Pals, with eight games left in the regular season for the Calgary Flames, we know one thing for sure: the Flames won’t be in the Stanley Cup playoffs.

But we’ve also learned some things down the stretch, including that Ryan Strome and Olli Maatta still have it, and that a few of the Flames’ kids – especially Matvei Gridin and Zayne Parekh – have learned a lot this season and are starting to show off what they’ve learned at the NHL level.

So what else might we learn?

Well, that’s where the Flames’ final call-ups from the American Hockey League’s Calgary Wranglers may come in handy.

Starting this season, teams are allocated five “regular” (non-emergency) recalls after the trade deadline, with four players allowed to be on the NHL roster at a time on “regular” call-ups. (For reference: “emergency” call-ups are ones required to help teams meet lineup minimums, “regular” call-ups are to have extra bodies on the NHL roster.)

As of Thursday morning, the Flames have three players already up on regular recalls: Gridin, Hunter Brzustewicz and Brennan Othmann. They have two call-ups left, though they would need to send one person down to bring up their last call-up.

So who might they use their last two call-ups on? Here are our suggestions.

An undrafted defenceman who spent time with the San Jose Sharks organization on an entry-level deal before heading to Germany for a season, Cicek joined the Flames system as a free agent in July and he’s been a Swiss Army knife on their blueline. He can play the left or right side, and he’s a stylistic chameleon able to adapt to the needs of whatever partner he’s with.

On a Wranglers team that’s had some challenges on the back end this season – and that lost the services of Ilya Solovyov, Yan Kuznetsov and Hunter Brzustewicz, half of their usual blueline, for much of the year – Cicek has been the defensive MVP. It would be really nice to reward him for his strong role this season with some NHL games.

A sixth-round pick by the Flames back in 2020, Kerins initially struggled to find his game at the AHL level. But something clicked for him in 2024-25. And he went from someone that many – including me, honestly – thought was a long-shot to get a qualifying offer to stay with the Flames organization ended up becoming one of their most interesting minor-league players.

Kerins has been flirting with a point-per-game scoring pace at the AHL level for the past two seasons, but he hasn’t gotten a ton of runway at the NHL level yet to show what he can do. Why not now?

So y’know how we glossed Cicek for being such a superb defender on a team lacking defensive depth? If you replaced “Cicek” with “Sam Morton” and “defensive depth” for “centre depth,” it’s a similar story. Originally a college free agent signing, Morton has become a really relied-upon fixture in the Wranglers lineup. What he lacks in dynamism he makes up for in reliability and consistency, and he’s usually the first player over the boards in hard-minutes situations.

He was up briefly this season before John Beecher was claimed off waivers, and he performed well. Why not give him another look?

A second-round pick by the Flames back in 2021, Stromgren has been with the Wranglers for the past three seasons and he’s improved his scoring pace in each of the three seasons. We’ll be the first to admit that he’s had some consistency challenges, but when he’s on his game he’s very good. He made his NHL debut earlier this season and got a few games in, albeit on the fourth line, and it would be helpful from an evaluation standpoint to maybe get some additional looks at him with the big club.

Finally, Suniev was a third-round pick in 2023 that impressed in two seasons at UMass before signing his entry-level contract last spring. He spent this season learning the pro game with the Wranglers, and Wranglers head coach Brett Sutter referred to Suniev as his team’s most improved player when chatting with Postmedia’s Danny Austin recently.

Suniev has a ton of upside, and it might be productive to bring him to the NHL to see how far he’s progressed before the summer.

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