We get a lot of good questions in our regular mailbag segment, and occasionally they’re interesting enough to spin off into their own discussion. So, let’s dive into one: which Flames are the best to begin a season?

This is fun and relevant because the Flames are returning to action on Saturday after not playing competitive ice hockey for the better part of five months.

So which regulars have been the hottest over the first five games of the season over the past three seasons?

The Flames are hoping Gaudreau’s first five games are close to his first five games in each of the past three seasons. While he’s averaged two goals early in the past three seasons, he’s also had between four and six assists in that span. He hasn’t exactly been a sniper early on, but he’s definitely had his vision and puck distribution going.

Like Gaudreau, Tkachuk hasn’t buried a ton of pucks early in seasons – he’s had just shy of two goals in each of the seasons early on. But he’s also had tons of assists in the past two seasons, pushing his point output to over a point per game in 2018-19 and 2019-20’s first five games. (All this while playing the “tough minutes” against the other teams’ top players.)

Monahan’s been the team’s most consistent goal-scorer basically since he became an NHLer. He hasn’t set the world on fire early in seasons, but he’s been consistent. He’s averaged just shy of three goals in the first five games of the past three seasons, along with two assists in each season. He’s almost a point-per-game player early on every season.

Last season, Brodie had an assist over his first five games. That’s a departure from his prior seasons, where he had four points and five points respectively. He doesn’t score a ton of goals, but he gets points in bunches and multi-point games early in 2017-18 and 2018-19 did a lot to push his productivity early on in those seasons.

Lindholm’s average output is boosted by six points in the first five games of 2018-19, including four goals. But he had three points in the other two seasons (2017-18 and 2019-20), so he’s fairly consistent (and like Brodie, he’s prone to single-game outbursts that push his average up).

Everybody else on the team is pretty inconsistent early in seasons. David Rittich both has early shutouts and games where he struggles.