Kicking off a season of endless unknowns, Brad Treliving took his first stab at predicting what will happen Monday when the Flames officially open training camp.
“I know we’ll go on the ice tomorrow and the big story will be, ‘who is playing with who,’ but I caution everyone, it’s Day 1,” said the Calgary Flames GM on Sunday.
“It may be different Day 2 and Day 3. I think that’s the way it’s going to go in training camp and early in the year. We may experiment with some different things. It’s not gospel. We’ve got a lot of depth and lots of options.”
Treliving is right.
Coach Geoff Ward told Sportsnet this summer he’d like to try both Elias Lindholm and Sam Bennett at centre, opening up endless options for a deep team that really doesn’t have any new jobs up for grabs in this shortened camp – just rankings within the group.
Sure, newbies Connor Mackey and Nikita Nesterov will battle Oliver Kylington for the sixth blue line spot. But otherwise, the club’s roster is obvious.
The lines aren’t.
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Who will play with Johnny Gaudreau and Sean Monahan in Lindholm’s absence? Does the team’s best line last year stay intact, with Matthew Tkachuk alongside Mikael Backlund and Andrew Mangiapane?
Injuries and some positive COVID-19 tests in a compacted season are sure to thrust peripheral players into the lineup with regularity, making their camps important too.
The goal now is to see how many different player combinations work on a roster with tremendous versatility.
“We do ourselves a disservice if we don’t take the opportunity to see if we have a better potential lineup than the one we ended with,” said Ward, anxious to see how free agent signings like Josh Leivo, Dominik Simon and Joakim Nordstrom will fit into the group.
“We could be moving players on a regular basis to get a feel for that. It’s all about chemistry. Our job is to understand what our best lineup is for our game against Winnipeg (Jan. 14.) There’s nothing in stone.”
Ward said he has two goals coming out of this ten-day camp: “To be rested and feeling good about going into that first game mentally and physically; and making sure guys understand and are comfortable with our structure.”
Now for more notes, quotes and anecdotes from Ward, Treliving and Mark Giordano, who all offered up some interesting insights in their Zoom calls Sunday:
STONE CHIPS:
• There was a familiar face no one expected to be part of the 41-man camp roster the Flames unveiled Sunday – Michael Stone. The veteran defenceman has been the team’s six, seventh and eighth defenceman the last couple years and will be back in camp on a PTO.
• The only other PTO invite is former Leafs prospect Garret Sparks, who will be one of five goalies in camp. Said Treliving, “We may have another forward here in the next couple days on a PTO.” Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman guessed on Twitter that forward would be hulking 27-year-old Brett Ritchie, whose size and experience make sense as a potential addition to the taxi squad. The six-foot-four, 220-pound former second-round pick of the Stars is a right-shooting winger who is four years removed from a career-high 16-goal season in Dallas.
• Not surprisingly, Treliving announced goalie Tyler Parsons will not attend camp due to ankle surgery that further threatens his career.
• The Flames have 41 players listed on their camp roster. Only 36 are allowed, but the five goalies don’t count. Four players are listed as late arrivals, including Kylington whose immigration delays have him in Calgary, sitting through his seven-day quarantine. Three prospects in the world juniors are also on that list, including Canada’s Jakob Pelletier and Connor Zary, as well as United States goalie Dustin Wolf.
Treliving revealed that while their respective junior leagues are dormant, all three will be eligible to play for the Flames’ AHL affiliate in Stockton, which is hoping to return to play in early February. “We feel we can get homes for all of our players,” said the GM.
Treliving said he has been happy with all of their performances in Edmonton, as well as that of six-foot-four, 209-pound Russian defenceman Yan Kuznetsov, a second-round pick this year: “For a guy the size of a fridge he moves well.”
BETTING LINES:
• The players will be divided into two squads for camp, Team (Lanny) McDonald and Team (Jarome) Iginla, which Ward says has prompted some friendly wagering between the two Flames legends: “Texting with Lanny and Jarome, they’ve got money on the inter-squad games,” laughed the coach, who had his interim tag lifted in the off-season.
Those games go at 7 p.m. at the Saddledome Jan. 7 and 11, but obviously aren’t open to the public. The two daily sessions at the Dome are only open to the media, who will sit in the 200-level while socially distancing and wearing masks. Post-skate interviews are all done via Zoom, as will be the case all season long. At no point this season will a player and media-type come face-to-face.
• Giordano singled out Mackey, a top free agent signing out of college last spring, as being “pretty close to being ready to play in the NHL.” It’s hardly surprising to hear that as the 24-year-old defenceman took part in the Flames pre-playoff training camp and held his own. He, like many other Flames, has been in Calgary for well over a month, skating and training at the Dome daily.
• As expected, the Flames are bringing back all their assistant coaches, including Ray Edwards, Martin Gelinas and Ryan Huska, as well as recently-promoted goalie coach Jason LaBarbera, who is overseeing Canada’s goalies at the world juniors.
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