Flames officially eliminated from 2026 Stanley Cup playoff contention

A rough campaign for the other team in Alberta officially has an end date.

Following an overtime loss to the Dallas Stars on Tuesday night, and the Nashville Predators beating the Anaheim Ducks, the Calgary Flames have been mathematically eliminated from contention for the 2026 Stanley Cup Playoffs.

It marks the fourth season in a row that the team has failed to qualify for the postseason.

The 2025-26 season will certainly go down as a disappointing campaign for the Flames. After a couple of .500-caliber years, Calgary seemed to be trending upward after almost making the playoffs last year, losing out on the final Wild Card spot in 2024-25 due to a tiebreaker. This time around, the Flames had a miserable start, winning just one of their first nine games and two of their first 11.

The team never recovered. Despite a couple of short win streaks, Calgary never reached the .500 mark, hanging around the bottom of the Pacific Division for most of the year. The first true sign that the Flames were packing it in came in January, when the team traded defenseman Rasmus Andersson to the Vegas Golden Knights. Then, leading up to the trade deadline, the Flames moved another defender, MacKenzie Weegar, to the Utah Mammoth, before Nazem Kadri was traded back to the Colorado Avalanche.

There are certainly a lot of question marks regarding the future of this team. Sure, there are hopes that goaltender Dustin Wolf bounces back, proving that this year was no more than a sophomore slump. Also, general manager Craig Conroy probably hopes the injury bug doesn’t hit his team as hard in 2026-27, as a number of key players, including Martin Pospisil, struggled to stay healthy this year.

The Flames (32-36-8) can expect to have another excellent draft pick this summer. They sit seventh in the Pacific, but have no chance of catching the Vancouver Canucks, who’ve already clinched last place in the NHL. Yet, sitting 30th in the NHL standings, Calgary has an 11.5 percent chance of winning the draft lottery.