Flames' Elias Lindholm looking for "Horvat-like" money on new deal: report
If the Calgary Flames want to keep Elias Lindholm around, they will have to pay him the big bucks.
The 28-year-old doesn’t seem to have ruled out signing an extension with the Flames, despite seeming unwilling to commit to the organization months ago. That said, Sportsnet’s Elliotte Friedman believes if general manager Craig Conroy wants to keep him around, it will come with a hefty price tag.
“I think Lindholm and the Flames are talking,” Friedman said in the latest episode of the 32 Thoughts podcast. “I believe that the Flames know that if they want to keep Lindholm, it’s going to be [Bo] Horvat-like money, in that area, 8x$8.5.
“I think there’ve been conversations not only about the contract, but the direction of the team and which way the Flames are going. I think Lindholm has indicated that if he commits, he wants to know that the team is still going to try to compete, that it won’t be a rebuild.”
Lindholm is currently on a bargain contract that has carried a cap hit of just $4.85 million over the past five seasons. He has just one more year on his deal before hitting free agency and would have interest from plenty of teams in the NHL should he get to that point.
Despite losing both Matthew Tkachuk and Johnny Gaudreau as his linemates last season, Lindholm was still quite productive in 2022-23 with 22 goals and 64 points in 80 games.
Since joining the Flames in an offseason trade with the Carolina Hurricanes in 2018, he has scored 139 goals and 325 points in 369 games. On top of his offensive production, he has been fantastic on his own end as well, proven by his second-place finish in Selke Trophy voting last season.
The scary thing that would come with paying Lindholm the same $68.5 million deal Horvat got from the New York Islanders is that he would be nearing 30 by the time it got underway. The Flames already have two long-term contracts committed to players in their thirties, Jonathan Huberdeau and Nazem Kadri, and would be taking a massive risk doing the same with Lindholm.
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