope this is it. I hope we are going on that curve going up now and, you know, when I was over in the new building the other day thinking, you know, it won’t be next year, but the year after we’re going to be there. I want to be on that upswing going where we’re pushing to make the playoffs. The goal is always to make the playoffs every year and to continually push to win a Stanley Cup. That’s the goal, and I think we’re on the right path, but I think we have to be patient. We wish we could speed it up as quick as we could, but it does take some time.”

Conroy mentioned that he and Colorado general manager Chris McFarland had been in discussions on a Kadri trade, but he disputed the reporting that a deal had been done. (“I know it was reported we had a deal in place. If we would have had a deal in place, the deal would have been done.”) But the two sides circled back on Friday and hashed things out, with the deal being concluded late Friday morning per Conroy’s estimations.

On the day, the Flames bolstered their NHL roster with a pair of established veterans in Ryan Strome (from Anaheim) and Victor Olofsson (from Colorado). The minor league system also got a boost in the form of forward Brennan Othmann, added from the New York Rangers. And the team added a highly-regarded prospect in college-bound centre Max Curran, as well as a pair of high draft choices from the Colorado trade – a conditional 2028 first-rounder and a 2027 second-rounder.

The Flames are trying to balance their immediate needs with their growth towards hopefully being a contender in the future. Conroy is doing his best to avoid short-cuts as he works through his plan to build a sustainable, long-term contender.

“I would love to be in a playoff series next year in the Saddledome in its last year,” said Conroy. “That would be amazing for me. It’s a special place for me. But, you know, we’re going to do it the right way. We’re not going to try to just rush something for one year. We’re going to do it where longevity is what we want. And that new building is, I hope, going to have a ton of playoff games.”

The Flames are back in action on Saturday night when they host the Carolina Hurricanes.