The preseason is over, therefore organizations and media alike have gathered plenty of metrics and data on players. Team roster cuts will be ramping up, and a better idea of who will be playing in the league and who won’t be will be established over the next few weeks. For the Calgary Flames, the onus will be on improving from last season’s dismal performance in which the team finished with a 38-27-17 record and missed the playoffs. A few individual Flames that struggled offensively should look to bounce back, especially under a new coaching staff. New head coach Ryan Huska and new assistants Marc Savard, Dan Lambert, and Cail MacLean will likely be experimenting plenty with their group to construct stable chemistry.
From a fan standpoint, the start of the regular season means the beginning of fantasy hockey. Drafts have been materializing and will continue to do so even after the first puck drops on Tuesday, Oct. 10. Each team will feature one or two star players and these are easy picks, but the real talent in fantasy is predicting which lesser-known individuals will break out or which formerly successful ones will get back to their old ways. This season, the Flames roster features many viable options for fantasy team owners, and here are our top five picks.
Andrew Mangiapane, Left Wing/Right Wing
First up is a strong bounce-back candidate in Canadian forward Andrew Mangiapane. The 5-foot-10, left-shooting winger is very versatile as he can play either wing and contribute anywhere in the lineup. He can adequately provide on both the power play and shorthanded units as well. In 2021-22, he crushed his previous career-highs in goals and points with 35 and 55, respectively. “Mang” fell off a bit last season as he totaled just 17 tallies and 26 assists for 43 points. Despite getting more even strength and power play ice time than ever before, pucks just weren’t going in as he posted a career-low 9.6% shooting percentage.
So far this year, Mangiapane has looked decent, scoring one goal across four preseason appearances. He has been headlining the right side of the top forward trio alongside Elias Lindholm and Jonathan Huberdeau. In addition, he will most likely find himself on either the first or second power play unit as well as a shorthanded line or two. Therefore, Mangiapane will be getting his best opportunity in recent memory, at least for the start of the 2023-24 season. However, ESPN has projected him to total just 15 goals and 18 assists. We think that playing with proven talent in Huberdeau and Lindholm coupled with the added special teams minutes should translate to better numbers for Mangiapane. If all goes well, he should have 20-25 goals and 50-ish points.
Rasmus Andersson, Defence
Second on our list is a more obvious choice: the Flames’ number one defenceman, Rasmus Andersson. He put up 49 points in 79 games last season, including a career-high 11 goals. His point total was one off of matching his best of 50 set in the previous campaign, and had he not missed three games near the end of the season he most definitely would have bested this figure. Andersson is sound defensively but also never shies away from joining an offensive rush. The soon-to-be 27-year-old is seemingly getting better every season and is unfairly overlooked by many despite playing a prominent role on a Canadian NHL team. According to ESPN, Andersson will score nine goals and 44 assists for 53 total points this upcoming season. We wholeheartedly agree, and believe this to be Andersson’s floor if anything.
Related: Flames’ Andersson Should Be Frontrunner For Captaincy
For the last two seasons, he has played the most minutes out of any Flame and is usually the lone defenceman on the first powerplay unit. Furthermore, he is the best penalty killing rearguard on the roster and had one goal and an assist while shorthanded in 2022-23. Andersson is shooting the puck more than ever, with a career-best 159 last season, and finishing as well; he posted his best shooting percentage in 2022-23 with 6.9 percent. There’s no reason to believe he won’t have double-digit goals and 40-plus assists again. If your fantasy league has defensive stats, Andersson led the Flames with 136 blocked shots and added 50 hits to boot. He should reach or eclipse these numbers, and also post better than his plus-5 rating of last season.
