Flames' Conroy taking extremely risky approach with pending UFAs
August has officially passed, and the Calgary Flames still have seven returning players with just one year remaining on their contracts.
Shortly after being announced as the Flames’ new general manager (GM), Craig Conroy said that he wasn’t about to fall into a Johnny Gaudreau situation with these players, meaning he wouldn’t allow them to walk to free agency and receive nothing in return.
Conroy still has time to move or re-sign his pending UFAs, though as each day passes, it is only getting more difficult. The major risk with keeping them to begin the season is that the roster is talented enough to compete for a playoff spot. If they are in by the trade deadline, it would be almost impossible for Conroy to deal with the majority of them.
Granted, some of this team’s pending UFAs, such as Nikita Zadorov and even perhaps Chris Tanev, aren’t devastating players to have walked away for nothing. But guys like Elias Lindholm and Mikael Backlund would be, and it would be the exact situation that Conroy said he wasn’t going to let happen.
It appears that the Flames GM is taking a wait-and-see approach in hopes that players like Backlund and perhaps even Noah Hanifin become more open to the idea of extensions if the team has more success to begin the 2023-24 campaign.
This could be a major risk, as there is a chance that despite the Flames’ talent, they struggle as they did a season ago. That would undoubtedly lead to several of their pending UFAs wanting out and would also lower the returns that Conroy would receive, given that other teams would be aware of their situation.
Ideally, Conroy would have already worked out extensions for these players or traded them like he was able to do with Tyler Toffoli. Perhaps he has a plan in place, but as of now, it feels like this wait-and-see approach could turn into a disaster.
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