Connor Zary's NHL arrival is a key success story for the Calgary Flames' development team

This has been a down season for the Calgary Flames, with few steady success stories to point to for their veteran players. However, the team’s young stars have been an enormous success for the team. Martin Pospisil has looked like an NHLer, seventh-round pick Ilya Solovyov earned a couple of different looks at the NHL level, and were it not for injuries, Jakob Pelletier would almost certainly have a role in the NHL.

Perhaps the biggest story of this season has been the emergence of Connor Zary as a bona-fide star at the NHL level. He has been the most exciting prospect in the organization this season and is starting to look like a top line player for this team down the line. When he was drafted, there was a ton of excitement around him, but between his D+1 year and now, there were serious questions as to whether he would even make it out of the AHL let alone becoming a standout NHLer. This is a testament to the Flames’ development team, who turned Zary from an exciting prospect to the NHLer we have today.

Reviewing Connor Zary’s progress to this point

The 2020 NHL Draft will go down as one of the best in Flames’ recent history. The team traded down twice, picking up two additional picks, before selecting Zary 24th overall with their first selection. A product of the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers, the Saskatoon-born player was known for his high hockey IQ, nose for the net, and excellent two-way game. A true workhorse of a player, Zary’s pedigree just screamed Flames, and he was exactly the type of player that they would go for.

Zary’s AHL and WHL experienced

Because of the pandemic, the WHL did not start in September, so Zary joined the Stockton Heat where he formed an incredible line with Matthew Phillips and Adam Ruzicka. In nine games, Zary put up seven points as an 19-year-old. When the WHL did end up launching, Zary went back to junior hockey and put up 24 points in 15 games as the Captain of the Blazers. He also was selected to play for Team Canada at the World Junior Championships, where he had two assists as the team’s 13th forward.

However, his final WHL season was cut short after suffering a concussion after a nasty head shot against the Prince George Cougars. That being said, with his unbelievable season, Zary was ranked as the top Flames prospect for the 2020–21 season.

Injury stunted Zary’s AHL development

The following season, Zary graduated from junior hockey and started with the Stockton Heat in the AHL. Having played a mix of centre and wing, the plan from the Flames’ development team was to turn Zary into a centre at the AHL and then the NHL level. Playing this position at such a high level is an art, as you need to be able to read the game at a different level, being able to backcheck or press forward as needed. However, the Flames’ brass felt this was the right call for Zary, given his skillset and potential from his junior time.

However, before they could even get that plan off the ground, Zary fractured his ankle in training camp and was on the shelf for eight weeks. Coming into a season eight weeks late as a rookie puts you far behind in terms of understanding the playbook, gelling with your teammates, and developing an understanding on the ice with coaches. All this plus being new to the speed and level of the AHL (although he had nine AHL games), was not a recipe for success. In his first three games he had just one goal and a nasty minus-seven rating. Yikes!

Zary would go on to finish with 25 points in 53 games and a minus three at the end of the season, playing mostly in a bottom-six role. This was to shelter him in his transition to centre, playing him against weaker competition mostly and allowing him to fully adapt to the speed of the AHL. Putting up these numbers without playing with Phillips, Ruzicka, Pelletier or any of the Heat’s top players is not bad at all.

Another go in the AHL

There was a good deal of talk at the end of the 2021-22 season that Zary was a bust. He struggled to make an impact at the AHL level following his first season and the worry was that he wouldn’t make it to the NHL, and even if he did, he would turn out to be a replacement level player. Images of Mark Jankowski and Sam Bennett came to mind of another wasted first-round pick in an era where the Flames desperately needed to draft well. Given the Flames traded down twice and took Zary and with players like Braden Schneider, Dawson Mercer and more becoming NHLers, the fears that the Flames took the wrong player were becoming increasingly real.

The following season, Zary was back in the AHL with the Calgary Wranglers and again came out with marginal numbers, putting up around a half-point-per-game to start the year. However, that started to turn around substantially in the second half of the year as he started to inch towards the point-per-game mark. He would go on to finish the year with 58 points in 72 games, good for second on the team.

The thinking was that Zary probably needed part of one more season in the AHL before making the jump, but with ten points in his first six games, the Flames gave Zary a look at the NHL level and he just never looked back.

Zary’s progress bodes well for the Flames’ future prospects

This is an enormous win for the Flames’ development team, who took Zary, worked with him, refused to give up on him, and turned him into an exceptional hockey player at the NHL level. This team has been rightly criticized for their work in the past, with Bennett, Jankowski, Juuso Valimaki, Tyler Parsons, Emile Poirier, Morgan Klimchuk and more not panning out into what was expected of them. And while there are always multiple factors that lead to the success or failure of a prospect, the player development team tends to be where the fingers are pointed first.

Zary’s production and growth, and particularly his growth from where he was at the start of the 2021–22 season is a testament to this organization’s hard work and dedication. They set a course of action for him, worked with him on the rocky road of turning him into a centre, grow him at the AHL level, and now are seeing the results in the NHL. And while the Flames are easing him into the NHL by playing him on the wing, make no mistake, there is an incredibly high chance that he starts playing centre before the end of the year. Zary was developed to be a top centre for this team, and that is a role he will play in the NHL.

Whether Zary continues to be one of the best rookies in the league or develops even into a middle six player at the NHL level over the course of his career, he has shown he is an impact player at the NHL level and this is a result of the team’s development folks who have made an enormous difference in Zary’s trajectory.

Even beyond Zary, looking at the impact that they have made on Pospisil, Duehr, and others has been exceptional. Teams that win championships like the Tampa Bay Lightning understand that success in the NHL comes from building home-grown talent and the Flames are starting to see the results of that.