[Bingo]

Behind the pay wall but here is his Flames ranking



Has Calgary 20th, up 6 spots

The Flames seem to find ways to graduate prospects on a consistent basis. In the last couple years, they’ve added Rasmus Andersson, Andre Mangiapane and Dillon Dube. As I write this, Juuso Valimaki is in the midst of joining them (though he was included in this ranking under the criteria nonetheless).

For a while, though, the Flames organization wasn’t replacing those players at the same rate as they were graduating them and their prospect pool’s standing suffered. From 2017-2019, Calgary used just three total picks inside the first three rounds of the draft, dealing their second- and third-rounders in 2017, all three of their picks at the top of the 2018 draft, and a second-round pick in 2019. The result, even with some impressive late-round drafting results with the selections of Dustin Wolf, Mathias Emilio Petterssen, and Dmitri Zavgorodny, was a prospect pool that ranked firmly in the league’s bottom third.

Then, finally, the Flames hung on to each of their picks in the 2020 draft, even adding a third-round pick. And with those eight picks, they did a good job mining talent (a theme, frankly). Today, while the Flames’ pool still lacks a true top-end prospect, its depth of quality and focus on skill has helped establish it as a roughly average farm system overall, with a few of my personal favourites as well as some intriguing long shots.