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Calgary Flames have more draft picks in first 68 selections than any other team

Colton Pankiw
Colton Pankiw
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Jun 22 2026, 9:22 pm
Calgary Flames have more draft picks in first 68 selections than any other team
Sergei Belski/Imagn Images

The Calgary Flames may have more pressure than any other team in the NHL heading into this year’s draft.

Thanks to some tidy work from GM Craig Conroy, the Flames are heading into the draft with 11 picks in total. Even better, eight of those 11 picks are in the first three rounds.

Here’s a look at where those first eight picks will slot in:

  • 6th overall (Flames own pick)
  • 30th overall (Acquired from Vegas Golden Knights in Noah Hanifin trade)
  • 35th overall (Acquired from Utah Mammoth in MacKenzie Weegar trade)
  • 36th overall (Flames own pick)
  • 51st overall (Acquired from Mammoth in Weegar trade)
  • 55th overall (Acquired from Mammoth in Weegar trade)
  • 65th overall (Acquired from Vancouver Canucks in Nikita Zadorov trade)
  • 68th overall (Flames own pick)

The Flames also have the 100th, 132nd, and 164th picks. They are second among all NHL teams when it comes to picks in this year’s draft, with only the St. Louis Blues (12) owning more.

As far as the early portion of the draft goes, nobody has anywhere close to the same number of picks as the Flames. The Chicago Blackhawks have the second-most picks of any team in the top 68 with five selections (4th, 34th, 37th, 45th, 66th).

Uncharted waters for the Flames

This draft will be entirely different for the Flames organization, as never before have they had eight picks in the first three rounds. They’ve had six in the first three rounds on two occasions, once in 1997 and again in 2024. Here’s how those played out:

1997

  • Daniel Tkaczuk (6th overall)
  • Evan Lindsay (32nd overall)
  • John Tripp (42nd overall)
  • Dmitry Kokorev (51st overall)
  • Derek Schutz (60th overall)
  • Erik Andersson (70th overall)

2024

  • Zayne Parekh (9th overall)
  • Matvei Gridin (28th overall)
  • Andrew Basha (41st overall)
  • Jacob Battaglia (62nd overall)
  • Henry Mews (74th overall)
  • Kirill Zarubin (84th overall)

Aside from the recently traded Battaglia, all five players taken in 2024 are legitimate prospects for the Flames. Parekh and Gridin have already made impacts at the NHL level, while Basha and Mews have bright futures ahead of them.

To no surprise, the most important pick of this year’s draft is the sixth-overall selection. It’s a spot the Flames have picked on five other occasions with varying results.

The Flames selected longtime NHLer Cory Stillman sixth overall in 1992. They also added two big pieces in 2013 with Sean Monahan and again in 2016 with Matthew Tkachuk. The other two occasions didn’t work out as well, as both Daniel Tkaczuk (1997) and Rico Fata (1998) were busts.

What makes the other picks the Flames own so exciting is that they’ve tended to hit on later selections in the draft, particularly since Conroy took the helm.

Players such as Mews (4th round), Ethan Wyttenbach (5th round), and Aydar Suniev (3rd round) are exciting young pieces that figure to play a role in the Flames turning things around. And, of course, fans need no reminder that Dustin Wolf was selected in the seventh round in 2019, albeit when Brad Treliving was still serving as GM.

Given how well Conroy and his staff have drafted since he took over in 2023, Flames fans should be both confident and excited that this year’s draft will drastically improve the future.

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