\u2018We want to do it the right way\u2019: Flames general manager Craig Conroy eyes sustainable success during exit interviews<\/p>\n
Pals, the Stanley Cup playoffs begin on Saturday and the Calgary Flames will not be part of the proceedings.<\/p>\n
On Friday, Flames brass met with their players as part of their annual exit meetings before everyone leaves to start their off-seasons. And despite a disappointing season \u2013 the fourth consecutive spring without playoff hockey in Southern Alberta \u2013 it was an interestingly upbeat series of discussions, very much in line with the vibes around the team over the past couple of months.<\/p>\n
No, the Flames aren\u2019t where they want to be right now.<\/p>\n
No, they\u2019re not particularly happy with that state of affairs.<\/p>\n
However, three years into general manager Craig Conroy\u2019s tenure, two things are crystal clear: Conroy has a plan for building the hockey club into something formidable, and he\u2019s not particularly interested in any shortcuts that would deviate from that plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI mean, you want to make the playoffs every year,\u201d said Conroy. \u201cI mean, that\u2019s always going to be the goal. But we\u2019re going to do it the right way. We\u2019re not going to just force it to rush to get rid of, you know, whatever pick we are, one to six. We\u2019re not giving that up just to, you know\u2026 Well, I mean, again, I say that. But if the right player was there, yeah, we would. But that would be for the long term.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cIt is about the long term. It\u2019s not about getting in one year, not in the next, in one year, out. We want to be there consistently. Look at a team like Toronto. They\u2019ve been there 10 years in a row. Unfortunately, they\u2019re out this year. But they probably want to get back in for the next 10 years. We want to get in and have an extended run. We want to do it the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n
A lot of things went right in 2024-25<\/a> as the Flames pushed to within a tiebreaker of making the playoffs. A lot of players had career years and the team avoided major injuries. But things swung the other way in 2025-26 and the Flames suffered through a tough 2-8-2 October, an inability to reliably score at five-on-five or the power play, injuries to a few key players, and defensive breakdowns at tough times that put their goaltenders in tough spots.<\/p>\n In terms of offensive output, Conroy indicated the solutions need to come from within the existing group.<\/p>\n \u201cWell, to just add scoring, I mean, it\u2019s not that easy,\u201d said Conroy. \u201cWe need more scoring from within, first and foremost. I mean, guys can\u2019t, you know, if you\u2019re on every power play, if you\u2019re on every, you know, we\u2019re going to challenge all the guys that are there. We need more from each and every one of them.\u201d<\/p>\n If you want to take a glass-half-full approach to things, there are reasons to be optimistic about the Flames\u2019 future. Lengthy rookie auditions from the likes of Yan Kuznetsov<\/a>, Hunter Brzustewicz<\/a>, Zayne Parekh<\/a> and Matvei Gridin<\/a> were very promising, to the point where you might be able to pencil them in as NHLers next fall \u2013 though it\u2019s worth noting that of that quartet only Kuznetsov requires waivers, so the other three are still in prove-it territory. The penalty kill was good. The team\u2019s general structure and pace was pretty consistent.<\/p>\n If you want to take a glass-half-empty approach, the Flames\u2019 leading scorer (Matt Coronato) had just 45 points this season. The Flames have drafted well but pending June\u2019s new additions, there\u2019s no offensive saviour coming through the pipeline nor does it sound like Conroy\u2019s in a hurry to move out assets to acquire a Band-Aid offensive solution unless it\u2019s a long-term strategic addition.<\/p>\n Growth will need to be internally-driven, and for a team that was in the bottom 10 for generating chances and bottom four for burying them, progress may be slow or uneven as the team\u2019s promising young players mature into polished NHLers. With the Flames understandably hesitant to take shortcuts and long-term, sustainable success in mind, Flames fans may need to show a bit more patience through potential growing pains over the next season (or more).<\/p>\n To reiterate Conroy\u2019s mantra: \u201cWe want to do it the right way.\u201d<\/p>\n This is a process. And sometimes the process takes a bit of time to generate the desired results.<\/p>\n Sponsored by bet365:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u2018We want to do it the right way\u2019: Flames general manager Craig Conroy eyes sustainable success during exit…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":266770,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5124],"tags":[895,26,5294,896,5,4],"class_list":{"0":"post-554938","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-calgary-flames","8":"tag-calgary","9":"tag-calgary-flames","10":"tag-calgaryflames","11":"tag-flames","12":"tag-hockey","13":"tag-nhl"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116423114535268703","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554938","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=554938"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/554938\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/266770"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=554938"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=554938"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=554938"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}