Twenty-eight games into the 2024-2025 NHL regular season and steadily marching towards the halfway mark, the Calgary Flames currently stand atop a narrow ridge.
The team has only one regulation win in its last seven games, and having finally excused themselves from a Wildcard playoff spot; the group finally places where many expected them to be by mid-December.
With the hot-cold nature of this year's iteration of the Flames, the next three weeks will define what the 2024-2025 season will be remembered for.
Will the group rebound like they did after their last major skid?
The Flames lost five of six between Oct. 24 to Nov. 3—only to recover into a top-seven team in the NHL in the 18 days that followed.
Head Coach Ryan Huska's crew lost only two regulation games in their next nine, and six of those outings resulted in wins.
Much of that stretch saw Calgary doggedly chasing Vegas for the top spot in the Pacific Division. For a few hours on Nov 23, the Flames seized first place from the Golden Knights, only to see their perennially contending rivals win the Saturday late game.
Or do the mid-season woes continue?
Does the record-low offence continue to struggle? The league median for shooting percentage among forwards is 12.7%. With injuries to Anthony Mantha (26.7%) and Justin Kirkland (22.9%); Jonathan Huberdeau (19.6%), Jakob Pelletier (20%), and Matthew Coronato (14.9%) are the only Flames forwards shooting above that percentage.
Looking at the other end of the list, you’ll find five top-nine forwards struggling.
Shooting Below 10%
Nazem Kadri: 8.9%
Mikeal Backlund: 5.3%
Blake Coleman: 8.1%
Martin Pospisil: 5.1%
Andrei Kuzmenko: 3.3%
Perhaps the majority of the forward group recovers from a poor start; perhaps they don’t.
An inability to utilize speed when taking the offensive blue line has led to a historically anaemic level of offensive production. More often than not, the Flames will either get shut down before taking the zone, or settle for a last-second dump-and-chase upon running out of space just past the line.
Adding to the problem, dreadful 45.4% face-off percentage often annuls the attack when they do land an O-zone face-off. This all culminates into a 29th-ranked 2.54 goals per game. It is simply too difficult to develop the high-danger opportunities needed to score +3 goals per game with so many hurdles between the Flames and the opposing net.
Despite temporary stretches of success, the team comes off as a proverbial half-fixed boat.
Strong commitment to team defence and above-average goaltending has done it's best to toss bails while the team's inability to score goals continues to take on water. All of this implies that the team is far exceeding the sum of it's parts.
That brings us to the greater topic. This up-and-down start
can’t be General Manager Craig Conroy’s greater scheme in action.
Conroy, 53, undeniably has a plan. He and others within the organization have certainly said so. However, there appears to be some reluctance to give away exactly what strategy he’s implementing over the next five seasons.
It makes sense. Perfect transparency isn’t an ideal way to build a successful roster in a 32-team professional hockey league.
If the 15-season NHL veteran were to go out and expressly state to the media, “We’re going to find a way to move out the guys signed long-term that can’t play up to their cap hit and then fill their spots internally with guys that other teams gave up on.” Well, he would have a hard time finding another general manager to talk shop with given they know full-well that he's peddling damaged goods.
He would also have an angry core of veteran players who are not going anywhere any time soon.
Not the approach you want to take when the last regime developed a reputation for having a divide among the players in the dressing room.
With that said, hiding your plan for the future means that outsiders are free to guess. After all, who doesn’t like to take a swing at what is inside the mystery box?
Today, we’ll analyze what Conroy's rebuild has achieved so far, as well as speculate on what the organization may do to push the team into the role of a contender.
Analyzing “The Calgary Model”
The NHL is a copycat league. Fans clamour for direction during times when their team isn’t winning.
Most recently, the Flames faithful have seen their team avoid major steps towards “tanking” (being bad enough to make a top-three pick at the draft next June) and have to look at other models of getting the team back into contention.
Boston and Dallas have traditionally found success through strong drafting, proper veteran leadership, and to be frank, quite a bit of good luck—but is that what Calgary is doing?
So far, how do we define the
Calgary Model?
Step One: Keep the Ship Afloat
Given that we’re almost a season and a half into the plan, we can certainly identify a few strategies already implemented.
Both seasons have started with a “wait and see” approach. If the team starts to look like it’s not destined for playoff revenues like the Flames did in late February of last season, management will move assets and lean into a slide down the stretch.
Selling off their first pairing of Chris Tanev and Noah Hanifin on Feb. 28 and March 6 of last year capped off an eventful trade season that involved a progressive exodus of notable impending UFAs. The final but most impactful stroke only happened after the team sat five points out of a Wildcard playoff spot.
Their record
Post-Tanifin? 8-13-0. Enough to move the team from 21st place to 24th.
Will the Flames opt for another sell-and-slide this season? Andrei Kuzmenko, Tyson Barrie, Kevin Rooney, Daniel Vladar, and Walker Duehr are their only pending unrestricted free agents.
The question then becomes:
Is the team bad enough to tank without those five players?
Kuzmenko has one goal and nine assists in 28 games. With a cap hit of roughly $1,274,900 by the March 7 NHL Trade Deadline, the enigmatic winger won’t fetch much if his play doesn’t improve. You could make a case that the Yakutsk, Russia product is helping the team land on an earlier draft pick already.
Kevin Rooney has been a solid contributor on the Flames fourth unit, and his absence may cause some trouble for an already-struggling penalty kill unit.
Vladar’s absence will depend on how well AHL starter Devin Cooley plays in his place.
