If there’s one topic that Calgary Flames fans want to hear about, it’s trades. The discourse around the team is abuzz about potential moves involving the club’s pending unrestricted free agents, and fans want to know when trades will start happening.
On Monday’s edition of Barn Burner, Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli provided an update on the Flames’ situation and noted that the delay in moves isn’t on their end.
Here’s Seravalli:
“I’ll tell you what, the Calgary Flames are ready. They’re open to ideas. They’re open to offers, on a whole bunch of different things that they have in their arsenal to try and make changes. It’s not that the interest level hasn’t been there, but there’s been such a lack of significant, real talk that they’re sitting here going ‘Okay, I understand that it’s mid-to-late November now but if you want to do something, you got to actually make it happen.’ It takes two to tango and it’s not for hemming and hawing on the Flames part that they’re sitting around saying ‘Well you know, might want to see what we have here, we could potentially be a playoff team.’ That’s not their thought process. It’s like, alright, let’s make a deal, and no one’s willing to do that yet.”
The Flames have four prominent pending UFAs on their active roster: forward Elias Lindholm, and defencemen Nikita Zadorov, Noah Hanifin and Chris Tanev. If they’re looking to make changes to their team, discussions will probably fixate on those four players, but you never know if they could be open to moving others as well.
As of Monday night, 16 teams (including the Flames) are using long-term injury relief to be salary cap compliant (per Cap Friendly). With so many teams in cap crunches, it seems reasonable to assume that serious trade talks league-wide won’t really heat up until closer to the March 8, 2024 trade deadline.
In the meantime: the Flames, and their fans, wait patiently.
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