Wow. Impressive work, sir! No stone unturned.

The back end might be the deepest in hockey and with just Aaron Johnson set to become a UFA of their 8 players with the big club, it will be quite a feat to crack this blue line down the road.

The Flames will have some interesting decisions to make with Pelech and Palin who are both RFAs this Summer (Baldwin and Cole too).

I still think a trade of one of their 4 defenders making more than 3 and a half million dollars (J-Bouw, Phaneuf, Regher, Sarich) is in the cards whether it is this season or in the summer.

You’d have to think at least one of Negrin, Pelech, Aulie, Erixson or Brodie will force their hand in the next season or two.

Flames Cap Numbers

Thanks for the kudos. Honestly, it would have been longer and more in depth if I didn’t have so much on my plate currently.

great summary, as per usual. my only comments would be that my concern with nemisz is that the offensive flash of taylor hall and the spitfires team might be inflating his numbers —-i know you’ve thought this at times as well. the other thing is that the allsvenskan is not technically a farm league for the SEL, it’s a promotion/relegation league (like the premiership and the first division football league in england). obviously it still denotes a “lesser” level of the sport, but it doesn’t feed up to the SEL the way the AHL does to the NHL. i know you know this as well, and “farm league” is a far easier way to describe the allsvenskan in two words. ;)

I actually never used the term farm league myself. Must have been added by the editor of the piece.

That’s really depressing and it shows how bad the Flames are at drafting, I was reading somewhere where it’s a 10% Success rate of the players we draft that actually make it to the NHL with the Flames or somewhere else.

Like years in the past the Flames will rely on signings and trades to build their team and maybe a few draftees.