new five-year pact Monday<\/a>, a deal that – at an AAV of $7.25 million – makes him the highest-paid defenceman on the squad.<\/p>\nBut even at the tender age of 22, Nemec is ready to be one of the go-to guys in Calgary next season, and having his new contract done this early in the summer allows plenty of time for him to acclimatize to his new environs after being dealt to the Flames by the New Jersey Devils in June.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to have the contract right now, in this part of the summer,\u201d Nemec said Monday over the phone from his home in Slovakia. \u201cNow we can plan everything else.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIf you see that D corps, I think it\u2019s pretty good. I think it\u2019s going to be great competition for me and the other players. I feel confident to play a lot of minutes and be one of the leaders of the team. That\u2019s going to be my goal for next season.\u201d<\/p>\n
Where Nemec slots in among the Flames\u2019 top-four remains to be seen, but he could well line up alongside his former New Jersey teammate Kevin Bahl. Nemec, who had 11 goals from the blue line for the Devils a season ago, acts as an ideal foil to Bahl\u2019s reliable, stay-at-home presence and it\u2019s clear that the young Slovak is eager to be a big part of Calgary GM Craig Conroy\u2019s vision moving forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m really happy and really excited for the next five years in Calgary,\u201d said Nemec. “I\u2019ve heard so many good things from all the players, so I\u2019m really excited.\u201d<\/p>\n
Two of those players are Nemec\u2019s countrymen. Martin Pospisil and Sam Honzek have each lined up with Nemec in international duty and in the weeks since the trade, Nemec admits he\u2019s leaned on the pair for tips about his new home in Southern Alberta.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo many players texted me after that trade,\u201d Nemec recalled. “It\u2019s good for me and I\u2019m really happy with that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy Slovak teammates, I asked them a lot of questions about Calgary and they\u2019ve been pretty helpful.\u201d<\/p>\n
Nemec is targeting a mid-August arrival to get settled in Calgary, a month or so before the Flames\u2019 pre-season opener Sept. 20 against the Kraken.<\/p>\n
In the meantime, he\u2019s doing anything and everything back home in Slovakia to make sure he hits the ground running once he arrives here.<\/p>\n
Ready to stake a claim for a big role in his first season in front of the C of Red.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m doing my off-ice stuff and on-ice too; I\u2019m on the same plan as last year, I started skating a little bit earlier, a month after the season,\u201d said Nemec. \u201cI felt pretty good last year, so I just wanted to do the same thing this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m working hard right now and waiting for the new season.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A tidy bit of business. And one of the newest members of the Flames defence corps is excited…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":783416,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-783415","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783415","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=783415"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/783415\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/783416"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=783415"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=783415"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=783415"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}