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Who are NHL draft experts saying the Flames will select in the first round?
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Photo credit: Kyle Smutzki - Portland Winterhawks
Ryan Pike
May 18, 2025, 10:00 EDTUpdated: May 17, 2025, 19:34 EDT
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The 2025 NHL Draft takes place June 27 & 28 from Los Angeles, and the Calgary Flames currently own two selections in the first round. The draft lottery took place a couple weeks back and determined the order of the first 16 picks of the draft, with the remainder being determined by the results of the Stanley Cup playoffs.
With the draft order a bit in flux, some of the draft experts we know have started to map out how the first round could go. With the Flames set to definitely select at 18th overall (with New Jersey’s pick) and tentatively select at 22nd overall (with Florida’s pick, pending their playoff results), which players do NHL Draft experts have the Flames selecting?

Steven Ellis (Daily Faceoff)

We covered this right after the draft lottery, so we won’t go into too much detail, but Steven Ellis dug into the first round over at Daily Faceoff.
He had the Flames grabbing a pair of forwards from the Western Hockey League: the Calgary Hitmen’s Ben Kindel and the Seattle Thunderbirds’ Braeden Cootes. We’ve profiled both players on the site.
  • Kindel is a right shot forward that plays a mix of centre and the wing, and had 99 points for the Hitmen this season.
  • Cootes is a right shot forward that’s almost exclusively a centre, and had 63 points for the Thunderbirds this season. (If you want to attribute part of their difference in offensive production to the Hitmen being a better, deeper team than Seattle was this season, we won’t disagree.)

FC Hockey

Over at FC Hockey, they also had the Flames selecting a pair of WHL forwards. At 18th they have the Flames selecting the Victoria Royals’ Cole Reschny, while the Flames nab Cootes at 22nd overall. Reschny is a left shot forward, primarily a centre, and had 92 points in 62 games with the Royals this season.

Corey Pronman (The Athletic)

The Athletic has a pair of draft gurus and they each put together their own first round mock draft. Corey Pronman has the Flames selecting Justin Carbonneau, a winger with the QMJHL’s Blainville-Boisbriand Armada, at 18th overall and then opting for Swedish centre Milton Gastrin at 22nd overall.
  • Carbonneau is a right shot forward, primarily a winger, that had 89 points with the Armada this season. Pronman’s own discussion of his picks praises Carbonneau’s offensive skill, but also notes that he may be “slightly redundant” within the Flames system due to the presence of Matt Coronato.
  • Gastrin is a left shot forward that plays a mix of centre and the wing that had 42 points with MoDo Hockey’s junior team this season.

Scott Wheeler (The Athletic)

Scott Wheeler, the other Athletic drafting ace, has the Flames selecting two WHL forwards – we see a trend emerging – with Reschny going at 18th overall and Kindel going at 22nd overall.

A pattern emerges

Between what Flames general manager Craig Conroy has expressed publicly, a preference towards centres to fill in gaps in the Flames’ depth chart, and draft gurus looking at the Flames’ reserve list on their own and going “Wow, they need centres,” most of the mock drafts out there right now have the Flames trending heavily towards centres. And a lot of the centres they have the Flames selecting are from the Western League.
Neither of those trends would surprise us if that’s how the first round unfolds in late June.
We’ll have much more on the 2025 NHL Draft, and the Flames drafting needs, as the off-season unfolds.

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