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Several Flames players are approaching career milestones
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Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images
Ryan Pike
Nov 17, 2024, 12:00 ESTUpdated: Nov 16, 2024, 12:42 EST
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On Thursday night, Edmonton Oilers captain Connor McDavid scored his 1,000th career NHL point. Good for him! It’s a pretty impressive milestone.
Three hours down the road in Calgary, while nobody wearing a Flaming C is all that close to 1,000 career points, several are approaching career milestones of their own. Let’s take a quick look at who’s approaching what significant markers!

Mikael Backlund climbs the franchise leaderboard

Calgary’s captain gets his own section, which is fitting given last month he became just the second player to suit up for 1,000 games for the Flames. (The other one is Jarome Iginla.)
While Backlund continues to chase Iginla for the all-time franchise games-played mark – only 211 games to go! – he continues to work his way up the franchise leaderboard in several categories. Among them:
  • Backlund is two goals behind Eric Vail (206) for 10th
  • Backlund’s next assist puts him in sole possession of 7th, breaking a tie with Guy Chouinard and Paul Reinhart (336)
  • Backlund’s next even strength goal ties him with Lanny McDonald for sixth (153)
  • Backlund’s next shorthanded assist breaks a tie with Theo Fleury (13) for the franchise lead

Some approaching career milestones

Several non-Backlund players are quietly approaching some interesting career milestones of their own.
  • Jonathan Huberdeau’s next assist is his 500th
  • Tyson Barrie is three assists away from 400
  • Yegor Sharangovich is two games away from 300
  • MacKenzie Weegar is 13 games away from 500
  • Rasmus Andersson is 27 games away from 500
  • Ryan Lomberg is 25 games away from 300
  • Dan Vladar is 16 games away from 100

A lot of Flames are pretty new to the NHL

As we were researching this piece, we noticed two related phenomenon: First, most of the Flames haven’t been with the team very long. (Backlund has played twice as many games as the second-most player, Andersson, and he’s played nearly as many games as the third-most player, Coleman.) Second, the vast majority of the Flames haven’t played a ton of NHL games at all.
Here’s the experience breakdown (after Friday’s action) of the 23 players on the active roster:
Games
Players
901 to 1,100
Nazem Kadri (921), Mikael Backlund (1,008)
701 to 900
Tyson Barrie (818), Jonathan Huberdeau (849)
501 to 700
Blake Coleman (560)
401 to 500
Rasmus Andersson (473), MacKenzie Weegar (487)
301 to 400
none
201 to 300
Jake Bean (206), Kevin Rooney (270), Ryan Lomberg (275), Yegor Sharangovich (298)
101 to 200
Kevin Bahl (166), Andrei Kuzmenko (171), Joel Hanley (195)
0 to 100
Adam Klapka (11), Justin Kirkland (24), Dustin Wolf (27), Matt Coronato (48), Daniil Miromanov (65), Brayden Pachal (80), Martin Pospisil (81), Connor Zary (81), Dan Vladar (84)
(Yes, roughly half of the team has played fewer than 200 games.)
When we hear head coach Ryan Huska discuss the team’s six core leaders – Kadri, Backlund, Huberdeau, Coleman, Andersson and Weegar – it makes a lot of sense. They’re all good players, and they’re so much more experienced than everybody else on the team (aside from Barrie).

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