The Calgary Flames’ season of change looks to be getting underway, to a certain extent. In yesterday’s 32 Thoughts written piece, Elliotte Friedman noted that another team executive thought the Flames were going to put a veteran player on waivers to change up the group during their ongoing losing streak. It was announced on Thursday afternoon that the team placed veteran defenceman Jordan Oesterle on waivers.
A veteran presence from Oesterle
Now to be extremely clear, Jordan Oesterle was signed this summer to be the rotating sixth/seventh defenceman. He has also only appeared in four games this season and is by no means a reason the Flames are off to as poor of a start as they are. In fact, Oesterle was thrown into a more prominent role due to Rasmus Andersson’s suspension and handled it to the best of his abilities. His stats don’t look great this year, but no one was truly expecting them to be flashy anyway. He fits the depth role just fine.
That being said, if Oesterle is the veteran player who was rumoured to be going on waivers to shake up the room, this really does not make a lot of sense. Oesterle has only been with the team since joining them during training camp and doesn’t make up a significant role on the back end. How much this would rattle the room feels insignificant.
This is most likely a move to see if the team can call up Ilya Solovyov and his $828.3K salary while having more flexibility in cap space with part of Oesterle’s $925K salary being buried in the AHL.
Photo by @AmanKurji.
