The Calgary Flames can forget the playoffs.
Their loss on Thursday, a tenth in their last fifteen games (but five in overtime), now puts them six points behind the Winnipeg Jets and the last place giving access to the playoffs.
To add insult to injury, they were just edged out in the standings by the Nashville Predators, trade deadline sellers.
Not only does the status of general manager Brad Treliving seem precarious, with his contract expiring at the end of the season, but the distinguished Elliotte Friedman is now reporting friction between center Nazem Kadri and coach Darryl Sutter.
Kadri scored his first goal in 17 games on Thursday. It was only his fifth point in his last twelve meetings.
Against Los Angeles, Dallas and Vegas recently, he was employed 12:35, 13:01 and 12:35, including one of those games with fourth line members Milan Lucic and Trevor Lewis. And he did not touch the ice in overtime on Saturday.
Earlier this season, Sutter played musical chairs with another big-money summer acquisition, Jonathan Huberdeau, who he changed lines and flanks repeatedly.
Kadri and Huberdeau have seen their production drop significantly this season. Kadri has 50 points in 73 games. He had 87 in two fewer games in Colorado last year. Huberdeau has just 49 points in 70 games. He got 115 in Florida last year.
The Flames will be placed in a special situation next year. The monstrous contracts awarded to Huberdeau and defenseman MacKenzie Weegar, 10.5 million and 6.5 million annually for the next eight seasons, will come into effect. Huberdeau will then be 30 years old and Weegar will turn 30 in January. And he will remain six years in the Kadri agreement, 33 years in October, at an annual salary of 7 million.
However, four important players, Elias Lindholm, Noah Hanifin, Mikael Backlund and Tyler Toffoli will be entitled to full autonomy at the end of the next season.
The Flames will no doubt have to go all out in 2023-24, with so many potential losses.
A reconstruction is obviously not suggested with so many huge contracts. And will a reset really yield results with a core 30-plus player that looks nothing like the Penguins, Bruins, or Lightning?
The succession is not spectacular either. Calgary was drafted only once in the first five rounds, ranked 59th, in 2022 and had no picks in the first four rounds in 2018.
2019 first-round pick Jakob Pelletier is an interesting prospect. But we do not know where its ceiling is. Pelletier, 22, has been scratched in four of the Flames’ last five games. He has seven points, including three goals, in 23 games. The first pick the following year, Connor Zary, had an interesting season with 54 points in 62 games in his second year in the American League, but he still did not deserve a call-up.
Matt Coronato, 13th overall pick in 2021, and Sean Farrell’s line partner for the past few years, may join the organization soon, but he’s a far cry from Farrell’s output. The CH prospect has amassed 52 points in 33 games at Harvard this winter, compared to 33 for Coronato. Even in the USHL two years earlier, Farrell had amassed 101 points, compared to the Flames prospect’s 85.
Calgary also foolishly lost defenseman Juuso Valimaki on waivers in October. Valimaki was the Flames’ first pick, 17th overall, in 2017. Not only did the 24-year-old Valimaki have 31 points in 68 games for the Coyotes, en route to producing 37 points, but he has averaged 22 minutes per game since late January as part of the first pair at Arizona.
The successor to Brad Treliving, if he is not selected, will inherit a nice disaster.
And the Canadiens could benefit from an advantageous first-round pick in 2024 or 2025, obtained to relieve Calgary of the Sean Monahan contract…
With this other defeat, in a hard-fought game in Boston, the Canadian consolidates its fifth place in anticipation of the repechage, by virtue of its 28th place in the general classification. Montreal can hardly join the Arizona Coyotes with ten games to go. The Coyotes are four points ahead of CH. In 29th place, the Ducks find themselves six points behind the Canadiens.
The Montreal organization has an 8.5% chance of winning the first prize in the lottery and 8.8% for the second. But even to fish out fifth, the CH would not be outdone. Connor Bedard, Adam Fantilli, Leo Carlsson and Matvei Michkov are the four favorites on the majority of lists.
One name to remember: Will Smith (not the Oscar slap giver!). The 18-year-old, 6-foot, 172-pound center has 100 points in 49 games in the American Development Program. He will join Boston College next year. By comparison, Logan Cooley, the third overall pick in 2022, had 75 points in 51 meetings in the same program the year before.
