The Calgary Flames are expected to sell off their pending UFAs, but is it also possible that they look to add players with term?
Assuming General Manager Craig Conroy moves both Chris Tanev and Noah Hanifin by the trade deadline, his team will be in some need of defencemen. According to David Pagnotta of The Fourth Period, one who they have looked at, and are believed to still have interest in, is Colton Parayko of the St. Louis Blues.
“This goes back to last season,” Pagnotta said on The Big Show with Rusic & Rose. “When St. Louis was looking at a variety of different options in shaking up their roster a little bit. Colton Parayko has a full no-trade clause, so if there is anything with Calgary or another team, he’d have to sign off on it. There were discussions, [before] Craig Conroy took over as GM. [Brad] Treliving was still the main guy, but there were some discussions with Calgary when they were still kind of looking at shaking things up on their blue line and seeing what other options were out there.
“Parayko would be one of those guys because he has term, I think six or seven more years on his contract. You get a guy where you have a controllable asset and offset the fact that you’re losing Tanev, for example. I think there’s still some interest there. I don’t know if it’s escalated to the point of things really heating up right now. But there has been interest in Parayko before, I think there’s some interest now still, and that could be an option.”
Parayko is in the second year of an eight-year, $52 million deal that carries a cap hit of $6.5 million. While his value isn’t as high as it was through his first few seasons in the league, he is still a very good player. His 23:40 minutes per game this season not only leads the Blues but is 29th among all NHLers.
Given Parayko’s salary and term, there is a strong chance that if a trade occurred with the Flames involving him, it would come in the offseason rather than the next few months. What the Blues would want in return is a question mark, as they are a middling team with no real sense of direction right now. Once they get a better idea of what that sense of direction is, perhaps there is a deal to be made between these two parties.
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