A look at the Calgary Flames’ projected line combinations

Friends, the 2026-27 National Hockey League season is just around the corner. Training camp opens for the Calgary Flames in the third week of September, roughly around Sept. 17, and on paper, the big club’s roster seems reasonably set.

Here’s a quick rundown of how we see the Flames’ roster and lineup shaking out ahead of training camp.

Goaltenders

As we’ve noted previously, goaltending is as close to a lock as you can get.

Dustin Wolf will be the #1, with Devin Cooley as his #2.

Defencemen

The Flames will likely carry seven or eight defenders

Pairing 1A seems to be Jacob Middleton and Zayne Parekh. Pairing 1B would then be Kevin Bahl and Simon Nemec. Both pairings feature a stay-at-home defensive type along with a younger puck-mover. Both pairings would be targeted towards 5v5 offensive zone deployments.

The third pairing looks to likely be Yan Kuznetsov and Zach Whitecloud. They’re a defensive zone pairing that would eat up tough deployments so that the top two pairings can get offensive chances. We could see Whitecloud and Middleton swapped, too, in which case Parekh would play on his left side with Whitecloud, and one of Kuznetsov or Middleton would have to play on their weak side.

The extras look to be Joel Hanley and Brayden Pachal. They’re not bad defenders, but the focus is likely on giving younger players like Parekh, Nemec and Kuznetsov tons of reps, which doesn’t leave much for these gents at the ages of 34 and 26, respectively. Because of Hanley’s versatility, if someone needs to waived to open a roster spot we’re thinking it would be Pachal. Again, Pachal’s a real solid pro, but Hanley can be used in more situations so he’s a bit more of a Swiss Army knife for the team as a seven.

(Should the Flames waive Pachal to bring a kid up? We’re thinking it doesn’t happen unless the Flames have a young forward pushing from below for regular minutes; Pachal serving as veteran depth on the NHL roster doesn’t hinder anybody’s development, but if you’re sending him to the Wranglers, he’s gotta be playing and that might take reps away from one of the kids down there.)

Forwards

The de facto top offensive line looks to be Matvei Gridin, Morgan Frost and Matt Coronato. They were superb down the stretch and deserve a chance to start together. The de facto shutdown line projects to be Samuel Honzek, Mikael Backlund and Joel Farabee. Honzek and Farabee both shined when paired with Backlund and Blake Coleman last season, so slotting them all together to start makes a lot of sense.

From there, we have seven forwards for six regular spots.

As the secondary offensive line, we have Jonathan Huberdeau, Ryan Strome and Yegor Sharangovich. Strome was really sharp after being acquired at the trade deadline, while Huberdeau and Sharangovich both have the chops to play an up-tempo offensive game… and have hefty contracts that sort of suggest that there’s a good reason to give them some offensive zone high ground to get them going.

For the fourth line, we’re defaulting to some combination of Connor Zary, Martin Pospisil, Maxim Tsyplakov and Adam Klapka. Zary and Pospisil might just rotate as the centre here, but neither has truly shined as a fourth line centre when they’ve been tried in that role in the past. Pospisil and Klapka have been effective in the past as energy forwards, but a good argument can be made that Zary needs to have more minutes – and puck touches – than being a fourth-liner if he’s going to be at his best. These four guys are undoubtedly NHL quality, but they don’t have obvious roles in the group the way the other nine forwards seem to.

If we’re being honest, the clarity of the forward roles – and the lack of clarity for the last few players – is both why we think there’s a chance for a young player to break through… and why it might also be a challenge. If a young player can show they can fill a clear depth role – perhaps one of the centres – you could imagine the Flames making some room for them. But with the likelihood that three forwards could be joining the team in the spring in Ethan Wyttenbach, Cole Reschny and Cullen Potter, it would also make sense that Flames brass want to really figure out their depth pieces before potentially needing to make room for the youngsters.

We’ll see how things pan out between now and the last week in September.