With key prospects in college, 2025’s camp is a crucial one for several young Flames

When the first puck drops in September during Calgary Flames training camp, 2025 first-round picks Cole Reschny and Cullen Potter will not be in attendance.

Neither will defensive standout Henry Mews, or breakout forward Trevor Hoskin, or the highly-regarded Luke Misa. Or five other Flames prospects.

They’ll all be in college.

And that creates a really interesting opportunity for the non-collegiate prospects in the Flames system.

When prospects training camp opens next week and main camp opens the week after that, 13 of the top 20 prospects from FlamesNation’s summer rankings will be in attendance. And while the absence of names like Reschny, Potter and others will have some fans disappointed, it creates a really exciting opportunity for the players that are in attendance to make an impression.

Let’s turn the clock back a bit.

When Craig Conroy became general manager in the spring of 2023, he declared that the Flames’ NHL roster needed to get younger. Since that declaration, we’ve seen three things happen fairly simultaneously.

1. The Flames have traded away several veteran players on expiring (or soon-to-expire) contracts.
2. The Flames have used the draft selections from those trades to add to their prospect base.
3. The Flames have given several young players opportunities to stick on the NHL roster.

In 2023-24, for example, Connor Zary and Martin Pospisil joined the Flames a month into the season and basically made it impossible to send them back to the Wranglers. In 2024-25, Sam Honzek earned a cup of coffee to begin the season, Dustin Wolf and Matt Coronato cemented themselves as important parts of the big club’s roster, and Adam Klapka had a strong showing in the final dozen games of the season.

Based on what we’ve seen in the recent past, this fall could be a really fascinating camp because of the sheer number of prospects that could be poised to make a big splash.

In terms of young players with a year or more of pro experience under the belts, there’s blueliners Ilya Solovyov, Yan Kuznetsov and Hunter Brzustewicz, and forwards Honzek, Sam Morton and William Strömgren. In terms of more raw prospects perhaps needing some pro refinement, there’s goalie Arsenii Sergeev, defender Etienne Morin, and forwards Carter King, Andrew Basha, Aydar Suniev, Jacob Battaglia and Matvei Gridin.

And blueliner Zayne Parekh exists in a category of his own, as he seems destined to start the regular season with the red team.

The Flames have a lot of exciting prospects playing college hockey in 2025-26. That’s a great opportunity for them to grow their games and mature into the types of players that can become strong pros in the near future. In the immediate future, though, their absence creates a ton of opportunity for everyone else in the Flames system.

And it could set the stage for a really fun few weeks in Flames camp as several fresh faces try to make a case for NHL employment.