The NHL’s trade deadline is just around the corner, and the Calgary Flames have continued to get some business done. Chris Tanev was dealt to the Dallas Stars Wednesday night, and talks are ongoing with Noah Hanifin and his future. With Tanev already out of the fold and Hanifin likely to be gone soon as well, the Flames’ blueline is about to look very different in what could be the next few days.
If a Hanifin trade goes through, having him gone and Tanev in Dallas will rip the Flames defence apart. Losing two defencemen will hurt any team, but these are two of their best. However, the Flames need to make the necessary moves as opposed to losing them for nothing come season’s end.
The question becomes, how do you replace an entire pair and who do you replace them with? Well, that is something that I want to look at today. What I will mention straight off the top is that there is a good chance that the Flames get a roster player in return for Hanifin (like they got with Andrei Kuzmenko in the Elias Lindholm trade). So, take these pairings with a grain of salt, as we obviously don’t know what the return will look like on either player.
Kylington and Pachal in an elevated role
The easiest way of looking at how things will probably shake up will be Oliver Kylington and Brayden Pachal taking extra responsibility and playing elevated minutes when trades begin to happen. The current healthy scratches Dennis Gilbert and Jordan Oesterle will then man the team’s third pairing.
| Weegar | Andersson |
| Kylington | Pachal |
| Gilbert | Oesterle |
Ryan Huska will inevitably do some experimenting with the pairs, but Kylington and Pachal have seemed to gain some early chemistry since they were put together when they returned from the All-Star Break. It is a young(ish) pair, and they are playing some good hockey at the moment, so I wouldn’t be breaking that duo up anytime soon, even if that means the Gilbert and Oesterle pair gets crushed in their minutes.
Breaking up Andersson and Weegar
MacKenzie Weegar and Rasmus Andersson have been the team’s top pair for essentially the entire season. They have had their ups and their downs, but for the most part, they have been an extremely effective duo on the backend. This has led to individual success for both of them.
Even with all the metrics backing them up as a superb top pair, it may not be the worst idea to split them up to even out the top-four. In this scenario, Andersson and Kylington can pair up like they did at the tail end of the 2018–19 season and first half of the 2019–20 season. Weegar can continue to play the left side with Pachal, and Oesterle and Gilbert remain the team’s third pairing.
| Weegar | Pachal |
| Kylington | Andersson |
| Gilbert | Oesterle |
This will spread the talent through the top-four, and you can give Kylington and Pachal some tougher minutes while they play with the team’s two best defencemen. It will also be fun to see Kylington in a top-four role for the first time since the 2021–22 season where he did so well, so seeing him getting more important minutes down the stretch will sure be a confidence booster for the player and will be a treat to watch for us fans.
The emergence of more Wranglers on the main roster
We have already seen a bunch of players make their NHL debuts this season with the Flames, they have not been afraid to use some of the kids on the farm to see if they can make an impact at the NHL level. Just on the blueline, we have seen Ilya Solovyov and Yan Kuznetsov play NHL games for the Flames this year, so it would not surprise me at all if after the trade deadline, we see some of the kids come back up to fill roster spots.
I would have to imagine we see one of Solovyov or Kuznetsov make a return for some NHL action, but I think the player that most Flames fans would like to see at some point would be Jeremie Poirer.
Poirer has not played since October due to an injury that has kept him out of the lineup, however, he has started skating again with the team, and a return to the Wranglers lineup could come sooner rather than later. Once he gets his legs underneath him, it would not surprise me to see him get a call to see what he can do at NHL level. He still may be a little while away from being a full-time NHLer, but an audition late in the year would be worth seeing as he has shown very well with the Wranglers when he has been on the ice.
A tough road ahead
No doubt it will be tough sledding down the final stretch of the season without the services of Tanev and when Hanifin eventually gets dealt. They have both been staples on the team’s backend for a long time, and it will be incredibly tough to replace them as the team continues to roll through this transitional period that we will call a “retool.”
However, this will be a fun time to see the coaching staff try different things with different players in other areas to see what they have internally. It will be a good chance to take a look into the future with some of the guys on the farm, and we will begin to see what this team is really made of moving forward.
Either way, I think it is an exciting time to move into a new era of Flames hockey.
Photo by Jason Mowry/Icon Sportswire
