Another Calgary Flames prospect development camp is in the books.

The fans who packed WinSport this past week were treated to a dazzling display of talent on the ice; the media got to hear from general manager Craig Conroy on three consecutive days, while also being introduced to some truly impressive young stars in the making. And in the end, the Snowy Cup made its triumphant return, with Team McDonald capturing the glory in a 10-8 shootout thriller.

Obviously, it’s unwise to draw sweeping conclusions from three days’ worth of skating drills and shootouts, but at the same time, the Flames put on these camps for a pretty good reason. There’s plenty to learn — and a lot of data points to gather — from getting all of these players onto the same ice surface.

So, with that in mind, here are six Flames prospects who made positive impressions during the club’s 2026 development camp.

Skill development sessions and 3-on-3 scrimmages don’t always present much of an opportunity to judge players like Carels, who tend to stand out the most when the lights are the brightest, but the No. 6 pick certainly looked to be a cut above most of his peers despite being less than two weeks removed from his 18th birthday.

Carels is a remarkably calm and composed two-way defenceman. He’s a terrific skater who shifts between his edges with ease and pivots on a dime. He might not be the fastest skater in the Flames’ organization, but Carels seemingly always knows exactly when to activate and where to go. He plays the game like a 10-year pro.

There’s so much confidence and intelligence in Carels’s game, and it shouldn’t take him long to acclimate to the NHL once he signs his entry-level deal with the Flames. In all likelihood, he’ll be a one-and-done at North Dakota who turns professional next spring.

Speaking of big, mobile left-shot defenders … Phillips almost looked like the Charizard to Carels’s Charmander this week. (That is the first, and last, Pokémon reference I will ever make in a FlamesNation column). Phillips was by far the most impressive player in Friday’s scrimmage, rushing the puck up the ice at every opportunity and using his stick to disrupt zone entries like you might sweep dust off the floor.

From a statistical standpoint, Phillips is a tough nut to crack. His production has never jumped off the page at any level. But watching him, it’s obvious that he has genuine offensive tools, and if he were ever deployed in a more favourable environment to showcase those skills, he might be able to put up points at a much greater clip. What with his 6’6″ frame (and his willingness to use it), as well as his ability to skate the puck out of the defensive zone, Phillips closely resembles Nikita Zadorov whenever he steps onto the ice.

Don’t be surprised if Phillips emerges as a much stronger offensive contributor this coming season as he joins the WHL’s Medicine Hat Tigers, whose head coach, Willie Desjardins, came to Calgary to watch him on Friday. After that, he’s expected to head off to the University of Minnesota.

Flames goaltending director Jordan Sigalet really pushed for Calgary to use one of its second-rounders this year on Trejbal, the consensus top goaltender available in the 2026 NHL Draft. Ultimately, the team had to trade up to get him, sending picks No. 51 and 68 to the Carolina Hurricanes for the No. 42 selection. They had the draft capital to make it work, and now it’ll be up to Trejbal to prove the Flames made the right call.

Trejbal might not completely resemble the archetypal blue-chip goalie prospect. At 6’4″, he isn’t short, but he’s a little wiry and certainly doesn’t tower over everyone else; he also catches right, an attribute shared by just six of the 98 goaltenders who played in the NHL last season. But even during the structured development sessions throughout the week, it was apparent that Trejbal has excellent technical skills and reflexes and can cover a ton of the net. He stopped multiple breakaways during the scrimmage and was clearly the best goaltender on the ice.

Speaking to the media on Friday, Trejbal expressed a desire to follow in the footsteps of Michael Hrabal, a top Utah Mammoth prospect who put together three tremendous seasons at UMass before turning pro earlier this year. It just so happens that Trejbal will begin his tenure as Hrabal’s successor between the pipes at UMass this fall.

Aside from his 5’11” frame, everything about Reschny’s profile and production to date suggests he’ll be a top-six NHL centre. If there’s one word for him, it’s “slick.” He’s got terrific hands in tight quarters, allowing him to finesse his way past even the biggest defenders (and he got plenty of chances to do that this week). And he already has a track record of standing out against strong competition, going from 92 points in 62 games with the WHL’s Victoria Royals in 2024-25 to 35 points in 36 games as a freshman at NoDak in 2025-26.

Reschny similarly acquitted himself to Carels at development camp, showing near-endless composure and making virtually everything look effortless. He always looked like he was fully in control. He spent most of the scrimmage paired up with Joe Iginla — more on him later — and the former WHL rivals showed signs of burgeoning chemistry, connecting on multiple scoring plays. But as our own Robert Munnich documented on Friday, Reschny is also more than capable of doing things himself:

With both Carels and Reschny in the lineup, NoDak is going to be a force to be reckoned with this season — and so will the Flames, once the two of them sign with the club in the spring.

Katolicky is a big, mobile winger coming off what one Flames staffer described this week as “a year and a half from hell.” A combination of injuries, illness, and bad luck dropped Katolicky from legit first-round consideration a year ago to the point where the Flames felt he was impossible to pass on … with the No. 132 pick. Talk about a slide.

The 2025-26 season went about as poorly as it could’ve for Katolicky, who struggled to produce in Finland’s U20 league while battling to overcome a variety of health issues. But he’s healthy now and will soon join the OHL’s Sarnia Sting, where he’ll likely be asked to do a little bit of everything. Most importantly, he’ll get to play in a lot of games, which is what the Flames really want to see after he was sidelined for much of last year.

Katolicky won’t turn 18 for another couple of weeks, but he looked surprisingly polished throughout development camp. The 6’5″ winger proved nearly impossible to move off the puck and created a ton of offence for himself and his teammates. Depending on how he does in Sarnia, it wouldn’t be too surprising to see Katolicky potentially join Trejbal with Team Czechia at the next two IIHF World Junior Championships.

Plenty of the Flames fans at Winsport were excited to see what Carels, Reschny, and Trejbal could do, but nobody captured the attention of as many fans as Iginla, who spent the entire week looking laser-focused on the ice and happy-go-lucky off of it. Iggy Jr. is clearly determined to silence the critics who questioned why the Flames used the No. 65 pick in this year’s draft on a 5’10” winger who only scored 31 points in 59 WHL games last season. Those numbers don’t tell the whole story about Joe, who fit right in alongside the rest of Calgary’s prospects at camp.

Joe just works. For now, he’s a power forward in a dangler’s body, but if he can fill out a little bit, he could become a much more consistently impactful player. He told reporters on Wednesday that he’s already bulked up from 166 pounds to 180 since the end of the season. He’s doing what he needs to do. One thing he doesn’t need to improve is his shot, which clearly got passed down to him from his old man — that’s Trejbal he’s beating in the clip below:

Like Katolicky, Iginla played through injury for much of the 2025-26 season and looks to be primed for a breakout this coming year. He’ll likely spend one more year in the WHL, either with the Vancouver Giants or another club; after that, further development within an NCAA program is a strong possibility.

Joe is the second-youngest player in the entire Flames organization, having been born only a few weeks before 2026 second-rounder Alan Shaikhlislamov; as such, he’ll be given a long runway to develop into the best version of himself.

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