Ever since the Flames 03/04 Stanley Cup run, where the club experienced a multitude of injuries on the back-end, Sutter has made a point of acquiring some nominal depth blueliiner at or around the deadline every year. Last season, it was Jim Vandermeer. The year before, David Hale. 

And this year, it's former Sen/Canuck Lawrence Nycholat.

Make no mistake, this guy slots in at around 8 or 9 on Calgary's depth chart. Nycholat is 29 years old and has 45 NHL games to his credit. He's put up decent numbers in the AHL, but never really done anything in the big league. His 14 games this year is too small a sample for his underlying ES stats to tell us anything, but that's not really here nor there with this kind of acquisition. Let's call him "Brennan Evans insurance".