Craig Conroy has made a splash in the trade market arguably upgrading the team in one swoop by sending two players and pics to the Flyers. The deal goes down like this:

To the Flames:
Joel Farabee
Morgan Frost

To the Flyers:
Andrei Kuzmenko
Jacob Pelletier
2025 2nd Round Pick
2028 7th Round Pick

This sounds like a steal. It is if we look at the 1-1 trade. Calgary upgrades significantly at C and adds an avg NHLer with an above avg AHLer.

Now the most skilled player in the lot is Kuzmenko, who arguably had the most skill on the Flames, but dangles with your hands doesn’t translate to good defence or even offence. Kuzmenko was streaky, was routinely on the bench over the past month, and although the plan all along was to trade him this year, his value, inspite of his skill set, was low.

Pelletier as well, homegrown talent who couldn’t get passed his smaller size to make a statement and stay in the NHL. He was waived after training camp and unitl recently spent his time with the AHL Wranglers. That Conroy could take both Farabee and Frost from Philadelphia, who appear to have embraced their rebuild, is a win.

The Flames have been clear they will use their cap to take on some assets, and they won’t add long-term players who aren’t of age. 24 and 25 are the ages of Farabee and Frost, the latter with a few more years on his sizable 5 million dollar contract (that’s the risk), and the latter a RFA at season’s end. This frees up cap space for the Flyers, but it does take away two underperforming but younger players from their organization. Oh well. Phillies loss is Calgary’s gain.

The biggest component to this trade is how it immediate makes the Flames’ lineup better especially donw the middle. So long as both new players jump on board the Calgary system which is absed on a relenteless forecheck and defense first, where the C has a lot harder job to pin down, Calgary might in fact make a run for it.

Playoffs were not in the picture when you looked up and down the lineup at the start of the year. But not it’s a distinct possiblitiy. I think most fans expected a tank season for a higher pick. But the advent of Dustin Wolf and scrappy vets have combined for what was supposed to be a tank season, into a typical Flames season of being MID.

Are the Flames going to make the playoffs? Probably. But the real story is how this ‘rebuild’ is in fact ahead of the curve, and although becoming contenders is not in the future (and all roads must go through Edmonton), it won’t be the years of pain many other organizations face. Add in the increasing cap size that’s going to explode over the next three years, Calgary is poised to run with the big revenue teams for years to come.