The NHL’s Trade Deadline has officially closed, and the Calgary Flames roster looks far different than it did just a couple weeks ago. Gone are Elias Lindholm, Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, and more. In their place, the Flames acquired Andrei Kuzmenko, a handful of prospects, and even more draft picks. Many of those picks have conditions surrounding them, but the good news is that there are far more lottery balls than they have had in recent memory.
Let’s go through what is in the pipeline for the next three drafts:
2024 NHL Draft
The Flames have up to nine picks in this draft, with at least seven picks guaranteed. Let’s go through them by round:
Round One
The Flames have at least one pick in this draft, and that pick is the Vancouver Canucks’ pick that they traded away as part of the Elias Lindholm trade.
This is where things get complicated. The Flames acquired a 2025 first-round pick from the Florida Panthers as part of the Matthew Tkachuk for Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar deal.
They also made a deal that sent a first-round pick to the Montreal Canadiens along with Sean Monahan for future considerations. We broke down the full trade with diagrams here, but the essence of it is as follows:
The original pick that the Flames traded to Montreal was their 2025 first. If their 2024 first-round pick is between 20-32, the Habs can take that. The Flames look unlikely to make the playoffs—and Montreal is likely smarter to wait for better odds—so this is a moot point.
In 2025, if the Flames have both theirs and Montreal’s first-round picks and both are not top-10, the Canadiens get the better one.
If the Flames’ pick is top-10 and Florida’s is not, Montreal gets Florida’s pick.
If Florida’s pick is a lottery pick, the Panthers keep that pick and send their 2026 first-rounder to the Flames instead. In this case, if the Flames only have their pick in 2025 and that pick is first overall, the Habs receive the Flames’ third-round pick and the better of the two 2026 first-rounders.
If the Flames have just their pick in 2025 and it is between second and 10th, Montreal gets that pick.
However, there is a very small chance that the Flames don’t get the 2025 pick from Florida. The Panthers previously traded a conditional 2024 first-round pick to the Philadelphia Flyers for Claude Giroux. If the Panthers’ pick is top-10, the Flyers get their 2025 pick, but that feels very unlikely.
For the purposes of 2024, it is most likely that the Flames have two first-round picks: their own and Vancouver’s.
Round Two
The Flames have their own second-round pick as well as the Dallas Stars’ second-rounder. This pick came as part of the Chris Tanev trade.
Round Three
The Flames have their own third-round pick.
Round Four
The Flames have their own fourth-round pick.
They also have a conditional fourth-round pick as a result of the Lindholm trade. If the Canucks make the Western Conference finals this season, they will send the Flames their own third-round pick. If they don’t, the Flames will receive the fourth-round pick that once belonged to the New Jersey Devils. The Canucks acquired this pick when they traded away former Flame Curtis Lazar last season.
Round Five
The Flames traded this pick to the Chicago Blackhawks in exchange for Ryan Carpenter. The Hawks then flipped this pick to the Toronto Maple Leafs as part of the Joey Anderson for Jake McCabe deal.
The Flames also had one of the Blackhawks’ fifth-round picks as a result of the trade that the Flames made with the Canucks for Nikita Zadorov. However, they traded that pick to San Jose as part of the Nikita Okhotyuk trade.
Round Six
The Flames have their sixth-round pick still.
Round Seven
The Flames actually do not have their seventh-round pick in 2024. This pick was traded to the Seattle Kraken as part of the Calle Jarnkrok trade. The Kraken got three picks in this trade: a second in 2022, a third in 2023, and this year’s seventh.
The second-round pick was the one that the Flames received in the Sam Bennett trade with Florida. The Kraken took centre David Goyette with that pick, who leads the OHL in scoring this season.
The third-round pick was the Flames’ original pick. Seattle then traded that pick and their own fourth-round pick to the Columbus Blue Jackets for Oliver Bjorkstrand, who then sent the pick to New Jersey for Damon Severson.
The Flames then reacquired that exact pick as part of the Tyler Toffoli trade that also saw Yegor Sharangovich coming back to Calgary.
2025 NHL Draft
This year’s draft picks are complex. The Flames could have up to ten picks but are guaranteed at least seven picks.
Round One
As discussed above, the Flames will have to sort out the conditions of the Monahan trade and will likely lose one of their first-round picks this season to the Montreal Canadiens.
Round Two
The Flames have their second-round pick this year.
Round Three
The Flames have two conditional picks in this draft.
The first is their own third-round pick that is part of the Monahan trade should they win the draft lottery. The odds of the Flames winning the draft lottery are very low, and odds are that the Flames will not lose this pick.
They also have a conditional third-round pick as part of the Noah Hanifin trade from the Vegas Golden Knights. This pick becomes a second-round pick if the Golden Knights win a playoff round this season.
Round Four
This pick is also conditional on the aforementioned Montreal/Florida first-rounder situation. If the Panthers lose their 2025 first-rounder to Philly—which seems unlikely—and that pick is both not in the top-10 and is better than the Flames’ pick, Montreal also gets the Flames’ fourth-rounder this year.
What that means is that Florida would need to get a top-10 pick this season, triggering them to send their 2025 pick to Philadelphia. They would also need to be worse than the Flames next year but not have a pick inside the top-10 for this scenario to happen. Again, a very low chance of this happening.
The Flames are likely to keep this pick.
Round Five
The Flames have their fifth-round pick still.
Round Six
The Flames have their sixth-round pick.
Round Seven
The Flames still have their seventh-round pick.
2026 NHL Draft
Round One
This is the least complex of the next three years. The Flames have up to nine picks in this draft, with at least eight guaranteed picks.
The team has its own first-round pick—conditional on the results of the Sean Monahan trade—as outlined above.
They will also have the Golden Knights’ first-round pick. Vegas traded their 2025 first-rounder to San Jose in exchange for Tomas Hertl. That pick—if it were traded to the Flames—would have been lottery-protected, but the 2026 pick is not protected at all. This is major news for the Flames.
Round Two
The Flames have their second-round pick still.
Round Three
The Flames have two third-round picks. They have their own pick still, and they also have the Canucks’ third-round pick. This was the one they acquired as part of the Nikita Zadorov trade.
Round Four
The Flames have their fourth-round pick.
Round Five
The Flames have their fifth-round pick.
Round Six
The Flames still have their-sixth round pick.
Round Seven
The Flames still have their seventh-round pick.
The more picks, the merrier in a rebuild
The Flames have called up a tonne of players this season. Combine that with having very few picks from the last three years still in the organization, and the result is they are desperately in need of a big couple of draft classes.
It is not hyperbole to say that these are perhaps two of the biggest draft years for the Flames in recent memory. The team desperately needs to pick well in the next three drafts to set itself up for success for the next decade.
While the team has been clear to say that they do not want to do a full rebuild—and with the Jonathan Huberdeau, Nazem Kadri, and MacKenzie Weegar contracts on the books—the team will be looking for a quick retool to help them be competitive when the new arena opens up in the coming years.
The Flames should be looking to the Dallas Stars as a model for how a good draft can set a team up for success. If the Flames can make the most of their first- and second-round picks, this could be an elite team for the next generation. This team desperately needs exciting players to build around, and this is the prime opportunity to get those.
