Gang, it sure does sound like Rasmus Andersson and the Calgary Flames are going to be parting ways in the near future.

The 28-year-old Andersson is a talented right shot defender who’s been a really good Flame since becoming a regular in 2018-19. However, he’s entering the final year of his current contract and can potentially become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the 2025-26 season.

On Friday, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli reported that the Flames and Andersson are “not on the same page” regarding a new deal. Later on Friday, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman wrote that Andersson is “ready for something new.” With the NHL Draft coming up on Friday, and the draft often being a place where big trades happen, let’s ponder what the Flames could get back in a potential Andersson trade.

In other words: if we were Flames general manager Craig Conroy, what would we be asking other teams for in exchange for Andersson?

First things first: so, are the Flames a team that boasts a lot of high-end talent on their NHL roster? No, but they’re working on it. Part of how they’re trying to work on it is by creating a developmental environment that’s really competitive, and stocking that developmental system with a lot of good young players.

Getting another first-round pick would help them continue that process. And heck, even as the Flames start becoming a consistent playoff team, they’ll want and need more first-rounders every year to use as picks and/or trade chips.

Do the Flames have a bevvy of young centres? Not really. Not yet, at least. The Morgan Frost trade helped, and the upcoming NHL Draft is full of centres in the first round, but if you’re the Flames, you would love to add a centre in that 23-to-26-year-old age cohort to fill in some gaps. Ideally a right shot.

In an ideal world, you have Zayne Parekh and MacKenzie Weegar playing on the right side, on different pairings, in the near future. So who’s playing with them? Well, Kevin Bahl is probably playing with one of them. Who’s playing with the other one? The Flames’ most NHL-ready left shot blueline prospects are more of the third-pair shutdown variety. So adding someone else like Bahl – a left shot, two-way defender in a similar age group – would be great.

Finally, the Flames feel like they’ve done a lot to add to their prospect group lately. They have goalies. They have blueliners. They have a bunch of wingers. But if they have a chance to add another prospect to that group that their amateur scouting group is high on, they’ll probably try to do that, too. Especially if that exciting prospect is a centre.

Two years ago, the Flames had Elias Lindholm available and ended up getting a first-round pick, a fourth-round pick, two prospects (Hunter Brzustewicz and Joni Jurmo) and a roster player (Andrei Kuzmenko) for 26 regular season games of Lindholm (in a season where Lindholm and the Flames kind of struggled) with no salary retained. The Flames can provide an acquiring team with 82 games of Andersson, potentially retaining salary, too.

Anderson is a good player. He plays a premium position. He’s cost-controlled for the year and really inexpensive for what he offers. He’s said to have a lot of interest league-wide. Expecting the Flames to get quite a lot for Andersson isn’t unreasonable.