After a brief exhale, the questions now shift to what else, if anything, Craig Conroy has left on his to-do list before the March 6 trade deadline. There’s nothing as imperative as the Andersson trade, but Calgary still owns multiple aging players that would fetch substantial returns on the open market.
The Flames have been pretty bad this year, the highest they’ve climbed in overall standings was 27th on New Year’s Day. Their leading scorers, Nazem Kadri and Mikael Backlund, are 35 and 36 years old, respectively, and there isn’t a ton of optimism that they’ll turn the ship around and morph into contenders in 2026-27. So naturally, there is a lot of trade speculation surrounding Calgary’s veterans, and it’s been reported that they’ve garnered a significant amount of interest around the league.
“I don’t think they’re done, I think they’ll continue to look at this. (Blake) Coleman has ten teams he can go to, and I don’t know how flexible he’s going to be with that, and that’s his right. He has to submit a list, and if he doesn’t want to adjust that list, I have no problem with that. Calgary’s got some framework… Tampa Bay makes so much sense, so much sense. It just depends on if Tampa has enough to get this done. But I don’t think Calgary is done by any stretch of the imagination, I think there’s definitely the potential for more.”
It was reported in November that Coleman was the player that the Flames were receiving the most calls on, despite their many other potential trade-chips, including Andersson at that time. The 34-year-old has another year left on his $4.9 million AAV contract, along with a 10 team trade approval clause, and is currently on the injured reserve.
Other Flames that have been the subject of trade rumours are Joel Hanley and the newly acquired Zach Whitecloud.
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