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The Calgary Flames look to be crashing headfirst into a full-scale rebuild. General manager Craig Conroy and the front office have completely torn it down over the last calendar year, trading all of Nikita Zadorov, Elias Lindholm, Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, Jacob Markstrom and Andrew Mangiapane since November of 2023. Every single one of the aforementioned players are bonafide NHL regulars who will — or already have — gone on to make a difference with their new franchises.
With all of those subtractions, and not too many additions to plug the holes, it goes without saying that the roster is going to look a whole lot different in 2024-25. And a whole lot worse. In fact, Daily Faceoff's Mike Gould on Wednesday named the Flames as one of five clubs that could finish dead last in the NHL this season.
“The Flames have some good young pieces, including 2024 first-round selections Zayne Parekh and Matvei Gridin, but they still don’t have anything resembling an NHL-caliber core,” Gould wrote. “Their current roster features an uneven mishmash of declining veterans, reclamation projects, and mid-tier youngsters. They still need to finish near the bottom of the league for a few more years before they can start moving up in any meaningful way.”
It's somewhat surprising considering the franchise is just three seasons removed from a 50-win, Pacific Division-leading 2021-22 campaign. It's been back-to-back missed Stanley Cup Playoffs for the Flames since, and things are concerningly not looking up in the slightest in Alberta.
While there are still a few great players on this roster, there are also a couple of significant regression candidates. If these three players cannot build on strong 2023-24 seasons — and even if they do — it could be a very, very long season in Cowtown.
Blake Coleman is coming off a surprisingly excellent year
Blake Coleman is fresh off the best offensive season of his career by a mile, which is surprising considering he's 32-years-old. Still, the Plano, Texas native was a bright spot on a progressively worse Flames team in 2023-24, scoring 30 goals for the first time and adding 24 assists for 54 points.
That was third most on the team after Nazem Kadri and Yegor Sharangovich — one who will be mentioned later in this piece — but it came with a 15.7 shooting percentage. That is well above his 10.4 percent career average, and was in the top-50 league wide. Coleman has been around the 15-20 goal range in his career, and impressively, only three of his 30 came with the man advantage in 2023-24.
Despite the excellent campaign, the Flames are markedly worse than last year, and Coleman is very unlikely to score at a near 16 percent clip again. If he had scored on 10 percent of his 191 shots, he would have only potted 19 goals. It doesn't help that Daily Faceoff projects him being left off of both powerplay units.
Although he was an even-strength scorer last season, considering his age and career averages, there's a great chance that Coleman regresses in 2024-25.
Yegor Sharangovich broke out in 2023-24
Along with Coleman, Sharangovich was a pleasant surprise last year, and one of the best players on the Flames, period. After being acquired from the New Jersey Devils in the trade that sent Tyler Toffoli to Newark, the 26-year-old quickly became one of Calgary's top offensive options.
Over a full 82-game slate in Alberta, the Russian amassed career-highs across the board, scoring 31 goals and 59 points. Unfortunately, he was a -29, a terrible plus/minus that was only equaled by Jonathan Huberdeau. Sharangovich also had one of the highest shooting percentages in the league at 17.3 percent, which he almost certainly will not be able to manage again.
Along with Kadri, Sharangovich figures to be a top offensive option in 2024-25, and he's projected to center the second line and play on the top powerplay unit along with Kadri, Huberdeau, Andrei Kuzmenko and Mackenzie Weegar. Although his defensive game needs a lot of work, Sharangovich should be able to build on an excellent offensive campaign.
But that shooting percentage is not at all sustainable, and even if he manages to hit around the 50-60 point range, it's unlikely he'll score over 30 goals again. He is certainly a regression candidate, but now locked up on a five-year, $28.75 million contract, he should be motivated to round out his game in 2024-25 and beyond.
Anthony Mantha had a concerningly high shooting percentage
The one player on this list who didn't play for the Flames last season, Anthony Mantha signed a one-year show-me deal with Calgary after being traded from the Washington Capitals to the Vegas Golden Knights mid-campaign. The 29-year-old turned in a solid year between the nation's capital and the strip, finishing with 23 goals and 44 points over 74 games.
“What was more impressive about his 23-goal season is that he did it while averaging under 15 minutes a night, one of only two seasons in his career that he’s done so (excluding the 10 games he played in 2015-16), giving him the 18th-highest 5v5 goals for per 60 minutes among league regulars,” wrote Daily Faceoff's Scott Maxwell at the end of July.
The problem is, Mantha's shooting percentage was 7.9 percent higher than his career average. In fact, it was the third highest in the entire National Hockey League at 20.4 percent, eclipsed only by Florida Panthers' Sam Reinhart and Vancouver Canucks' Dakota Joshua.
Although Mantha should be a good fit in Calgary, and will likely play a top-six role, he probably won't be producing similar stats with a weak Flames team in 2024-25. For a player who has struggled mightily with injuries, putting together a fully healthy season should be the goal as he looks to leverage either a mid-season trade or a more lucrative contract elsewhere next summer.
