NHL Rumors: Calgary Flames GM Craig Conroy on Their Free Agents

Sportsnet: Calgary Flames GM Craig Conroy on the Jeff Marek Show on where they’re at with some of their pending free agents. He knew they wouldn’t be re-signing Elias Lindholm.

** NHLRumors.com transcription

Matt Marchese: “You know Noah Hanifin, Chris Tanev, those are the two names that everybody wants to talk about. Have you made a decision on which direction you’re gonna go? Like is the is the Elias Lindholm trade, giving us an indication of where things are progressing with the Calgary Flames right now? I know you got a player that plays right now for you in Andre Kuzmenko but, um, should we take that as a sign of, you kind of have your direction right now? And yes, you want to make your team better for now but you also want to look towards the future with this group too.

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Conroy: “Yeah, I think, you know, the one thing I think each guy is individually. You know, with Elias, I knew we probably weren’t going to sign him. We just weren’t going to sign him. I knew that he wasn’t signing back. So, you know, that was kind of in my mind too beginning of the year that that was something I was going to have to do.

You know, and I take each guy individually and you’re always trying to do the right thing again for the organization. So, you know, to say we’re going to go one way or the other right now. I’m still, you know, I’m talking to the players. I’m talking to the agents and we’re still working our way through this trying to figure out you know if it’s a fit.

That’s the one thing when you have unrestricted free agents, you know, they have a big say whether they want to stay or want to go. So, you know, it’s never I know people want it to happen today, but it always it just, it just takes a little bit more time. And you never want to, you know obviously, it’s getting to that time with maybe a little over a month ago to the trade deadline. But, you know, we’re still just working our way through it with the agent, with the player and we’re gonna kind of see where this goes.”