Folks, if you’ve watched the Calgary Flames much over the past several seasons, you’ve probably noticed the play of blueliner MacKenzie Weegar. Simply put, Weegar’s been very good for the Flames since his arrival from Florida during the 2022 off-season, aside from a brief adjustment period during the 2022-23 campaign.
But if you’re tired about our writing staff waxing poetic about how dang good Weegar has been, good news: others are joining the chorus in praising Weegar.
Over at Daily Faceoff, the great Paul Pidutti – who you can find on social media under Adjusted Hockey – has developed the High Noon methodology to rank players, and he recently published his top 40 NHL blueliners. “The method uses a three-year weighted average of adjusted point shares to systematically rank the league’s players by position.” The methodology focuses on offensive production, not underlying numbers, and so it’s unabashedly skewed towards offensive blueliners via its design, with the weighed skewed skewed towards more recent offensive production.
On this year’s edition of the High Noon defenceman ranking, Weegar has slotted in as the 16th-best blueliner in the league. That’s a jump up from 30th in 2024 and 35th in 2023.
From a production standpoint, Weegar had eight goals (tied for 34th) and 47 points (tied for 16th) in 2024-25. Over the past three seasons (2022-25 inclusive), he has 32 goals (19th) and 130 points (tied f0r 22nd). In the grand scheme of things, 16th feels roughly where he should be based on his offensive production and year-to-year consistency in his production.
Weegar’s Flames teammate, Rasmus Andersson, was 34th on last year’s High Noon list but dropped to 75th in this year’s edition, a product of his offensive production taking a dip in 2024-25.
At 16th on the High Noon list, Weegar slots in behind (in order) Cale Makar, Quinn Hughes, Josh Morrissey, Adam Fox, Evan Bouchard, Victor Hedman, Rasmus Dahlin, Shea Theodore, Roman Josi, Devon Toews, Vince Dunn, Zach Werenski, Gustav Forsling, Mattias Ekholm and Thomas Harley. That’s not bad company to be keeping.
The 2025-26 season will be Weegar’s fourth with the Flames, and the third year in an eight year deal that carries a $6.25 million cap hit. At his current cap hit, Weegar is tied for 49th among the league’s blueliners in that category with Ekholm, Morrissey, Ryan Ellis, Damon Severson, Travis Sanheim, Alexander Romanov and Bowen Byram.
More must-reads:
Get the latest news and rumors, customized to your favorite sports and teams. Emailed daily. Always free!