How does the Calgary Flames’ 2025–26 point pace compare to previous seasons?

As is tradition in Calgary, the Calgary Flames refuse to go away. Just when you think this is finally the season they truly bottom out, they turn things around and get themselves right back into the mushy middle. The 2025–26 season is no different.

After the worst start in franchise history, the Flames have been one of the NHL’s hottest teams over the past few weeks. What once seemed like a doomed season now doesn’t look so gloomy. So, how far is this team behind previous Flames rosters after 38 games?

How do the last 10 seasons look after 38 games?

So across the last 10 seasons, how have the Flames looked after 38 games compared to this season, and where did they end up at year’s end? Let’s break it down. All numbers are courtesy of NHL.com. Seasons are ranked by point percentage after 38 games.

Season	Record	Points	Points %	Season Outcome	Playoffs?
2018–19	23–12–3	49	0.645	1st in West	Eliminated 1st round
2021–22	20–12–6	46	0.605	3rd in West	Eliminated 2nd round
2024–25	18–13–7	43	0.566	9th in West	No
2022–23	18–13–7	43	0.566	9th in West	No
2019–20	19–14–5	43	0.566	8th in West	Eliminated 1st round
2017–18	18–16–4	40	0.526	11th in West	No
2016–17	19–17–2	40	0.526	7th in West	Eliminated 1st round
2023–24	17–16–5	39	0.513	11th in West	No
2015–16	18–18–2	38	0.500	12 in West	No
2025–26	16–18–4	36	0.474	TBD	TBD
2020–21	16–19–3	35	0.461	5th in North	No

In terms of overall production after 38 games, the 2025–26 season is the second-worst season for the Flames across the last decade. So even with their recent turnaround, they’re still tracking as one of the worst Flames teams of the decade. Only the 2020–21 bubble season within the North division had gone worse after 38 games. That season, head coach Geoff Ward was fired after the team’s 24th game.

This season is also just the second time in the past decade that the team sits below .500 after 38 games, along with the bubble season. The 2020–21 bubble team is also the only one with more regulation losses after 38 games than the 2025–26 team. That bubble roster had dropped 19 of 38 games in regulation, compared to this season’s 18 regulation losses, which is tied for second-worst with the 2015–16 season.

In terms of overall losses, the 2025–26 team’s 22 losses in 38 games are tied for the worst mark with the 2020–21 bubble team, which had also dropped 22 of its first 38 games.

The team was sitting between .500 and .600 at the 38-game mark in seven of the last 10 seasons, in typical Flames fashion. In other words, the Flames almost always find themselves in the mushy middle come New Year’s.

Of the five times the team ranked below .550 at the 38-game mark, they only managed to make the playoffs once. That outlier was the 2016–17 season, where they barely snuck into the playoffs as the seven seed thanks to a 10-game winning streak between February and March. The other four occurrences saw them miss the playoffs and finish near the bottom of the Western/North conferences.

Tracking overall pace across the past five seasons

In terms of overall per-game pace across the first 38 games, here’s how this season compares to the previous four seasons.

All in all, the 2025–26 season is very clearly the worst season the team has played in the past five years. With that said, they’ve been closing the gap quite a bit recently.

Overall, the 2025–26 season has matched up with another season just once after the first couple of games. By game 10, this year’s team had the same number of points as the 2023–24 team that finished 9th last. Since then, however, they’ve been behind every other season’s point pace.

Right now, the only season they’ve even come close to is the 2023–24 season, as they’re currently tracking three points behind that season. All three other seasons were multiple points above the 40-point threshold by now. Both last year’s 2024–25 team and the 2022–23 team sat at 43 points by the 38-game mark, while the historic 2021–22 team already had 46 points, a full 10 points ahead of this year’s team.

Last season’s team hit the 36-point mark after 32 games, four games quicker than this year. The 2021–22 team hit the 36-point mark by game 27, a whopping nine games quicker than this year’s team.

Still trending below average

Despite the Flames’ recent turnaround, they’re still very much looking like one of the worst Flames teams of the decade. Their current pace places them as the 2nd-worst team of the decade, ahead of only the dreadful bubble team in 2020–21.

Assuming their pace remains the same for the remaining 44 games, expect the 2025–26 Flames to finish with one of the worst records of any Flames team since 2015.