The Calgary Flames are going to look a lot different to begin the 2024-25 season than they did the year prior. Especially on the blueline.

On opening night 2023, the Flames had seven blueliners on their roster: Rasmus Andersson, Dennis Gilbert, Noah Hanifin, Jordan Oesterle, Chris Tanev, MacKenzie Weegar and Nikita Zadorov. (Oliver Kylington was on the non-roster list.) Roughly 10 months later, only Andersson and Weegar remain.

Here’s our educated projections of how the Flames’ defensive group could look and be used when the season begins.

We’ll go from the players who faced the toughest opposition – via Dobber’s Frozen Tools – to the easiest opposition.

Kevin Bahl and Daniil Miromanov both faced first-line opposition, though they received moderate amount of defensive zone starts. They weren’t each thrown to the wolves – they both had pretty good defensive partners to help them out – but they weren’t really sheltered. Both were in the black for expected goals percentages (via Natural Stat Trick): Bahl was 51.87% xGF and Miromanov was 57.48% xGF.

MacKenzie Weegar and Rasmus Andersson spent a big chunk of the season together, though after the trade deadline Weegar spent time with Miromanov as they tried to get him going offensively… and Andersson played with a rotation of whoever else the Flames had leftover. The duo, in general, faced second-line opposition and were given a moderate amount of offensive zone starts. They had slightly different outcomes, likely due to their time apart: Weegar had 50.99% xGF and Andersson had 47.68% xGF.

In Columbus, Jake Bean primarily faced third-line opposition and received a pretty even mix of zone starts. He had 45.33% xGF.

Brayden Pachal, Ilya Solovyov and Joel Hanley all faced fourth-line opposition. Pachal and Solovyov had an even mix of zone starts, while Hanley received moderate defensive zone starts. Pachal had 47.34% xGF, Solovyov had 47.13% xGF and Hanley had 53.58% xGF.

In terms of special teams: the Flames usually went with one defender on the first power play unit (Weegar) and the second unit had two defenders (Andersson and one of Hanifin or Miromanov). On the penalty kill, after Tanev, Hanifin and Zadorov departed the Flames used Weegar and Andersson on the first unit and a second unit of Pachal and a rotating partner. (Bahl played second unit PK in New Jersey while Bean played second unit PK in Columbus.)

So here’s the thing, folks: the forwards have Mikael Backlund and Blake Coleman to eat up tough situations and create situational high ground for literally everybody else. Neither guy is expected to create a ton of offence – if they do, it’s a bonus – but they enable other players to do that with their strong two-way play.

The blueline is a much different situation, because their true-blue best blueliner, Weegar, is also one of the players expected to generate offence. But he’s also a player they’ll throw into tough situations and try to prop up defenders who need a bit of help in an area of their game, so he’s being asked to do a lot. So is Andersson.

So here’s what we would do to help even things out a bit.

(We’re not sure which of Hanley or Solovyov would be the best fit as the seventh defender.)

Weegar, Bahl and Pachal can help balance out the defensive foibles of their partners, enabling Miromanov, Andersson and Bean to generate five-on-five offence. The goal should be to provide some balance so that the Flames don’t need to lean too much on any one pairing.

On special teams, Weegar is on PP first unit, Miromanov and Andersson are on PP second unit, Weegar and Andersson are on PK first unit, and Bahl and Pachal are on PK second unit. The “bump-up” shift after special teams would be whichever pairing is the freshest after each special teams situation.

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