Top 3 Differences for the Calgary Flames Going into 2023
The Calgary Flames will go into 2023 quite differently than they went into 2022. No season is the same, but this year may be the largest switch-up the Flames have had in quite some time.
The core of the team took a big turnover over the summer and other players in the organization have taken their chance to emerge. Here are the top three differences the Flames have going into the new year.
3. Rising Prospects
Gaining and losing players in free agency or as trade pieces has given the opportunity for players working through the AHL system to come up and earn their spots in semi-permanent to permanent roles. The player who has taken the biggest jump is Adam Ruzicka.
Ruzicka was a full-time AHLer in the 2019-20 and 2020-21 seasons. After these two years, he was only up to three games with the Flames, games that took place when the Flames were statistically out of the playoffs.
The Calgary Flames will go into 2023 quite differently than they went into 2022.
2021-22 was the biggest opportunity for the 6”4 forward to really emerge as a useful piece to the Flames roster. He started the season in Stockton and a couple of months into the season, he got called up and was only sent down later in the year for a handful of games.
This season, he has not spent any time in the AHL with the Calgary Wranglers and has turned into a full-time NHL player that has even gotten a few games on the top line. He is seventh on the team in points, playing in 27 games to date and scoring six goals and assisting on 14.
Other prospects have had bigger opportunities this year like Nick DeSimone, Dennis Gilbert, Connor Mackey, Radim Zohorna, and Matthew Phillips, but Ruzicka has ultimately had the most success.
2. Standard of Play
The expectations for the Flames going into this year were not too high. Fans were excited to see how this new roster would shape up, but ultimately, there were some growing pains anticipated.
The Flames stunned in their first few games of the season, beating the defending Stanley Cup Champions in their first game of the year.
They went on to win their first five of six games of the season but their “beginners luck” started to taper off and the growing pains everyone expected started to show themselves.
Players that were usually very consistent were falling off and disappearing from the scoresheet. Andrew Mangiapane was typically a goal-scorer to rely on, and he was becoming hard to notice.
Milan Lucic struggled with production and the high expectations of Jonathan Huberdeau and Nazem Kadri didn’t translate to the stats.
There are hundreds of things to say about this lineup, but things just aren’t clicking the way they have in previous seasons. Many are playing on jumbled lines, the confidence is not where it needs to be, and mistakes are more and more prevalent.
Another glaring issue that has come up is goaltending. Jakob Markstrom has not been at his best this season and has fully recognized that in post-game interviews.
Dan Vladar has still made a solid backup option but does not have the pieces at this point in time to be to go-to starter for the Flames. Markstrom has shown improvement since the worst of it this season but needs to sharpen things up if this team is able to secure a playoff spot.
If the Flames are to make a postseason run this year, they first off need to make it there. They were in a playoff spot going into Christmas, but they were just on the cusp.
If they continue to play as they are, they might narrowly miss the playoffs or miss the mark altogether. If they are able to squeak by, making a run will be a whole other story. Where things stand, this team is not the same team that clinched the division last season.
1. Blockbuster Trades
The most undeniable difference this team faced this year was the offseason changes. They lost three long-time players over the summer including Sean Monahan, Johnny Gaudreau, and Matthew Tkachuk.
Monahan had his struggles with injuries over the years but was a key piece in their success in his early years with the team. The three left a large hole that is hard to fill with who they had left.
This brought the opportunity and cap space for the Flames to bring in some large names. Nazem Kadri and Jonathan Huberdeau, as well as MacKenzie Weegar.
Kadri and Huberdeau were bought into the team before the summer even came to an end and both signed long-term contract extensions with the team.
However, Kadri and Huberdeau have not been producing at the level of their previous seasons. Huberdeau was a top scorer with Florida and third in the league for points. This season, he has 18 points in 34 games and doesn’t even crack the top 50 scorers in the league.
Kadri on the other hand, was 19th in league scoring last year with 87 points and is on a better pace than Huberdeau so far this season with 28 points in 37 games. This still doesn’t put him in the top 50 scorers in the league either.
This team needs a full-roster effort to score on a night-by-night basis as opposed to being able to rely quite a bit on all-star scoring, like in the past. While we are not in the locker room, there is very likely still some chemistry with the new faces that will translate to the ice.
If the Flames are able to pull off a radical change in 2023, make the playoffs and be competitive, they will be a large underdog storyline of the season.
More. Connor McDavid continues to lead the charge for the Edmonton Oilers. light
The Flames will play their last game of 2022 on Saturday, December 31st against the Vancouver Canucks.