{"id":409714,"date":"2026-01-15T23:15:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-15T23:15:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/409714\/"},"modified":"2026-01-15T23:15:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-15T23:15:13","slug":"top-flames-prospect-matvei-gridin-headed-to-ahl-all-star-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/409714\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Flames prospect Matvei Gridin headed to AHL all-star game"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ideally, this will be Matvei Gridin\u2019s one-and-only AHL all-star appearance.<\/p>\n

A year from now, he\u2019ll hopefully playing in the NHL full-time for the Calgary Flames<\/a>.<\/p>\n

To get picked for the AHL\u2019s annual showcase game in his first professional season, though, is the type of thing that feels awfully nice to add to your resume.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s awesome,\u201d Gridin said. \u201cTo go to all-star at 19 is just awesome.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Thursday afternoon, Gridin officially was announced as the Calgary Wranglers\u2019 representative at the 2026 all-star game, which will go down in Rockford, Ill., on Feb. 10 and 11.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s hardly a surprise. There were a couple other deserving candidates on the Wranglers roster \u2014 most notably Dryden Hunt, Rory Kerins and Martin Frk \u2014 but there can\u2019t be many arguments about the young winger\u2019s selection.<\/p>\n

He has been on a rapid rise since September, when he turned heads at Calgary Flames<\/a> training camp and led the team with three goals in six pre-season games, earning himself a spot on the opening night NHL roster.<\/p>\n

He scored in the Flames\u2019 opener, but lasted only four games before being sent down to the AHL for a little more seasoning with the Wranglers.<\/p>\n

Why was he sent down?<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no shame in that. Nobody\u2019s doubting Gridin\u2019s scoring abilities, but he still needed to work on other areas of his game if he was going to be an effective everyday NHL player.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think right from Day 1, when he came down here he had the right mindset of making sure he gets better every day,\u201d Wranglers head coach Brett Sutter said. \u201cI think we\u2019ve seen him have success offensively, but what I\u2019m most proud of is everything else in his game and how it\u2019s grown.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s doing the right things away from the puck and it\u2019s leading to success for himself and his linemates. I think everyone is pretty excited for him today.\u201d<\/p>\n

To be clear, it\u2019s not like Gridin suddenly has changed his game entirely. He\u2019s still got an eye for the net and is one of the Wranglers\u2019 most consistent contributors. Selected 28th overall in the 2024 NHL Draft by the Flames, he probably has more offensive upside than any other forward in the organization\u2019s prospect pipeline.<\/p>\n

And his numbers in the AHL haven\u2019t disappointed. They\u2019re why he was selected as an all-star, as much as anything else.<\/p>\n

Gridin\u2019s AHL numbers<\/p>\n

Through 32 games with the Wranglers this season, he already has recorded 10 goals and 18 assists, fifth on the team behind Kerins, Frk, Hunt and William Stromgren \u2014 who has spent the past week and a half with the Flames in the NHL<\/a>.<\/p>\n

When you consider that Gridin is still only 19 years old and could very easily have been sent back to the QMJHL for another season with the Shawinigan Cataractes, those numbers look even more impressive.<\/p>\n

Related<\/p>\n

Nobody wants him to lose any of those offensive instincts and there\u2019s a good chance he\u2019s spending a lot more time in the NHL before 2026 is through.<\/p>\n

The scoring might get him there, but it will be work he has done improving other areas of his game since joining the Wranglers that will keep him up with the Flames.<\/p>\n

\u201cHis work to get pucks back and his work to support his linemates and the defencemen out there has really come a long way,\u201d Sutter said. \u201cI think that\u2019s a normal thing for a lot of young players, it\u2019s offence or nothing else, but I think for him he\u2019s realized how many more areas of the ice he can contribute in and he\u2019s done a really good job of that as of late.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ideally, this will be Matvei Gridin\u2019s one-and-only AHL all-star appearance. A year from now, he\u2019ll hopefully playing in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":409715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[16357,895,26,163,5294,16335,896,5,10449,6751,4,6764,3322,234,12556,9297],"class_list":["post-409714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-calgary-flames","tag-brett-sutter","tag-calgary","tag-calgary-flames","tag-calgary-wranglers","tag-calgaryflames","tag-dryden-hunt","tag-flames","tag-hockey","tag-martin-frk","tag-matvei-gridin","tag-nhl","tag-philipp-grubauer","tag-rory-kerins","tag-seattle-kraken","tag-the-wranglers","tag-william-stromgren"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/115901663104832933","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=409714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/409714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/409715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=409714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=409714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=409714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}