Flames and Rasmus Andersson to exchange contract extension numbers this week: report

Gang, in case you haven’t noticed, the Calgary Flames’ roster has changed quite considerably since Craig Conroy became general manager back in 2023. The general trend has been older players on expiring contracts moving elsewhere, and younger players joining the team.

With that in mind, let us direct you to Frank Seravalli’s Trade Targets board over at Daily Faceoff. On Wednesday morning, Seravalli updated his board with some new information regarding several players that could be on the move.

Among them? Flames blueliner Rasmus Andersson, who is eligible to become an unrestricted free agent after the 2025-26 season.

Here’s Seravalli:

This is a big week for the Andersson conversation, as the two sides are expected to trade initial numbers for the first time to see what an extension might look like. The tenor of those talks will determine what happens next. Fish or cut bait? Andersson presents great trade value, even after a relatively down year, for a right-shooting defenseman with an edge, double-digit goal scoring ability and a very reasonable cap hit. The Flames aren’t in a rush. They’d have no problem hanging onto him until the trade deadline to potentially watch his stock rise even higher.

So here’s the deal with Andersson: he’s a well-respected right shot blueliner who is an alternate captain and one of the most-tenured members of the Flames team. He’s a big piece of the team both on and off the ice. Heck, he played a dozen games with a broken bone in his leg. He is a good hockey player, his spooky-bad plus/minus this past season notwithstanding.

However, Andersson is on a contract that expires after one more season (with a $4.55 million cap hit next season), and he and the Flames are eligible to ink an extension starting on July 1 – as the final year of his deal begins. Andersson is an October 1996 birthday, and he would be celebrating his 30th birthday during the first month of the first season of his next deal.

This contract is a big chance for Andersson to, as the kids say, get that bag – and get financially set up for life. Hockey’s a contact sport and injuries happen, so this could be Andersson’s last chance to get that bag. When we looked at market comparables, the general ballpark on a long-term deal would be something like seven or eight seasons at $8 million per season (or thereabouts).

The Catch-22 for everybody involved is roughly as follows:

• The Flames may really like Andersson, but may not like how his contract ages as he gets deeper into his 30s and so they have an incentive to go shorter-term (or find ways to get Andersson’s cap hit down). They might not like Andersson at the number the market dictates he could get as a free agent.
• Andersson may really like the Flames, but with where he is in his career he’s got incentives to lock in as long a contract as he can get. He might not like the Flames at the number they would be comfortable at giving him on a long-term deal.

As Seravalli alluded to: once the two sides exchange numbers and concepts, then we’ll see what the next steps are, and whether or not Andersson is locked into a new deal… or finds himself on the trade market. Andersson’s deal has a six team no-trade list, so he has a small amount of control over where he may end up, if it comes to that.

We’ll have more on the Andersson saga is it develops.