Thursday marked another disappointing moment for the Calgary Flames in what’s been a tough season for the squad as they were officially eliminated from playoff contention after a 5-2 loss to fellow Canadian team — the Winnipeg Jets.
It will mark the second consecutive season that the Flames will miss out on the NHL playoffs and the third time in the last four seasons.
While preseason expectations may have been higher, the season hasn’t really played out for the Flames and head coach Ryan Huska the way they may have envisioned it. As such, it kind of makes sense that they are among the first 10 teams eliminated from playoff contention.
Still, we’re going to look at where the season went wrong for the Flames, whether or not they had a chance to turn it around and where exactly they go from here.
Where the Flames Season Went Wrong
The Flames have gone through a complete restructuring over the last couple of seasons. Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weeger joined the team, along with Nazem Kadri, while others like Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau left.
This season the team parted ways with Nikita Zadorov and Chris Tanev and really became sellers early on in the season and for good reason. They opened the year with a win followed by just one more win in their next nine contests. That opened the season 2-7-1 and forced them into an uphill battle early on. Another three losing streaks of four games or more throughout the season and the Flames’ hopes were extinguished over and over again throughout the year.
The overall frustration hit a boiling point around the NHL trade deadline when goaltender Jacob Markstrom voiced his displeasure with the team’s poor lack of communication surrounding his situation on the market. Along with that, questions began to form around the team’s culture and leadership — which fit the storyline of a struggling franchise.
But that is something the team — and Weeger, specifically — have made clear they would continue to work on into the offseason and the 2024-25 campaign.
Flames Average Across the Board
The Flames are 18th in the NHL in goals for to this point in the season, but have also given up the 12th most goals this season amongst NHL teams. That’s a 3.25 goals against average for the Flames — a number indicative of a team that wasn’t going to make playoffs, obviously.
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To add to that, their power play was the sixth worst power play unit int he league, operating at a 16.5 percent clip, while their penalty kill may have been one of the few bright spots this season shutting down 81.1 percent of opposing man advantages.
Still, their leading scorer has been Kadri who has only tallied 65 points in 75 games, while Huberdeau (47 points) and Michael Backlund (38 points) have underperformed this season.
It’s hard to sit here and say that the Flames needed to change everything, but goaltending, defensive coverage and overall offence all needed some work this season for the Flames.
The Flames Still Burning
Regardless of the outcome, the Flames do have seven games left in the season and should get some good play from bubble players who want to impress team brass ahead of next season. It’ll also give the veterans some time to see what the team has and add some leadership to the room moving forward.
Still, like most of the teams knocked out of contention early, the Flames have players like Matt Coronato and Connor Zary to look forward to next season. They have the potential to score a top-five pick at the NHL Draft this summer and that, too, could jumpstart their play in 2024-25.
For now, however, we’ll add some water to the fire and wish the 2023-24 version of the Calgary Flames a wonderful summer and may they rest in peace until he puck drops on a new campaign.
