Pro Hockey Rumors

The offseason has arrived for half of the league’s teams that aren’t taking part in the playoffs plus those already eliminated through the first couple of rounds.  Accordingly, it’s time to examine what they will need to accomplish over the coming months.  Next up is a look at Calgary.

Heading into the season, expectations were quite low for the Flames, a team that some felt would be closer to the bottom five in the standings to a playoff spot but instead, they were in a battle for the final spot in the West until the dying days of the regular season.  Even so, GM Craig Conroy likely recognizes that his team isn’t a piece or two away from contention.  Accordingly, their checklist was designed with the thought that their offseason could be relatively quiet from a transactions perspective as they look to allow their young core continued time to develop before making a move or two to take the next step in a year or so.

Find A Backup Goalie

For the first half of the season, the Flames were effectively platooning their netminders.  Daniel Vladar was healthy after returning from hip surgery and while hopes were high for Dustin Wolf, they understandably didn’t want to put too much on him too soon.  In the second half, Wolf grabbed the top job and ran with it, playing a crucial role in Calgary’s late-season push for a postseason position.

While they know who their starter will be next season, the backup is in question.  Vladar is eligible for unrestricted free agency this summer and is one of the more intriguing options available in a UFA class that isn’t particularly deep at that position.  While he has expressed a willingness to return, it would likely be in a more limited role than he had this season which means Calgary’s offer might come in below the $2.2MM he made in each of the last two years.  It’s possible that there is a better opportunity for him elsewhere.

Assuming Vladar moves on, the Flames have a couple of options they can go with.  The first is turning to the UFA market to fill the spot.  A veteran like Jake Allen could make sense as someone who could mentor Wolf while taking on a bigger workload if needed.  Ilya Samsonov and Alexandar Georgiev are former starters who could view that post as a chance to try to rebuild some value while Anton Forsberg and Alex Lyon also make some sense as well.  Adding one of those over giving up assets to trade for a second-string option would likely be a better move for them.

The other option would be to promote from within.  Devin Cooley had a fantastic first half of the season with AHL Calgary and looked to be pushing for a recall but he struggled down the stretch.  Signed on a one-way deal for 2025-26, they could give him a shot at earning the job in training camp while back-filling with a veteran third-string option who could hold his own if he needed to be the backup.  In that case, adding someone like Kaapo Kahkonen or Ville Husso would be the move they’d likely look to make.  No matter what, Conroy will need to sign a goalie over the next six weeks.

Wolf Extension Talks

Meanwhile, there could be a signing to come with their other goalie as well.  Wolf is entering the final year of his two-year bridge deal, one that carries a very team-friendly cap hit of $850K.  Once July 1st comes around, he’ll be eligible to sign a contract extension.

This case is a particularly interesting one.  Wolf has just 71 career NHL appearances under his belt which isn’t much of a sample size.  53 of those came this season and he posted a 2.64 GAA with a .910 SV% while being a finalist for the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie.  It wouldn’t be surprising to see him on some Vezina Trophy ballots as well although he didn’t finish in the top three in voting there.  At this point, any doubts about Wolf being their goalie of the future (and present) have basically been erased so the Flames will undoubtedly want to get him locked up to a long-term deal.

Pricing out such a contract this summer could be tricky, however, given the limited track record.  The prudent play would generally be a shorter-term contract in these situations but Wolf is only two years away from UFA status and will be arbitration-eligible if unsigned by next summer.  Accordingly, the options may just be a medium-term pact that buys out two or three UFA years or a long-term (or max-term) agreement.

For the former, Wolf would likely point to the five-year $25MM contract Seattle gave to Joey Daccord last year as a starting point.  Daccord had similar numbers and experience at the time, making that one of the cleaner comparables.  While all of those years were UFA years and Wolf has two RFA years remaining, the projected higher salary caps moving forward would largely offset that, allowing Wolf to likely push for more than that.