Jonathan Huberdeau, Left Wing
Third is this season’s unanimous choice for bounce-back candidate of the year, forward Jonathan Huberdeau. The prized piece going to Calgary in last offseason’s Matthew Tkachuk trade to the Florida Panthers, expectations were high for Huberdeau. After all, the All-Star winger finished the 2021-22 season tied for second in the league with an extraordinary 115 points. His 85 assists that season were tops in the NHL. As we now know all too well, Huberdeau skyrocketed back down to earth in his first year with the Flames. He scored just 15 goals and 55 points in 79 games to set an NHL record for the highest season-to-season point total drop-off in history (from ‘After historic scoring drop-off, Huberdeau aims to regain his swagger over the offseason’, Calgary Sun, Apr 14, 2023). He frequently clashed with former coach Darryl Sutter and played almost three fewer minutes a night compared to his Panthers days.
This season we should see more of what the Flames are set to pay $10.5 million for. Huberdeau has a huge chip on his shoulder and will undeniably be looking to prove his now many doubters wrong. He has looked quite good in the preseason, scoring twice and adding an assist in four contests. For fantasy, he is slated to score 17 times and add 42 assists for 59 points, the slightest of upticks. While we don’t necessarily believe “Huby” will once again set the league on fire, we do think he will outperform these set measures. If Huska keeps playing him on his natural wing and giving him plenty of power play time, he should have no problems getting back to 20-plus goals and 60-plus points, especially if he stays paired with finishers like Lindholm and the aforementioned Mangiapane.
Elias Lindholm, Centre
Next is another quite discernible pick, the team’s number one centreman in Elias Lindholm. The Swede had 22 goals and 64 points to finish last season third and second, respectively, on the Flames. No forward on the team played more than his 18:39 of ice time per game, as he is a trusted two-way pivot that can provide support on both ends of the ice at an elite level. He finished second in Selke Trophy voting for the best defensive forward in 2021-22, in addition to scoring a career-high 42 goals and 82 points in 82 games. Lindholm is touted for his faceoff excellence; he won 857 draws last season at a 55.7 percent clip, good for ninth place in the league. No Flames forward blocked more shots than his 50, and he threw almost 100 hits as well.
Choosing Lindholm in fantasy is not without its unique responsibilities. As a pending unrestricted free agent, he does carry the potential to be in another sweater come trade deadline time should the Flames struggle. This could alter his appeal as he may not be entrusted as a 1C on a different club. With the hope he remains a Flame, he is set to line up beside the pass-happy Huberdeau and be a notable triggerman on the power play which should inflate his goal totals once again. Lindholm had bad puck luck like Mangiapane as he only converted on 11.8 percent of his shots, a range he hasn’t been near since the 2017-18 season. “Lindy” will ideally score 30-plus goals and reach 70 points or more in 2023-24.
Matt Coronato, Right Wing/Centre
Last on our list is a bit of a dark horse fantasy candidate in rookie forward Matt Coronato. The Flames’ 13th overall pick in 2021 is done tearing up the college hockey ranks and looks ready for his next challenge. After all was said and done this preseason, the 21-year-old tied for the rookie lead in scoring with four goals and seven points in six games. These totals also led the entire Flames roster. Coronato used the exhibition matches to showcase his lethal shot and offensive creativity. The young man made his NHL debut in the last game of the 2022-23 season against the San Jose Sharks, and didn’t look out of place there either despite going scoreless.
With the departure of Tyler Toffoli this offseason and the recent injury of Jakob Pelletier, the Flames are a tad thin on the wing. To add to the problem, Lindholm and Walker Duehr are the only right-shooting forwards guaranteed spots on the roster. This may not prove to be an insurmountable issue but more diversity in a forward core is always nice. Coronato has been skating on the second line with Mikael Backlund and newcomer Yegor Sharangovich, and the trio has looked excellent. Backlund is adept defensively and can pick up some of the potential rookie’s slack, as can Sharangovich. The two can also distribute and shoot the puck as well as anyone, offering Coronato a great opportunity to pile up points. Should he become a power play mainstay as well, we could see the first Flames rookie to score 30 goals since Joe Nieuwendyk.
To finish off, the Flames feature many talented individuals, and all have a case to be on this list. Hopefully, someone not included here will surprise us all in 2023-24. However, with the data we currently have available, these five choices offer the most probable chances to reward their fantasy owners.
