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Calgary Flames

UFA RW Troy Brouwer

Brouwer is coming off of a pretty darn good playoff performance, but what is he going to do for the other 82 games in a year?

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The final player I’m going to look at in my UFA Right Winger series is a player that I am not all ashamed to say that I overlooked when I originally put together my player list of somewhat desirable targets for the Flames. He’s 30, he shoots right, and his current contract is a palatable if somewhat expensive 3.6 million AAV. I’ve said it before in this series and I’ll say it again here, his true value is his versatility.

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He has spent significant portions of his season at all 3 forward positions with some pretty big names. If you want versatility from a top 6 player, Brouwer is the guy you want evidenced by the amount of time he has spent with Alexander Steen, David Backes, and Paul Stastny. The price tag may be a little high and there is some speculated interest from him to consider playing for his hometown team and obvious interest in the Vancouver Canucks organization to get their hands on him. Is it even worth it for the Flames to try and get him?

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That's a lot of time spent at evens without a whole to show for it. Granted he's not exactly getting a zone start push, amongst regular forwards he got the 4th worst ZS% (minimum 500 minutes played at evens) with frequent linemate Backes having the worst on the team. With that said, he's not exactly driving possession either. Scoring chances are going against him and shot suppression isn't exactly going in his favor either. His playoff performance doing a lot to drive his value up but there's still 82 games to be played before that. He did exactly that this season but this is case where I feel his perceived value is higher than his actual value is. But if the Flames do make a play for him, what will they get?

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Well, pretty much what he did this season. Ken Hitchcock chose to use him in a more heavy minutes role, and he did perform quite well given where he was starting his shifts almost all of the time but if you look at his career as a whole there's not much to really write home about. Don't get me wrong, he's a player worth pursuing but compared to a few of the other players on my list, not to mention players in the Flames' own system, he's not one really worth paying the likely price he's going to command on the open market. Would I like him on the Flames? Yes, but he's gonna have to take a paycut to be here.

What say you?

by Matthew Granlund