There were growing whispers that this could end up being a quiet trade deadline for the Calgary Flames.
So much for that.
On Wednesday, the Flames completed a blockbuster when they flipped veteran blueliner MacKenzie Weegar to the Utah Mammoth in exchange for 31-year-old defenceman Olli Määttä, 20-year-old Cornell University centre Jonathan Castagna and three 2026 second-round picks.
It’s a big deal and not one where the Flames’ hand was forced. Weegar is still under contract for four more years after the end of this season. They could have kept him around.
Instead, they made their move. They got two players they like and a heavy haul of draft picks.
“It gives us so many opportunities, whether we want to move up in the draft or target players,” Flames GM Craig Conroy said. “You see all the trades that are happening right now and how many are second-round picks and it gives us value there, too.
“We just thought to get three picks this year in the second round was definitely something we felt was worth making a deal for MacKenzie, along with the other two players, too.”
The move signals one thing above all else: The focus in the management offices at the Saddledome is squarely on building for the future.
The three second-round picks make that clear. That they’re all picks in this year’s draft will only add to the Flames’ considerable bounty of young prospects. It means a little less waiting.
Or, conversely, it could open the door to more moves. Anything’s possible.
One of the picks belongs to the Mammoth themselves, while the others initially belonged to the Ottawa Senators and New York Rangers. The Rangers pick, in particular, should fall near the beginning of the second round. They’re third-last in the league right now.
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That the Flames are focused on building for the future is not exactly new news. If the Flames trade Blake Coleman and Nazem Kadri this week, the only remaining players who were on the opening night roster in 2022-23 will be Jonathan Huberdeau and Mikael Backlund. This process has been going on for a few years.
Craig Conroy took over as Flames general manager a year later and he has been slowly but surely steering the Flames in a direction that prioritized youth and building through the draft.
The list of veterans he’s dealt away is long. Among others, Rasmus Andersson, Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, Elias Lindholm, Nikita Zadorov, Andrew Mangiapane and Jacob Markstrom were all traded for packages that prioritized youth and picks. Other veterans weren’t re-signed but were allowed to walk in free agency.
The difference with the Weegar trade is his contract status. Many of those veterans we just mentioned were on expiring contracts and either weren’t going to re-sign or didn’t fit with the Flames’ development timeline.
Weegar is a different story. He was a leader in the room, had played more minutes than any of his teammates this season, is second in the entire NHL in blocked shots and played on both the power-play and penalty-kill.
The Flames could have kept him around, but they didn’t. It now seems inevitable that both Kadri and Coleman will be traded, too. If not by Friday’s deadline, then in the summer or by this time next year.
Calgary Flames forwards Blake Coleman and Nazem Kadri celebrate after Kadri scored the tying goal to send the game into overtime against the Pittsburgh Penguins at the Scotiabank Saddledome in Calgary on Tuesday, Oct. 22, 2024.
“The thing is from the beginning, if the deal makes sense — and it has to make sense for both sides or it doesn’t happen — you can’t force deals or just take bad deals to do a deal,” Conroy explained. “That doesn’t make any sense. It has to be one that works for both sides. That’s going to be our philosophy going into this trade deadline. If they make sense and it’s something that makes the Calgary Flames better, we’re going to explore everything. We’re not closing the door on anything.”
Losing Weegar makes the Flames less competitive in the short-term, so it wouldn’t make much sense to keep two veterans like Kadri and Coleman who would be valuable to contenders around in their late-30s.
Määttä could prove useful, but he has been a healthy scratch for long stretches this season and nobody should expect him to fill the hole in the roster left by Weegar.
The Flames have now traded their two top defencemen in the last month-and-a-half. They may deal away two of their best forwards by the end of the week.
The rebuild vs. retool debate is over. Maybe it was over a long time ago, but that feels written in stone now. It’s all about the future now. Developing young talent is the priority.
The Flames will finish near the bottom of the standings this season. That could and should lead to them drafting a star like Gavin McKenna, Ivar Stenberg or Keaton Verhoeff. After Wednesday’s deal, there will be a huge influx of young talent entering their system after the draft.