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FN’s 2026 Flames summer prospect rankings – #13: Tyson Gross

Photo credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images

By Mike Gould

Aug 18, 2026, 10:00 EDTUpdated: Aug 15, 2026, 00:37 EDT

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By virtue of his strong junior year at St. Cloud State University, followed by a strong first six NHL games during the 2025-26 stretch drive, Tyson Gross is the only undrafted prospect in our 2026 Calgary Flames prospect rankings.

It’s certainly not unheard of for undrafted free-agent signings to work their way up the ranks of an NHL organization. Still, it’s a testament to the strength of Gross’s debut that he managed to establish himself as one of the better prospects on a rebuilding team over the span of just a few weeks.

The last undrafted prospect to receive this much hype in Calgary was probably Connor Mackey, who topped out at No. 4 in our rankings in 2020 — a very different point in time for the Flames. (That prospect pool was thin). But while Mackey has never fully earned the trust of any of his NHL coaches, Gross already managed to play his way into pivotal in-game situations within his first six Flames appearances, and he could have the inside track towards earning the team’s fourth-line centre job for the 2026-27 season.

Tyson Gross

Forward; shoots right
Born Sept. 23, 2002 (age 23) in Calgary, Alberta
6’3″, 194 pounds
Undrafted; signed by Flames as a free agent on Mar. 11, 2026

It’s always a challenge to project how a prospect will develop over multiple years in succession. Vanishingly few players are ready to step into the NHL at age 18, and even the ones who are typically still have a lot of growing left to do.

Tyson Gross needed a lot of extra time to get to where he is now. From the day he turned 18, it took him more than five years before he signed his first NHL contract, and it was really only in his third and final season at St. Cloud State University that he emerged as a true star in his league. But with his 24th birthday already on the horizon, Gross looks to be much closer to a finished product than most of the other prospects in our rankings — and there’s a spot open for him if he can claim it.

After playing his junior hockey with the AJHL’s Drumheller Dragons and the USHL’s Fargo Force and Cedar Rapids RoughRiders, Gross attended his first NHL development camp with his hometown Flames in 2023. Ultimately, given his previous allegiance to the club (both as a fan and a camp attendee), it wasn’t too difficult for the Flames to convince Gross to sign with them three years later. It certainly didn’t hurt that his dad, Kevin, is a longtime employee of the team who currently serves as their VP of partnerships and sales.

Gross racked up 41 points in 36 games as a junior with the Huskies in 2025-26 while also leading all of NCAA Division I men’s hockey with 489 face-off wins. In total, he won 58.9 percent of his faceoffs at St. Cloud State last year, and he remained strong in the dot after joining the Flames, going 27-for-53 across his first six games. It took very little time for Flames head coach Ryan Huska to start using Gross as a faceoff specialist in high-leverage situations; he notably went 6-for-7 in his draws on the penalty kill, and showed similar proficiency while defending leads late in games.

Pretty much everyone in Calgary was happy to see the Flames win the sweepstakes to sign a hometown boy as an NCAA free agent. After all, they didn’t have to give up anything to get him, and he posted pretty impressive numbers at St. Cloud State while also being named the NCHC’s best defensive forward. With that kind of pedigree, Gross will be given every opportunity to build upon his strong first impression with the Flames for years into the future.

Here’s how University Chronicle contributor Felicity Harding characterized Gross’s contributions at St. Cloud State in 2025-26:

St. Cloud State as a whole had a less than ideal season, but even in those circumstances, Gross still had an outstanding season. On the stat sheet, Gross was one of the most frequent Huskies to appear as he led the team in assists (23) and points (41), was second on the team in goals (18), and was third on the team in shots (92). He also set career highs in goals (December 13, 2025), assists (January 10, 2026), and points (January 2, 2026). One of the major parts to his offensive success is that he isn’t the flashiest player on the ice, but he has a sneaky good shot and hands.
Gross saw a lot more ice time as well having solidified himself as St. Cloud’s 1C. He was one of the players where if he was on the ice, you knew he would have the puck at some point in time. The jump and growth in his skating ability really helped with the greater success in his offense and also made him a better 200-foot player.

Expectations for 2026-27

As is the case with Abram Wiebe, who narrowly missed cracking our Top 20, Gross is at the age where he doesn’t have much runway left before he needs to achieve liftoff into the NHL. He has only the 2026-27 season remaining on his entry-level deal with the Flames, who have become rather ruthless about cutting players loose amid the continuous influx of new talent. Gross need only look at Carter King — another Calgary kid who signed with the Flames at the end of the 2024-25 season but lasted just one year in the organization — as a cautionary tale that in the NHL, nothing truly lasts forever.

Gross should be in the running for a spot on the Flames’ fourth line, where he could slot in alongside the likes of Martin Pospisil, Adam Klapka, Maxim Tsyplakov, Sam Honzek, and even Connor Zary. As it stands, PuckPedia has 13 different forwards on its current Flames roster projection, and Gross isn’t one of them; however, things can change very quickly in this league, and it wouldn’t be all that surprising to see Zary traded or Tsyplakov waived before the start of the upcoming season. It also remains to be seen whether Pospisil will be able to stay healthy after he was limited to just 22 NHL games in 2025-26.

The Flames have a reasonably large contingent of forwards looking to earn a promotion into the NHL, with groupings of established farmhands (Dryden Hunt, Ben Jones), quad-A tweeners (Sam Morton, William Stromgren, Rory Kerins), and trade acquisitions (Jonathan Castagna, Brennan Othmann). Gross falls into another sub-category of recent college signings, which overlaps with the likes of Castagna and Morton and also includes Aydar Suniev. But of all these players, Gross probably has the strongest bona fides — in Huska’s eyes, at least — and it wouldn’t be surprising if he starts the 2026-27 season as the Flames’ No. 4 centre and face-off specialist. He’s got the goods to become a very useful NHLer.

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