A look at the Flames’ season-opening salary cap picture

Originally posted on Flamesnation | By Ryan Pike | Last updated Oct 7, 2025 10:00 AM ET

The Calgary Flames announced their season-opening roster on Monday afternoon.

The roster contains 23 active players – two goaltenders, eight defencemen and 13 forwards – plus two players on the injury reserve list. Despite having their highest-paid player on the IR to start the season, the Flames have oodles and oodles of salary cap space.

Here’s a quick snapshot of just how much financial flexibility the Flames have.

The opening roster, at a glance

Goalies [2]: $1.625 million	Wolf – $850,000 Cooley – $775,000
Defencemen [8]: $23.03 million	Weegar – $6.25 million Bahl – $5.35 million Andersson – $4.55 million Hanley – $1.75 million Bean – $1.75 million Miromanov – $1.25 million Pachal – $1.187 million Parekh – $942,500
Forwards [13]: $47.779 million	Kadri – $7 million Coronato – $6.5 million Sharangovich – $5.75 million Farabee – $5 million Coleman – $4.9 million Backlund – $4.5 million Frost – $4.375 million Zary – $3.775 million Lomberg – $2 million Klapka – $1.25 million Gridin – $942,500 Honzek – $886,666
Injury Reserve [2]: $11.5 million	Huberdeau – $10.5 million Pospisil – $1 million
Retained Salary [1]: $1.875 million	Markstrom – $1.875 million

All-told, the Flames have cap commitments of $85.809 million on their opening roster, which translates to $9.69 million in cap space if carried through the full season.

Three players are on entry-level deals and are eligible for performance bonuses:

Zayne Parekh has $1 million of bonuses, connected to “Category A” bonuses.
Sam Honzek has $500,000 of bonuses, also connected to “Category A” bonuses.
Matvei Gridin has no performance bonuses in his deal.

(“Category A” bonuses are connected to a player meeting certain statistical benchmarks or qualifying for the All-Rookie Team.)

The Flames will need to demote two players from the active roster whenever Huberdeau and Pospisil are ready to return to game action, with both injuries being characterized by the club as short term in nature. The odds are that the waiver-exempt players – Parekh, Gridin and Honzek – are probably the prime contenders to be demoted, with Gridin and Honzek probably the most likely to be AHL-bound, which would reduce their cap commitments by $1.82 million.

That said, Gridin has been really good and will likely have an opportunity to convince the brass that he’s worth keeping around on the NHL roster. In that case, perhaps the Flames opt not to carry eight defenders and send a blueliner down instead.

Either way, regardless of who goes down when the Flames get healthy, they have a ton of salary cap flexibility and will probably continue to have flexibility for the remainder of the season – and potentially they could have even more wiggle room, depending on how a potential Rasmus Andersson trade would shape up.

We’ll see how everything pans out over the next 192 days of the regular season.

This article first appeared on Flamesnation and was syndicated with permission.

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