It’s a quarter of the way into the 2025–26 season, and the Calgary Flames are, well, bad. They are 32nd in the league, with a big gap between them and 31st. There are three standings points between them and the Nashville Predators, and both teams have an equal 20 games played. The only other point gap that is three points or more is between first and second in the NHL: The Colorado Avalanche with 31 and the New Jersey Devils with 27, though the Devils have a game in hand.

Suffice to say, the Flames are in the basement of the league, and they are there on a solo basis.

Calgary just can’t score

A big reason why the Flames find themselves in this predicament is their lack of finishing talent. Across 20 games, they’ve scored just 42 goals. This is last in the league and is six goals fewer than the next closest team, which is, coincidentally, also the Predators.

Calgary’s top goal scorer is Blake Coleman with seven goals so far. He’s responsible for 16.2% of his team’s goals. In contrast, seven goals with the league-leading Avalanche would be 9.0% of the team’s goals. That’s a stark difference and shows how little the puck is going into the net for the Flames.

A look at expected goals

The Flames’ offence shouldn’t be this bad. Per NaturalStatTrick.com, they have a 5v5 score-and-venue adjusted expected goals for percentage (xGF%) of 54.0%. This is good for seventh in the league! However, their GF% is 46.3%, good (or bad?) for seventh-last in the league…!

The more damning stats pop up when you look at expected goal rates—what Calgary’s xGF/60 and xGA/60 are. Their xGF/60 is 2.47, which is 17th, and their xGA/60 is 2.1, which is first in the NHL.

The team plays a low-excitement style of game and too often stifles its offence in favour of defence. Playing good defence can definitely be a big factor in winning games, but it comes with an assumed complement that you’d also generate offence. The best defence in the world can’t win games if it can’t score, and the Flames are facing this exact predicament.

The Flames are in a hole

Turning back to simpler stats of total goals, the Flames are again sitting at 42 goals after 20 games (not counting the goal from their shootout win). This is good for 2.1 goals per game. The Predators are at 2.4 goals per game. Just like the standings points comparison above, this 0.3 goals per game gap between 32nd and 31st is only seen again when looking at the teams in first and second—the Avalanche have a whopping 0.48 goals per game difference over the Carolina Hurricanes.

In terms of goals per game, the teams ranked second to 31st all have much smaller gaps than 0.3 between their ranking neighbours. Simply, the Avalanche are outliers at the top, the Flames are outliers at the bottom.

A historically bad offence

As the entire NHL continues its shift towards more goals scored, Calgary’s output so far this season paces them towards the record books. Since the 2012–13 lockout, a scoring rate of 2.1 goals per game is sixth-worst:

TeamSeasonGF/GPBuffalo Sabres2013–141.83Buffalo Sabres2014–151.87Detroit Red Wings2019–202.00Colorado Avalanche2016–172.01Arizona Coyotes2014–152.01Calgary Flames2025–262.10

Not good! If the Flames don’t find their scoring touch, there’s a lot of season left for this to get even worse.

Let’s see how the Flames tackle this problem. While they may not win many games this year, at least figuring out their offence over the balance of the season would make for better progress. That’s all they can hope for.

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