{"id":156689,"date":"2025-09-20T08:33:12","date_gmt":"2025-09-20T08:33:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156689\/"},"modified":"2025-09-20T08:33:12","modified_gmt":"2025-09-20T08:33:12","slug":"calgary-flames-happy-for-rest-of-nhl-to-overlook-them-at-their-own-peril","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/156689\/","title":{"rendered":"Calgary Flames happy for rest of NHL to overlook them at their own peril"},"content":{"rendered":"

Already four seasons into his Calgary Flames<\/a> tenure, veteran blueliner and Team Canada Olympic hopeful MacKenzie Weegar<\/a> still smirks when asked about the modest external expectations that seem to be set every season for the team.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt bugs me for about a minute,\u201d he said this week as the Flames opened training camp at the Saddledome.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t mind seeing that kind of stuff. For me, it motivates me when I see that expectations are lower on the outside. It\u2019s been like that for a while, so it doesn\u2019t really change necessarily in our room or internally. The last couple of years here, [we\u2019ve] always had a chip on our shoulder to prove people wrong\u2026I kind of drive off that kind of stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blake Coleman<\/a>, one of the few Flames to have ever experienced playoff hockey in Calgary and heading into his fifth season with the team, said that they\u2019re used to being written off before the regular season begins. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe just go about our business and do what we know we can do,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur leadership core on this team believes in what we\u2019ve got and, at the end of the day, it\u2019s really about what we believe in the room. Expectations and projections\u2026can change very quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n

Under third-year general manager Craig Conroy<\/a>, the Flames have gradually evolved from trading veterans on expiring contracts to signing a burgeoning core of under-26 players (Dustin Wolf<\/a>, Kevin Bahl<\/a>, Connor Zary<\/a>, Matthew Coronato) long-term to complement the likes of Weegar, Coleman, captain Mikael Backlund<\/a>, and centre Nazem Kadri<\/a>. Despite the roster turnover and different stages of team-building, the mandate remains the same: make the playoffs. <\/p>\n

Coronato, in the first of a seven-year extension that pays him $6.5 million per season, has spoken about how valuable last season\u2019s playoff push was for him and other young Flames. <\/p>\n

Calgary was in post-season contention until the 81st game of the campaign. They were the fourth-best team in the league over the final month, and that stretch gave Coronato and others the necessary belief and experience to eventually fulfill that mandate. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt was so much fun,\u201d he said. \u201cI think it was a great experience for some of us younger guys to learn what it takes to get into the playoffs. It\u2019s not easy, but I think we definitely have a lot of confidence coming back this year.\u201d<\/p>\n

Coronato is touting the group\u2019s improvement.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we\u2019re going to get better,\u201d he said. \u201cWe know a lot of guys are going to do great things and it\u2019s just a little better we need to get. I think we showed that when it really mattered, we could play good hockey. We could play in those close games and we\u2019re going to be one of the hardest-working teams.\u201d<\/p>\n

The players and staff are both proud of that 2024-25 campaign and have shut the door on it, knowing that once again they\u2019ll have to prove themselves.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe did a lot of great things and I don\u2019t want them coming in this year thinking that it\u2019s just automatically the same,\u201d head coach Ryan Huska<\/a> said.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt doesn\u2019t work that way. I just want them to turn the page and, [in] doing that, be prepared to chart a new course that\u2019s going to get us to where we want to be this year. But they have to understand that it isn\u2019t going to be quite the same, because when people looked at our team last year, they were like [dismissively], \u2018Yeah, we\u2019re going into Calgary,\u2019 or, \u2018Calgary\u2019s coming in,\u2019 but we play hard. Teams now around the NHL know that. So we\u2019re not getting maybe a team\u2019s off-night this year. We\u2019re not. That\u2019s the way it\u2019s going to be. So for us to get to the level that we were at and find another level, we have to be better. Plain and simple.\u201d<\/p>\n

Players have turned the page for the most part, but the motivation from season to season remains: use that mild anger over a perceived lack of respect as motivation.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is fun to make people put their foot in their mouth a little bit,\u201d Coleman said, \u201cbut at the end of the day, it\u2019s on us and we don\u2019t really think too much about it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Already four seasons into his Calgary Flames tenure, veteran blueliner and Team Canada Olympic hopeful MacKenzie Weegar still…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":156690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[712,82196,49,80260,48,82195,82197,448,82198,82],"class_list":["post-156689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-apple-news","tag-blake-coleman-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8476399","tag-ca","tag-calgary-flames-sports-hockey-team-team-nhl-api-20","tag-canada","tag-mackenzie-weegar-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8477346","tag-matt-coronato-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8482679","tag-nhl","tag-ryan-huska-sports-hockey-player-player-nhl-api-8459497","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=156689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/156689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/156690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=156689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=156689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=156689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}