The Calgary Flames 2023–24 training camp opens this morning to welcome 64 players onto Saddledome ice. It’s officially camping season.
With only one PTO attending camp in defenceman Jonathan Aspirot, this opens the gates wide for the team’s younger players and prospects to make a run at an NHL roster spot. While the last few years have been mostly focusing on potentially one open slot, this year has many more question marks across the board.
The announcement of the team’s three groups that will be taking the ice separately—Team Iginla, Vernon, and McDonald—leads many to insinuate a number of thought processes that look to be the early season starting point for the team. Here is everything I gathered.
The top line
Jonathan Huberdeau, Elias Lindholm, and Yegor Sharangovich are skating together on Team Vernon which leads many to believe that this could be Ryan Huska’s starting top line. The Huberdeau and Lindolm combination was used sparingly last year, so it would make sense they start fresh and add in some new blood in Sharangovich.
Additionally, Matt Coronato and Jakob Pelletier are also in the group which could lead some to believe that there could be some early season tryouts for the young guns on that top line as well.
Power Play Units
Speaking of the players noted above, you have to wonder if a combination of them are going to make up the first power play unit. You know that Marc Savard is going to revamp the approach, and so putting in one of the younger kids and keeping the top line in tact would be a start.
Add in some of the key power play quarterbacks on the defensive side that are also on Team Vernon and you can bet you will see a wide range of rollouts in the pre-season.
Defensive pairs
The team’s top six defencemen are broken out into two groups to start camp. Rasmus Andersson, Nikita Zadorov, MacKenzie Weegar, and Noah Hanifin are all on Team Vernon while Chris Tanev and Oliver Kylington are on Team Iginla. This is most likely how pairs are going to start off with this season.
Reuniting Tanev and Kylington makes a ton of sense, with Tanev being your most defensively responsible blue-liner and Kylington easing his way back into the NHL.
A combination of either a Weegar-Andersson and Hanifin-Zadorov would be the most likely but there could be some swapping there. Either way, barring a trade, the six defensemen are set in stone.
Goaltending battle?
Despite many looking at Dustin Wolf as pushing for the backup, or some even thinking Wolf stealing the starter role outright, the team has broken the tandems out into two obvious categories. Team Vernon has the NHL goalies and Team Iginla has the AHL ones. Unfortunately, Wolf falls under Team Iginla.
For now.
It would have been nice to see Wolf with Markstrom on the same team working together, but it’s obvious that they view Vladar as the backup at this point in time. Preseason and early games will tell a lot, but Wolf’s ability to go through waivers is a huge asset.
Old McDonald had some kids
For the most part, those who ended up on Team McDonald will not be staying at NHL training camp for long. The roster is made up of mostly AHL and junior players which will be some of the first cuts.
Interesting to see Ilya Nikolaev who had a strong Young Stars tournament for the Flames, but being an over-ager he is most likely going to be a minor league player in this organization.
Jeremie Poirier is also on this team, but due mainly to his injury that will keep him out of most of the camp.
Key names, key places
A few other very interesting tidbits across the three teams.
Samuel Honzek, Connor Zary, Emilio Pettersen and Cole Schwindt are all skating on Team Vernon with some of the key Flames players. Management will be able to get a solid look at them with NHL talent.
Love the possibilities on Team Iginla too. Mikael Backlund, Andrew Mangiapane, and Blake Coleman are most likely suiting up together as a line, but it looks like the trio of Nazem Kadri, Dillon Dube and Adam Ruzicka could be the other lineup to start. All six players could be mixed together to find the right combo, but Ruzicka is clearly going to be a full-time NHLer this season under Huska.
Finally, you will most likely have Dennis Gilbert and Jordan Oesterle battling it out on Team Iginla for the extra defensive spot. Based on the cap constraints it will be interesting if the team carries seven defensemen or 13 forwards.
Photo by Brett Holmes/Icon Sportswire
