Adam Klapka is carving out exactly the kind of role the Calgary Flames need right now: big, physical, and impossible to ignore.
Through six games this season, the 6-foot-8, 235-pound winger has already posted two goals, two fights and 37 penalty minutes. Twenty-five of those penalty minutes came in the Oct. 3 game against the Vancouver Canucks. It’s a stat line that tells the story of a player making his mark in more ways than one, and one who looks on pace to blow past his career high of six goals.
For the Flames, that kind of edge matters. In a season where the team has stumbled badly and morale can take a hit, Klapka is giving them the kind of depth toughness that can steady a lineup. He has also brought some offense, which only makes the package more useful.
Klapka’s path to this point started in Prague, Czechia, where he came up through the HC Slavia Praha youth system before spending one season with another club and then heading to the United States to join the Tri-City Storm in the USHL. Even then, his size stood out. In the 2020-21 season with Tri-City, he produced 12 goals and 21 points in 49 games while racking up 73 penalty minutes.
That physical streak has followed him everywhere. After going undrafted, he went back to Czechia and played for Bílí Tygři Liberec, where he had six goals, 18 points and 72 penalty minutes in 44 games to start his professional career. On May 16, 2022, he signed his entry-level contract with the Flames and returned to North America after just one season.
His first stop in the organization was the Calgary Wranglers, and it took him some time to settle in. Once he did, the production came.
He finished that season with 13 goals, 25 points and 80 penalty minutes in 60 games, then scored 10 times over his final 25 games. He carried that touch into the playoffs, adding four goals in nine games.
The next year brought another jump. Klapka put up 21 goals and 46 points in 65 games with the Wranglers, and the added offense, combined with the bruising style he already brought, earned him his first NHL call-up.
He scored his first NHL goal late in the 2023-24 season and later signed a one-year extension. After splitting the following season between Calgary and the Wranglers and producing well at both stops, he landed a two-year extension.
Last season, he finished with six goals, 18 points and 112 penalty minutes.
This season, even in its early stages, Klapka has kept building. He has 21 hits, which ranks second on the team behind Martin Pospisil, and has shown he can give the Flames more than just muscle.
Against the Colorado Avalanche, he flashed a different side of his game, using a toe-drag to beat a defender before burying the puck for his first goal of the season. It was the kind of finish that got a strong reaction from Flames fans because that isn’t the part of his game most people expect first.
He backed that up against the Anaheim Ducks on Oct. 13, scoring the opening goal just past the eight-minute mark of the first period and dropping the gloves with Ducks enforcer Jeff Malott, whose brother Mike Malott is a UFC fighter. With the game tied 2-2 at the time, it was a timely answer in a stretch where Calgary had already watched some games slip away.
Klapka may never be asked to score 35 goals or log 15 minutes a night, but he knows how to make himself valuable. The goals are a bonus.
The fights are part of the job. Right now, the Flames are getting a depth forward who can bring a heavy game, chip in offense, and, when needed, take on the tough stuff without backing down.
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