Tyson Barrie isn’t currently in the lineup, and Walker Duehr just got back. With zero points and the Flames going 1-1-1 since Duehr joined the lineup, his play hasn’t been notably above replacement-level value.
Conroy may need to deal a veteran with term if he wants to lean into a tank this season. Beyond Daniel Vladar, none of the current pending UFA’s push the Flames into the win column on a consistent enough basis.
And perhaps that is part of Conroy’s plan.
We know what Conroy’s strategy has been so far, but what kind of plan flip-flops like the Flames currently have in the first half of the last two seasons? Given that we’re only a year and a half in and Conroy isn’t showing his cards, we’re going to have to dive a bit into the
Speculation Zone for the rest of what may be the
Calgary Model.
Step Two: Restore Veteran Assets to Positive Value
Once in a while on X/Twitter, it’s hard not to notice Player Agent Allan Walsh pumping the tires of one Jonathan Huberdeau.
Two trains of thought there.
One, maybe Allan is just building the confidence of a client currently in year two of an eight-season, $84,000,000 deal. A bit of love on social media never hurt anyone.
At this point, you have to imagine that Huberdeau doesn’t browse X.
Vastly underperforming his $10,500,000 annual cap hit, a pressure-cooker hockey market like Calgary isn’t exactly avoiding due criticism of his frequent turnovers and underwhelming offensive production.
So, who could these posts be directed at?
We could take a wild guess and say, “management groups of opposing NHL teams.”
Is it possible that Walsh has been given the green light to quietly seek a trade out of town for the struggling star winger?
After all, that giant cap hit matters a
lot less in life when the fanbase and media isn’t constantly bringing it up.
And what about Nazem Kadri and his $7,000,000 annual cap hit until July 1, 2029? Darren Dreger of TSN reported over the summer that several teams had interest in the veteran center.
It appears that all that would be required for Kadri to have interest in joining another organization is for the Flames to fall out of contention.
“Of course. Of course. I’m never really on board to be a seller,” said Kadri in a media scrum on Feb. 28 of last season. “[I] wanna win. I think we, you know, got a pretty resilient character group inside the dressing room that is capable of some pretty good things,”
It’s saying the quiet part out loud, but the organization won’t be able to utilize its cap space efficiently as a contender if they’re dishing out $17,500,000 a season for the two players in the later stages of their careers.
Let alone when the next wave needs to be re-signed.
Given that we’re already deep in the
Speculation Zone, let’s make one more educated guess.
Step Three: Restore & Trade Younger Assets
This is barely speculation at this point, but it goes further, so hang on.
Conroy has already stated (and carried out) his intention to acquire underutilized and underappreciated players.
Give them an increased role, a veteran linemate to show them the way, and viola; your team now has a top-four defenceman or top-six forward for
way under the standard price tag.
But what if the
Calgary Model has a bit of a restoration boutique vibe to it?
Conroy brings in a Daniil Miromanov, or a Kevin Bahl, or a Yegor Sharangovich and says, “Hey, we’re giving you the conditions needed for success. Continue improving your game, and regardless of where you end your contract, you will be compensated well for your UFA years.”
After all, selling a salary-controlled player with term to a contender surely brings a high-end asset or two to the table. Especially when salary retention comes into play.
Take a look at what Blake Coleman fetched in his trade from New Jersey to Tampa in 2020.
To Tampa Bay
RW Blake Coleman (50% retained)
To New Jersey
2020 first round draft pick (D Shakir Mukhamadullin)
LW Nolan Foote (selected 27th overall in 2019)
With another season of term still on his contract at the time of the trade, Tampa was able to make two Cup runs with Coleman at a cap premium.
Both runs resulted in a Stanley Cup.
For a team looking at an accelerated rebuild, this should be the meta that Conroy and Co. pursue. Utilizing open roster spots and veteran leadership to build and trade high-value assets with term still on their contracts.
Step Four: The Final Push
You would hope that a step titled “The Final Push” is that coveted emergence as a contender, right?
The hard truth in the NHL is that, at all times, seven or eight of 32 teams are spinning their tires in that "Final Push" phase. More often than not, you’re either out of the mud or you're facing another multi-season reset and likely a change in management.
The success of teams like Chicago, Edmonton, and Florida carries the underlying hum of so many failed rebuilds.
Before there was Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, there was Eric Daze and Jack Skille. It was only when Dale Tallon and Stan Bowman built a balanced team around them that included impactful veterans that they started to find playoff success.
The Oilers made the first top-ten pick of their rebuild in 2007 with Sam Gagner at 7th overall. Their first trip of that era to the Stanley Cup Finals came 17 years later.
Florida went through the Jokinen-Bouwmeester Era, the Weiss-Horton Era, and the Huberdeau-Trochek Era before they managed to acquire & restore two top-10 picks from Calgary.
The Calgary Flames simply won’t become a contender by injecting a slow drip of top-ten picks into an aging core. No team that has sunk to the bottom has rebounded to win a Cup on high draft picks alone.
When, and if, the time is right, Conroy may get his chance to push his new core over the top. Be that through free agency, trade, or both.
By being pragmatic with his veterans, willing to deal younger high-value assets, and most importantly, keeping his cards close to his chest, Craig Conroy may have a chance at contender status during his time in Calgary.
And if he plays his cards perfectly? “The Calgary Model” becomes welcomed into the zeitgeist among frustrated fans of perpetually rebuilding NHL teams across the continent.
Statistics courtesy of the National Hockey League and PuckPedia.
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