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Top Flames stories of 2024: Andrei Kuzmenko gets dropped to the fourth line (for the first time)
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Photo credit: Brett Holmes-USA TODAY Sports
Ryan Pike
Dec 26, 2024, 11:00 ESTUpdated: Dec 25, 2024, 00:03 EST
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Welcome to our countdown of the top Calgary Flames news stories of 2024, where we will be counting down our most-read stories of the year in the days leading up to 2025.
It’s probably safe to say that Andrei Kuzmenko’s time in the National Hockey League has never been entirely smooth sailing.
The product of Yakutsk, Russia spent most of his playing career in his home country, including parts of seven seasons (and 315 games) in the Kontinental Hockey League – primarily with SKA St. Petersburg.
Following the 2021-22 KHL season Kuzmenko signed with the Vancouver Canucks and he moved to the NHL in 2022-23, making his NHL debut at the age of 26. His first season went great, as he scored 39 goals on a shooting percentage of 27.3 and generated 3.4 shots per game. By his second season, though, his shot quantity remained high but his percentages dropped, as he scored on 12.7% of his shots. Kuzmenko is a player not known for his 200-foot play, and so his reduced offensive production led to frustration in Vancouver.
He was sent to the Flames at the end of January as part of the Elias Lindholm trade. He debuted with the Flames after the All-Star Break and scored three goals in his first five games with the club. However, his overall game showed some of the same ups and downs that it displayed in Vancouver.
On Feb. 19 against the Winnipeg Jets, he was dropped to the fourth line. Our Jeff Middleton chronicled what happened:
Kuzmenko, who has 24 points in 49 total games this season and three points (all goals) in six games with the Flames so far, started out hot but has cooled off recently, with three of his last five games going without a point. He started this game against the Winnipeg Jets on the second line with Nazem Kadri and Martin Pospisil but was demoted to the fourth line in favour of Dryden Hunt to start the third period.
Huska made it a point after being asked about it to say it wasn’t a reflection of what Kuzmenko was doing and more that he didn’t like the way the results were coming in.
“It’s not even really a message,” Huska said in his post-game address (available on the Flames’ social channels). “We’re trying to find a little bit more rhythm, and the way we started the game with Connor [Zary] in the middle of the ice just didn’t seem for me like it was working. I feel like [Kuzmenko] has been effective with Naz and Marty, and I guess I just didn’t like the way it was shaking out for him more so than anybody. So it’s just one of the switches that we felt like we had to make in that area, but it’s nothing on him, and who knows what it will look like the next game.”
It later emerged that Kuzmenko was dealing with a virus and/or an injury, and he missed a pair of games in late February and another pair in mid-March before seemingly finding his rhythm with the Flames. Over the final month of the season, Kuzmenko led the Flames in goals and was behind only Nazem Kadri in points. (During his short NHL career Kuzmenko has shown himself to be a pretty streaky offensive player.)
Kuzmenko was dropped to the fourth line for bits and pieces of the 2024-25 season, and he has recently been out of the Flames’ lineup – at first due to injury and more recently as a healthy scratch. Based on his first few weeks with the Flames, perhaps we can expect a bounce-back from him as his cold streak could be followed by a stretch of increased production. It has happened for him before.
You can read the full story by clicking here, and be sure to tune in each day until Dec. 31 for the rest of our countdown!

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