This is an article from The Athletic (Dom Luszczyszyn), which ranks teams’ offseasons based on their changes in collective game score. I put this here because he ranks Calgary down mostly because of the Dougie Hamilton trade. He calls Hamilton the Flames former best defenceman. I argued the same thing prior to the trade and am very interested to see how his absence actually affects the team. I think a lot of people assume Giordano was making that first pairing go based on the eye test whereas the numbers suggest it was both Giordano and Hamilton. Hopefully the eye test is right and our first pairing doesn’t take too much of a crash.
Calgary Flames: C-
In: James Neal, Noah Hanifin, Elias Lindholm, Derek Ryan, Austin Czarnik
Out: Dougie Hamilton, Micheal Ferland, Kris Versteeg, Matt Stajan, Lance Bouma
Net Value Added: -0.5 wins
The Flames started the offseason with a thud, trading their best defenseman for two decent players who weren’t all that close to his value. That they packaged the capable Micheal Ferland and the promising Adam Fox in the deal made even less sense.
That’s a large hole to dig out of (minus-1.8 wins), but Calgary managed to bridge the gap with the rest of its offseason, by adding a decent trio of forwards. James Neal could be a slam dunk on the right wing next to Sean Monahan and Johnny Gaudreau (though the term of his contract is alarming), Derek Ryan is a nice fit as the third line centre, and Austin Czarnik has shown potential in the AHL.
It’s enough not to fail the Flames for their summer, but the team is still worse than the one that finished last season. Calgary bolstered its forward group, but it was at the expense of one of the league’s best defence groups, one that looks pretty mediocre outside of Mark Giordano and now Noah Hanifin. The Flames plugged holes up front, but created new ones on defence.
There’s enough talent here that the Flames are still a likely playoff team, but they were arguably more than that in a weak division before trading one of the league’s best defenders.
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