Calgary Flames All-Time International Roster: Team USA

Welcome to Part 2 of our Calgary Flames All-Time International Roster series. Today we continue with Team USA. Click here to read Part 1 which featured Team Canada. For Team USA I have lowered the GP cutoff to 125 games as there actually haven’t been that many Americans on the team.

You can view Team Canada’s roster here

Line 1: Johnny Gaudreau – Joel Otto – Joe Mullen

As you can likely already tell, Team USA won’t have quite the upper echelon that Team Canada did, but that is still a solid first line.

Line 2: Matthew Tkachuk – Craig Conroy – Tony Amonte

Still a pretty solid second line for the team. Amonte had 72 points in 161 games with the Flames in the final two seasons of his NHL career. Tkachuk is making a real push for the first line as well right now.

Line 3: Paul Ranheim – Mike Sullivan – Lee Stempniak

Not a third line that’s going to light it up by any means, but a solid hard working line.

Line 4: Eric Nystrom – Derek Ryan – David Moss

Nystrom gets in simply by the fact that there have only been four American left wingers to ever suit up for over 140 games with the Flames. Ryan gets in with 148 games, only the previous three centres had more. David Moss comes in mainly due to him having 317 games with the team.

Scratches: Garnet Hathaway, Tim Jackman

Defense

1st Pairing: Gary Suter – Phil Housley

Not a lot of room for debate here. Suter was a legend in Calgary with 564 points in 617 games between 1985 and 1994. Housley was a Hall of Famer spending roughly four and a half seasons with the Flames.

2nd Pairing: Noah Hanifin – Jordan Leopold

A decent second pairing, definitely not elite. Hanifin makes up a big part of the Flames future defense core while Leopold had a stint between 2002-06 and was a rental in 2009.

3rd Pairing: Chris Butler – Neil Sheehy

Yeah I told you this list falls off pretty quickly. Butler was a part of the Flames for three seasons after being acquired in the Robyn Regehr trade. Sheehy joined the team in 1983 and was traded in 1987-88 for Dana Murzyn. Sheehy had a whopping 271 PIM in the 1985-86 season.

Scratch: Chris Dahlquist

Goaltenders

Starter: Jon Gillies

Yikes. Not a lot of strength in the crease for the Flames. Gillies is the elder statesman of American netminders in the clubs history with a whopping 10 games started. I was tempted to just give it to Dustin Wolf already.

Backup: Brian Boucher

In the heated backup matchup between Boucher and Phillip Sauve, I give the edge to Boucher because he actually had a decent career outside of Calgary as a backup.

by Michael MacGillivray