Pals, the Stanley Cup playoffs begin on Saturday and the Calgary Flames will not be part of the proceedings.

On Friday, Flames brass met with their players as part of their annual exit meetings before everyone leaves to start their off-seasons. And despite a disappointing season – the fourth consecutive spring without playoff hockey in Southern Alberta – it was an interestingly upbeat series of discussions, very much in line with the vibes around the team over the past couple of months.

No, the Flames aren’t where they want to be right now.

No, they’re not particularly happy with that state of affairs.

However, three years into general manager Craig Conroy’s tenure, two things are crystal clear: Conroy has a plan for building the hockey club into something formidable, and he’s not particularly interested in any shortcuts that would deviate from that plan.

“I mean, you want to make the playoffs every year,” said Conroy. “I mean, that’s always going to be the goal. But we’re going to do it the right way. We’re not going to just force it to rush to get rid of, you know, whatever pick we are, one to six. We’re not giving that up just to, you know… Well, I mean, again, I say that. But if the right player was there, yeah, we would. But that would be for the long term.”

“It is about the long term. It’s not about getting in one year, not in the next, in one year, out. We want to be there consistently. Look at a team like Toronto. They’ve been there 10 years in a row. Unfortunately, they’re out this year. But they probably want to get back in for the next 10 years. We want to get in and have an extended run. We want to do it the right way.”

A lot of things went right in 2024-25 as the Flames pushed to within a tiebreaker of making the playoffs. A lot of players had career years and the team avoided major injuries. But things swung the other way in 2025-26 and the Flames suffered through a tough 2-8-2 October, an inability to reliably score at five-on-five or the power play, injuries to a few key players, and defensive breakdowns at tough times that put their goaltenders in tough spots.

In terms of offensive output, Conroy indicated the solutions need to come from within the existing group.

“Well, to just add scoring, I mean, it’s not that easy,” said Conroy. “We need more scoring from within, first and foremost. I mean, guys can’t, you know, if you’re on every power play, if you’re on every, you know, we’re going to challenge all the guys that are there. We need more from each and every one of them.”

If you want to take a glass-half-full approach to things, there are reasons to be optimistic about the Flames’ future. Lengthy rookie auditions from the likes of Yan Kuznetsov, Hunter Brzustewicz, Zayne Parekh and Matvei Gridin were very promising, to the point where you might be able to pencil them in as NHLers next fall – though it’s worth noting that of that quartet only Kuznetsov requires waivers, so the other three are still in prove-it territory. The penalty kill was good. The team’s general structure and pace was pretty consistent.

If you want to take a glass-half-empty approach, the Flames’ leading scorer (Matt Coronato) had just 45 points this season. The Flames have drafted well but pending June’s new additions, there’s no offensive saviour coming through the pipeline nor does it sound like Conroy’s in a hurry to move out assets to acquire a Band-Aid offensive solution unless it’s a long-term strategic addition.

Growth will need to be internally-driven, and for a team that was in the bottom 10 for generating chances and bottom four for burying them, progress may be slow or uneven as the team’s promising young players mature into polished NHLers. With the Flames understandably hesitant to take shortcuts and long-term, sustainable success in mind, Flames fans may need to show a bit more patience through potential growing pains over the next season (or more).

To reiterate Conroy’s mantra: “We want to do it the right way.”

This is a process. And sometimes the process takes a bit of time to generate the desired results.