The Flames are looking to move up at the draft
After a challenging regular season that saw them finish with a 34-39-9 record as the fourth-worst team in the NHL, the Calgary Flames were hoping to finally get some good luck in the NHL Draft lottery.
Instead, the Flames dropped two spots, with the Toronto Maple Leafs and San Jose Sharks having the ping pong balls bounce their way to move up to the first and second overall spots, respectively.
That put general manager Craig Conroy and Calgary out of the range of landing one of the truly elite prospects available in this draft, but that doesn’t mean Conroy can’t put together an aggressive offer to trade up and add one of those blue-chip players.
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by NHL insider David Pagnotta to discuss Calgary’s motivation to land a top prospect at this year’s draft.
Tyler Yaremchuk: I want to wrap up with a little bit of talk about the Calgary Flames. You reported that there’s some interest in that Flames front office to move up in the first round. I guess expand on that, and what does that tell us about how Craig Conroy sees this off-season going for Calgary?
David Pagnotta: Well this is going to be a full, I think they’re fully invested into that rebuild that we’ve been waiting for for a while. Now, these two things are separate. So one, yes, it looks like they want to move up or at least try to. They were hopeful they were going to get a better pick. They moved down, they’re hopeful that they can figure something out here. Maybe move up to No. 2, maybe No. 3. They’re going to talk to, I would imagine, all of those teams to see what the price tags are and what the appetite is to move up, or for those teams to potentially move down. We know San Jose’s willing to listen on No. 2. We know Chicago’s willing to listen on No. 4. I think different motivation on both. I think San Jose’s willing to move back. I think Chicago is willing to move the pick entirely if it brings in a legitimate NHL caliber, top-six, in his 20s type of player to play with either Bedard or Frondell.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode below…