Sometimes prospects are drafted and they become useful players, but they never quite blossom into what scouts felt they could become. Two-time Calgary Flames blueliner Jamie Allison is a pretty good example of this.

As Flames fans await the return of Ryan Lomberg to the C of Red in 2024-25, let’s delve into the history of another two-time Flame.

An Ontario kid, Allison played his junior hockey with the Windsor Spitfires and Detroit Jr. Red Wings. He was selected by the Flames in the second round of the 1993 NHL Draft, and he boasted some size (6’1″, 209 pounds), some two-way savvy, and an understated offensive game.

He played two seasons in the OHL after being drafted, including winning an OHL Championship and making a Memorial Cup appearance in his 19-year-old season. In a fun bit of trivia, Allison’s final junior game was the 1995 Memorial Cup Final, where he lost to Ryan Huska and Jarome Iginla’s Kamloops Blazers. In a weirder bit of trivia, he had already made his NHL debut, as the Flames brought him up on emergency recall for a road game in Detroit earlier that season after the team ran out of healthy bodies.

Anyway, Allison played three full seasons with the Flames organization on his first run, and a piece of a fourth season. He established himself as a really solid two-way AHL blueliner (and quite a bruiser, amassing 223 points in his first season with Saint John). He started pushing for NHL time in his second and third seasons; he played 20 NHL games in 1996-97 and 43 games in 1997-98.

By 1998-99, though, there just wasn’t an obvious NHL slot for Allison, and amidst an early losing skid, the team needed a shake-up…

On Oct. 27, 1998, the Flames made a trade with Chicago. Headed to the Blackhawks were Allison, minor forward Erik Andersson and Marty McInnis. Headed to the Flames were forwards Jeff Shantz and Steve Dubinsky.

The Flames were 2-4-1 at the time, and were likely hoping that the addition of Shantz and Dubinsky would solidify a shaky forward group. That part worked, but a week after the trade starting goaltender Ken Wregget got hurt and the Flames remained a fairly scrambly bunch for the season of the season – they only ended up missing the playoffs by six points, which was impressive considering they went through seven goalies.

In Chicago, Allison got a chance to show he could be an NHL regular, playing his way onto the NHL roster and becoming a full-timer for the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 season. The Flames were obviously still keeping tabs on his progress…

So, y’know how these days, teams dump a lot of pretty decent players onto waivers on the day before rosters need to be set at the end of training camp? The idea is with so many players available, maybe your team can sneak their promising young player through and stash him in the minors. Well, before the current system, there used to be a waiver draft prior to the season, where teams only had a certain amount of protection spots available. (The entire thing was convoluted, but teams had to protect two goalies and 18 skaters, and if you claimed a player, you had to drop somebody from your protected list.)

Anyway, in 2001, the Flames claimed Allison back from Chicago in the waiver draft and dropped Phil Housley (and his $2.5 million salary) off their protected list, and Chicago claimed Housley. Allison spent the bulk of the 2001-02 season with the Flames…

With the Flames out of the playoff picture, the Flames traded Allison to Columbus prior to the 2002 trade deadline in exchange for Blake Sloan.

Sloan played one season with the Flames before departing the organization, while Allison played three more NHL seasons, sandwiched around the 2004-05 lockout. His most memorable appearance likely came in a November 2005 game with Nashville; initially expected to be a healthy scratch, he dressed as backup in place of Chris Mason when Mason was injured during warm-up.