Start with the number, because everything else in this story grows out of it. 2.54. That’s how many goals the Flames scored per game last season, and nobody in the NHL scored fewer. Matt Coronato led the team with 45 points. Nobody topped him. Across a full season, it was the lowest total ever to lead this franchise.
Then look at who’s gone. Nazem Kadri had 41 points in 61 games before he was sent to Colorado in March. Rasmus Andersson went. MacKenzie Weegar went. On July 2, Blake Coleman, 20 goals last season, left for Minnesota with Olli Maatta, and back came Jake Middleton, a shot-blocking defenceman, plus picks from 2027, 2028, and 2029. None of those picks will score a goal this season. Free agency opened with a handful of two-way depth signings, and no impact scorer arrived.
Huberdeau’s Injury Leaves Flames Toothless
Between Kadri, Coleman, and Jonathan Huberdeau, 42 of Calgary’s 208 goals from last season are gone or in doubt for opening night. That’s one in five, from the league’s worst offence. And Huberdeau’s the gut-punch. He’s the last established star on this roster, and he had hip resurfacing surgery in March, a procedure with a mixed record in this league. Patrick Kane came back and kept producing. Ed Jovanovski and Ryan Kesler never really did.
Early in September, Craig Conroy told Calgary radio there’d been “a little bit of a setback” with Huberdeau’s skating. Three days later, the GM called it “a poor choice of words” and said a return was “a matter of when, not if.” The recovery window runs seven to nine months from a March operation, and nine months lands in December. Five years and $52.5 million are still owed.
The Flames are very much at the beginning of a long and potentially arduous rebuild, and online betting sites know it. The popular Sportaza online sportsbook is offering odds of +750 for the last season in the Saddledome to yield playoff hockey, the second-highest odds of anybody in the league behind the Vancouver Canucks (+800). So, with all of that stripped away, where do the goals actually come from next season?
Matt Coronato
He didn’t dress it up. As main camp opened, Coronato named finishing as the part of his game that “sticks out” and said it plainly: “I got to be able to finish my chances and do that better than I did last year.” He’s 23, in year two of a seven-year, $45.5 million deal worth $6.5 million a season.
He signed that deal off a 24-goal breakout. Then his shooting percentage fell 4.2 points, from roughly 13 percent to around nine. His chances didn’t go anywhere; he still ranked among the team’s best in expected goals. They just didn’t go in.
Why does it matter more for him than anybody? Because the rest of this list is a bridge, a bet, or a trade chip. Coronato is the only one Calgary has already paid to be the answer.
Morgan Frost
Ryan Huska was blunt about it at camp: Morgan Frost is “our most dynamic centreman right now.” There’s the problem. Calgary’s top-line centre is a pending unrestricted free agent, in the last year of a deal carrying a $4.375 million cap hit, and his name was floating around Montreal before September did.
He’s coming off a career-high 22 goals. He talks about role, not the contract. “If anything, it’s motivating for me,” he said, and he wants to show “why I can be a first or second-line centre.” Here’s what that means for the rebuild. If Frost plays well, he either gets paid by a team that’s still years away or gets sold at the deadline. Both outcomes leave the middle of the ice empty again.
Joel Farabee
Joel Farabee’s story is the quiet one. He scored 20 goals last season, the third time he’s hit that number, and he did it while killing penalties and chasing top lines around. With Coleman gone, he’s inherited Backlund’s wing and all the hard matchups that go with it. “I measure myself in how I play and how we play as a line,” he said, and he says he’s excited to see Frost become “a true 1C” while his line handles the defensive work.
It’s admirable. It’s also a question Calgary keeps putting off. He’s 26 with a $5 million cap hit through 2027-28, so is he a core piece or deadline value? A team this short of goals can’t keep answering that by giving him less offensive ice time.
Matvei Gridin
At prospects camp, Matvei Gridin wouldn’t repeat his spring promise to lead the Flames in scoring. “I won’t say it again, but you guys know what I’m talking about.” That’s a 20-year-old borrowing confidence he hasn’t quite earned yet. Maybe he’s closer than it looks, though.
He was an AHL All-Star as a first-year pro, with 30 points in 37 games for the Wranglers. Then he put up 14 of his 20 NHL points in Calgary’s final 20 games, much of it on a line with Frost and Coronato. He’s back on that line now, “a big, big year for me,” as he put it.
With Huberdeau out, the most exciting answer to this article’s question has 37 NHL games on his record. That’s where the hope is. The risk is right there too.
