The Flames saved the best for last on Friday in what ended up being a tight-necked 3-2 loss to the Winnipeg Jets. Calgary outshot Winnipeg 34-17 with a notable 10-1 shot differential at 5v4. Despite the night ending on a bit of a sour note via an unassisted Kyle Connor net-front goal, the team seems to be, more or less to begin the season against the Canucks on Wednesday.
With that said, there are plenty of storylines to address. Let’s go around the team and look at a few of them.
#1. Barely Made It
If we’re assuming the Flames third pairing will be what the Flames rolled out on Friday, the bottom half of the defence should look something like this.
Bean-Pachal
Barrie
Hanley
Tyson Barrie signed a one-year, $1.25 million contract on Thursday. The immediate assumption was that he would be taking a lineup spot. He did, after all, get
pretty dramatic when he wasn’t given first power play unit deployment last season – at least according to Nashville GM Barry Trotz.
Maybe he’s on spot duty for injuries. Maybe he’ll serve as the “stick” when it comes to the powerplay. While the “carrot” of producing offence is great, having Barrie around and hungry to play the point might serve as additional incentive to actually score goals at 5v4.
We’ll see on that one. Right side power play quarterbacks don’t grow on trees. Entirely speculation, but it may have been the Flames doing him a favor to get him some perceived value while his agent works out a proper landing spot that includes better offensive deployment.
The downside to all of this is that the Flames have six potential NHLers in the AHL that have to wait for three injuries to get into an NHL game. Poirier, Grushnikov, Jurmo, Kuznetsov, Brzustewicz, and Solovyov.
#2. Hon-orable Mention
It is still a fairly contentious topic as to whether 2023 16th overall pick Sam Honzek should be starting the season on the Flames roster.
Deployed on a line with Mikael Backlund and Connor Zary last night, the 19-year-old fit right in. The unit out-attempted the opposition 10-5 while on the ice. That particular lineup spot is Blake Coleman’s, so that might be the writing on the wall already.
Honzek finished the game with zero shots or points, but tied for team lead in hits with MacKenzie Weegar and Martin Pospisil. All of them had three. The former Vancouver Giant also drew a penalty.
He slowed down a bit as the pace increased, but he still had two goals and five assists in six games.
#3. Opening Lines
It’s always fun to look at how much lineups change year over year. Assuming Honzek gets assigned to the Wranglers, here is what the lines should look like on Wednesday.
Kuzmenko-Kadri-Sharangovich
Huberdeau-Pospisil-Mantha
Zary-Backlund-Coleman
Lomberg-Rooney-Klapka
Weegar-Miromanov
Bahl-Andersson
Bean-Pachal
Vladar
Wolf
Here is what the starting lineup looked like last season.
Huberdeau-Lindholm-Dube
Sharangovich-Kadri-Coronato
Mangiapane-Backlund-Coleman
Greer-Ruzicka-Duehr
Hanifin-Andersson
Zadorov-Weegar
Oesterle-Tanev
Markstrom
Vladar
Fun to think about how different it will be next season.
#4. Speaking of Turnover
Who else is wondering if the Bruins are keeping an eye on Daniel Vladar’s recovery? They have Linus Ullmark and Brandon Bussi if Jeremy Swayman continues holding out, but Daniel Vladar might be a better contingency plan.
Personally, I think you would have to be out of your mind to be paying Jeremy Swayman eight million a season for the next eight years.
Plenty of goalies were traded this offseason (Markstrom, Askarov, Ullmark), but all of those were hockey trades involving players going the other way. The closest comparable appears to be Montreal sending Jake Allen to the Devils for a conditional third round pick.
Allen was also salary-retained at 50% for an extra season and the condition turned the pick into a second if he played 40 games next season as well as the team he’s on needs to make the playoffs. A long shot.
So perhaps he’s worth a third. Maybe the price is closer to a fourth round pick. The Flames originally acquired the Czech netminder for a 2022 third round pick during the 2021 offseason.
#5. The Foster Line
The unit of Jonathan Huberdeau, Martin Pospisil and Anthony Mantha is certainly a weird one.
Last night they posted fantastic metrics. At 5v5 they out-attemped the opposition 8-2 and outshot 4-1. Huberdeau got a stick on a Daniil Miromanov shot for a goal and Mantha got a very loose secondary assist on the play.
The line finished with a 71.88CF% out-attempting the opposition 23-9 at 5v5 over two preseason games; 20:43 of ice time. More importantly, they scored three goals and were scored against once over that span.
You don’t want to say that they’re wasting Martin Pospisil on those two forwards – they have solid results so far. Still, wouldn’t you rather see the Flames’ fastest skater by a huge margin working with more dynamic players?
We’ll do one more of these before the season starts. Stay tuned!
Stats courtesy of NaturalStatTrick and the National Hockey League.
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