Player roles may determine which defenders make the Flames roster

The two biggest questions heading into Calgary Flames training camp are a pair of developments related to the club’s blueline group.

First, what does the future hold for blueliner and alternate captain Rasmus Andersson? The highly-respected rearguard is widely expected to be moved at some point during the 2025-26 season in advance of the expiry of his current contract.

Second, how will rookie defender Zayne Parekh be integrated into the NHL roster following a superb 2024-25 campaign in the Ontario Hockey League?

And, as a product of those two questions, how will the Flames’ defensive group look on opening night for the 2025-26 season?

We’ve discussed this previously, but let’s think about how the Flames tend to operate in terms of ice time deployment and special teams roles by looking at 2024-25 and what we can expect for 2025-26.

Even strength

At five-on-five, the three most-used defenders were MacKenzie Weegar, Rasmus Andersson and Kevin Bahl. Bahl and Andersson were attached at the hip for most of the season, and were used by Ryan Huska as the “tough minutes” pairing against stiff opposition with a skew towards defensive zone starts.

That freed up Weegar and whoever he was playing with – down the stretch, most often Joel Hanley – to face slightly easier opposition with slightly more offensive zone starts than the Bahl/Andersson pairing. And that left the third pairing – usually Brayden Pachal with some mixture of Tyson Barrie or Jake Bean – to get easier opponents and heavy offensive zone starts.

In terms of five-on-five roles, if we’re assuming that Andersson is sticking around for a bit, the ideal pairings may look like this:

• Bahl & Andersson
• Weegar & Parekh/Hanley
• Parekh/Hanley & Pachal

Weegar’s pairing faces pretty tough opposition, but Weegar is the Flames’ best defender and someone that can play well with a lot of different player types. So putting Parekh with Weegar, while it would be pushing Parekh into the proverbial deep end a bit, could provide him with offensive zone starts, high leverage situations, and a high-quality defensive partner.

Or the Flames could keep Weegar with Hanley and use Parekh with Pachal in more sheltered situations. Pachal’s quite good, especially as a physical two-way defender who can likely be used on his off-side on the left, but he’s just not as skilled as Weegar so the deployments would be a bit different.

We would also note that with such a right-heavy group in terms of shooters, this sort of scheme would probably result in the Flames’ seventh defender being another lefty. And with the potential for Andersson’s departure, a defensive-minded lefty like Yan Kuznetsov or Ilya Solovyov might have the inside track – you could probably move Parekh to a pairing with Bahl, skew Weegar and Hanley towards the hard minutes a bit, and then use Pachal with Kuznetsov/Solovyov on the third pairing and be in good shape.

This does mean, though, that it might be a bit of an uphill battle for incumbents Jake Bean and Daniil Miromanov, primarily because neither of them seems especially well suited for a third pairing role.

Special teams

Last season, both power play units had one defender with four forwards, with Weegar on the first unit and Andersson on the second. Likely that changes a bit this year, with Parekh moving onto one of the groups, likely the second one. In theory, whenever Andersson departs, that second unit becomes a one defender unit as it was last year.

On the penalty kill, the two general pairings were Bahl & Andersson, and Weegar & Pachal. (Hanley played a bunch with Weegar, too.) That seems like a pretty likely bet to repeat. Whenever Andersson departs, we probably see Pachal, Hanley or the seventh defender (again, perhaps Solovyov or Kuznetsov) rotate into the mix.

Again, the special teams responsibilities make it a bit tough to have Bean and Miromanov in the lineup, since neither are definite power play or penalty kill players.

Andersson will leave key minutes available if/when he departs. And Parekh might need easing into the Flames’ lineup. The players that provide the Flames with the maximum flexibility on the back end are probably the ones that will be on the roster when the season opens in Edmonton in early October.

Who do you think will make the team on the blueline?