According to a report from Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli, the Calgary Flames are dipping their toes into the professional try-out pool. Per Seravalli, the Flames are inviting veteran blueliner Tyson Barrie to training camp on a PTO.

The 33-year-old Barrie is a right shot defender originally from scenic Victoria, British Columbia. He played his junior hockey with the Kelowna Rockets from 2006-07 to 2010-11, coincidentally overlapping with Flames head coach Ryan Huska for his entire junior run.

Since going pro in 2011-12, Barrie’s played 809 NHL games between runs with Colorado, Toronto, Edmonton and Nashville, where he’s emerged as an offensive specialist. He’s posted 109 goals and 505 points over 13 NHL seasons. His best offensive year was 14 goals and 59 points with Colorado in 2018-19, but he was limited to 41 games and 15 points last season with Nashville between injury and a stretch as a healthy scratch.

The Flames have 15 defencemen under NHL contracts for 2024-25 – that includes Zayne Parekh and Etienne Morin, both likely headed back to junior – and still have to get restricted free agent Ilya Solovyov under contract. But adding Barrie could give the Flames a bit of breathing room in terms of extra bodies, plus Barrie is a really experienced veteran who’s been there, done that, and could be a useful mentor for some of the younger offensive-minded defencemen in the system.

On paper, the Flames’ starting six blueliners appear to be MacKenzie Weegar, Rasmus Andersson, Jake Bean, Kevin Bahl, Brayden Pachal and Daniil Miromanov… but the seventh spot doesn’t appear to be completely sewn up, with the likes of Joel Hanley and Solovyov potentially in the mix. If you’re going to have a seventh defender on the roster, a savvy veteran like Barrie might not be the worst idea for the role and could add a bit of flexibility to the mix.

Or he could just be a veteran playing pre-season games, which would allow the Flames to lean on Weegar and Andersson a little bit less before a regular season where they’ll likely be leaned on heavily as the Flames begin their retool in earnest.

We’ll see how things shake out when training camp begins later this month.