Martin Pospisil isn’t going to change his game.

He gets asked about that a lot. The Calgary Flames winger has had several concussions during his career and has missed the first three-and-a-half months of the 2025-26 campaign with an upper-body injury suffered during the pre-season.

After skating on his own for four weeks, the 26-year-old was assigned to the AHL’s Calgary Wranglers for a conditioning stint and participated in his first two practices since early October on Tuesday and Wednesday. He should get into a game or two for the Wranglers this weekend when they host the Bakersfield Condors and a return to the NHL should follow shortly afterwards.

Given his history, should we be expecting a change to his game? Will we see a Pospisil who throws fewer hits and relies less on his physicality?

“I can have only one answer, it’s hard to change my style of play,” Pospisil said. “When I step on the ice, I’m a different person and that’s part of my game and what makes the team better. I won’t change anything. Of course I need to be careful with some things but the physicality and the speed I bring, I just want to bring it every day, every game.”

It has been a grind for Pospisil to get back to the point where he can skate with teammates. The last time he played was Oct. 1 against the Vancouver Canucks and there were months of rest and recovery before he could start ramping up the work it’s taken him to return to the ice with teammates.

When he got hurt initially, it wasn’t thought to be serious and Pospisil, who stopped short of calling the injury a concussion, didn’t think he’d be out long.

“When it happened, I skated three or four days later and the first couple of skates I was feeling normal,” said Pospisil, who will represent Slovakia at the Olympics in February if he stays healthy. “Then, all of a sudden a couple days later I started feeling way worse. If somebody had told me it was going to be this long, I probably wouldn’t have believed it.

“It’s not easy with this kind of injury, especially mentally, to be positive. Sometimes you don’t feel like part of a team. My girlfriend, she helped me a lot to stay positive and I went day by day and I’m happy I can skate and I can play.”

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Getting Pospisil back in the lineup would provide a badly needed boost for a Flames team that is desperately fighting to keep their longshot playoff hopes alive. His speed and physicality have been missed.

Since he broke into the NHL full-time in November of 2023, the Flames have gone 22-30-4 in games where Pospisil had been out of the lineup while posting a 74-52-18 record when he played. His presence alone doesn’t guarantee that the Flames will turn things around, but it definitely won’t hurt.

First, though, he needs to get through a week with the Wranglers.

“He hasn’t played this year, he was hurt in pre-season, so he’s in a situation where he can come down and have real practices with a team and then get into games and ultimately be back in a Flames jersey as soon as possible,” said Flames assistant general manager and Wranglers GM Brad Pascall. “There’s where his process has led.

“Because we’re in the same city, but also because Marty has played with a number of these guys already over the past couple of years and is a product of our development system, it’s not foreign to him or the players around him. It’s a great step for him to be able to step into the NHL ready to go.”

Through two days of practice at WinSport, Pospisil didn’t suffer any setbacks. That’s another step towards a return.

“I think he’s had a really good couple of days,” said Wranglers head coach Brett Sutter. “I think he’s feeling good about his game.

“I thought he worked really hard yesterday and competed and looked like he was able to handle the physicality.”

Pospisil wasn’t shying away from using his body in practice, especially in one-on-one drills. Many players need to get hit or throw a hit before they can fully feel confident being back after an injury, but Pospisil said he’s already feeling like he’s proven to himself that he’s ready to play physically.

“That’s part of my game,” Pospisil said. “If I want to be strong on the puck and make a play and make space for my teammates, I need to use my body and my physicality.”