As for the latter, we’ve seen the market for starters recently push past the $8MM mark with some consistency, including Jeremy Swayman, Linus Ullmark, and Jake Oettinger who all recently joined Ilya Sorokin at $8.25MM per season.  Wolf doesn’t have as much success as those four but in talks, both sides will probably be forecasting him having a similar performance next season.  That could help him get into that range to the point where an eight-year deal could start with an eight.  Conroy will need to decide if he’s comfortable going to that level now or if the team is better off waiting to see how next season goes and adjusting their offers from there.

Center Decisions

As is the case with many teams across the NHL, Conroy has made it known that he’d like to add down the middle.  More specifically, he’d prefer to add someone around the same age as his core group which is something that’s especially much easier said than done.  Given that the intent is to acquire a player who would be with the team long-term, striking to acquire that piece when it becomes available makes sense even if they’re not likely to be in contention for another couple of years.

Of course, it’s worth noting that Conroy managed to swing a move to add a middleman in that age group when he acquired Morgan Frost from the Flyers this season, taking on the full freight remaining on Joel Farabee’s contract to do so.  The thought was that a change of scenery could reinvigorate him after a relatively quiet first half of the season in Philadelphia.  However, that didn’t happen as he managed just three goals and nine assists in 32 games despite an increase in playing time after the swap.

Unfortunately for Calgary, they need to make a big decision on Frost’s future in the coming weeks.  He’s a restricted free agent with arbitration rights this summer but more importantly, he’s a year away from UFA eligibility.  Now, a short-term bridge deal would walk Frost right to the open market.  Assuming they’d like to avoid that, they’ll have to find a common ground on at least a medium-term agreement, on that would come in around double his $2.4MM qualifying offer.  Is that a price they’re willing to go to for a player who certainly struggled in his first few months with the team.  With arbitration eligibility, this one will have to be handed over the next couple of months.

The other center they have to make a decision on is Connor Zary, who split time between playing down the middle and on the wing.  Over his first two seasons, he has been a secondary scorer and is coming off a year that saw him put up 13 goals and 14 assists in 54 games.  A pending restricted free agent with his entry-level deal coming to an end, Conroy will need to decide if he wants to do a long-term deal with the 23-year-old as he did with Matthew Coronato or if a bridge agreement makes the most sense.  They can certainly afford the former given their cap situation (more than $28MM in room, per PuckPedia) but the latter seems more likely on a deal that could land around the $3MM mark per season.

Determine Andersson’s Future

Veteran defenseman Rasmus Andersson has been a fixture on Calgary’s back end for the past seven years (plus brief stints for his first two pro campaigns).  Back in 2020, he signed a seven-year contract that carried a $4.55MM AAV, a deal that carried some risk at the time but has turned out to be quite the bargain.  The Flames have one year left at that price before the 28-year-old becomes eligible to test the open market next summer.

Given that Calgary is a fair ways away from being a legitimate contender, Conroy fielded lots of calls about Andersson’s availability heading into the trade deadline but he opted to stand pat.  Now that he’s entering the final year of his deal, those calls are going to pick back up.

While the Flames certainly wouldn’t want to move him, the question becomes how much they’re willing to pay him.  As an all-situations right-shot defender and a rapidly rising salary cap, Andersson is likely poised to push for $8MM or more on his next contract as things stand even though he’s coming off bit of a down year.  If they’re willing to go to that number and Andersson’s willing to sign, a long-term extension getting done early in the summer – he can sign as of July 1st – wouldn’t be a surprise at all.

If that doesn’t happen, then trade speculation will undoubtedly be cranked up.  Calgary still wouldn’t have to deal him right away knowing that if need be, he’d yield a strong return in an in-season swap but that comes with a risk if injuries come into play.  Still, Conroy has three options here – extend, trade, or hold, and all have positives and negatives tied to each approach.  He’ll have to figure out the best one over the next couple of months.

Photo courtesy of Brett Holmes-Imagn Images.