The Calgary Flames remain one of the league’s best stories nearly a month into the 2024-25 NHL regular season.

Rasmus Andersson is off to a fantastic start, Dustin Wolf looks like a bona fide Calder Trophy candidate, and Jonathan Huberdeau, Connor Zary, and Andrei Kuzmenko are all tied with seven points in eight games. For a team many expected to finish near the bottom of the NHL standings this season, the Flames have flipped the script in the early goings.

But there are also some signs that the Flames are bound for some serious regression, beginning with the fact that they’ve now dropped back-to-back games against teams that finished way ahead of them in the standings last year. Sure, the Flames were probably right to criticize the officiating in their loss to the Winnipeg Jets on Saturday, but it doesn’t change that they were clearly the second-best team on the ice.

After sitting alone atop the Pacific Division one week ago, the Flames are now in third place in the division behind the Vegas Golden Knights and Los Angeles Kings, with the surging Vancouver Canucks just one point back with one game in hand.

With that being said, the Flames aren’t even close to the bottom of the league (yet) and it’ll take a long string of losses to get them anywhere near the San Jose Sharks, who have lost nine consecutive games to begin the season and their last six in regulation.

Since losing star prospect Mack Celebrini in their first game of the 2024-25 season, the Sharks have been flat-out pitiful. Their goaltending tandem is rocking a goals-against average near 4.00, and beyond Mikael Granlund, Tyler Toffoli, William Eklund, and Fabian Zetterlund, they aren’t really getting contributions from anybody.

The Sharks are as good an argument against stripped-down rebuilds as any team since the “Decade of Darkness” Oilers. Sure, they landed Celebrini through the draft lottery last year, but it might take another three of him to get these Sharks out of their current squalor. Remember, the Oilers’ first No. 1 pick was a future Hart Trophy winner, and they still needed to make three more to get on the right track.

For now, the Sharks are running away with the race for the top lottery odds once again this season. Even with back-to-back regulation losses, the Flames are still nine points “behind” them in the reverse standings — and remember, the Sharks finished last season with just 47 points. What if they outdo themselves this year?

Just ahead of San Jose in the lottery race are the Chicago Blackhawks and Philadelphia Flyers, both of whom have five points — and, more importantly, their respective top prospects are both healthy and playing games. Connor Bedard and Matvei Michkov both look like cornerstone players in the making and their supporting casts are both better than the flotsam and jetsam in the Bay Area.

Of course, the Flames don’t necessarily have to pick first overall for their 2024-25 campaign to be a “success” from a rebuild standpoint. This is a team that already has some of its future building blocks in place, with Wolf and Zary both looking like genuine difference-makers now and in the future. But they need more, especially with 2021 first-round pick Matt Coronato still struggling to make a consistent impact at the NHL level (he made his AHL season debut on Sunday afternoon).

As every hockey fan in Calgary surely knows by now, the Flames need to finish in the bottom 10 this year to avoid handing their own first-round pick to the Montreal Canadiens as part of the conditions of the regrettable Sean Monahan trade. Otherwise, they’ll keep the Florida Panthers’ 2025 first-round pick while forfeiting their own, which could, in theory, result in them giving away a pick in the 11-15 range over one at the very end of the opening round. Not ideal.

Wolf, Zary, and Zayne Parekh are excellent pieces, but the Flames need more. It’s not going to benefit anybody for them to become as bad as San Jose is now, but it’s also clear that the bill for their excellent start is about to come due. They might be favoured against Utah and Montreal, but the Flames’ other games in the next two weeks are against Vegas, New Jersey, Edmonton, Boston, and red-hot Buffalo. Things could come apart at the seams very quickly here.

It’s still very, very early. The Flames have been respectable, if not flat-out good, so far. But it’s looking more and more like things could start to normalize in Calgary pretty soon, and if that does happen, don’t be surprised if the noise starts up again about some of this team’s more experienced players wanting a change of scenery.