Summer may be slipping away, but Brennan Othmann’s contract situation is still sitting there on the Flames’ docket.
The restricted free agent forward remains unsigned as August winds down and training camp gets closer, which makes for a mildly unusual bit of unfinished business in Calgary. Most of the team’s offseason housekeeping has already been taken care of, but Othmann is still waiting for his next deal.
The broad outlines are easy enough to see. Othmann is a 23-year-old left shot who can play either wing, a 2021 first-round pick who couldn’t lock down a regular role with the New York Rangers during his entry-level contract before being traded to the Flames ahead of the deadline.
Even so, he still got into 44 NHL games on that ELC, which says plenty about his ability to play at this level. The question now is what kind of player he becomes from here.
That’s the tricky part in these negotiations. A young player coming off an entry-level deal usually wants two things: a clear road to the NHL and a decent payday. Ideally, both show up in the same package.
The Flames have already shown their hand a little with William Strömgren, another 23-year-old forward from the same draft class, who signed a one-year, league-minimum deal worth $850,000 earlier this summer. That makes it a fair assumption that Othmann’s next NHL salary will land at the same cap hit.
The tougher piece is the AHL side of the equation. With so many NHL-caliber forwards in the organization, it’s easy to imagine a big chunk of Othmann’s 2026-27 season being spent with the Wranglers, maybe even all of it. That means minor-league pay matters.
Per PuckPedia, Strömgren’s contract includes a $110,000 AHL salary and $170,000 in guaranteed compensation. Othmann’s case is a little different, though, because he played far more NHL games on his ELC - 44 compared with Strömgren’s 3 - and also produced better per game in the AHL, where he posted 0.69 points per game to Strömgren’s 0.60. That gives Othmann a real argument for better AHL money.
At the same time, the Flames have a history of paying up on two-way deals for more established minor-league players, not necessarily for guys still trying to define their lane. And if Calgary has been careful about avoiding early rebuild mistakes, that would fit here too. Hand out too much too early, and the cap space starts disappearing fast.
So yes, it’s a little odd that Othmann hasn’t signed yet. But it’s not some out-of-nowhere mystery.
The Flames have had other RFAs drag into September before - Jakob Pelletier, Cole Schwindt and Ilya Solovyov in 2024, then Connor Zary in 2025 - and those deals eventually got done. Training camp has a way of pushing things across the finish line.
We’ll see whether that happens again.
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For Calgary, the timing makes the gamble worth watching. The forward group still has uncertainty around the edges, and Nylander will get a chance to show he can fit into that mix as the organization sorts through its options. He has not played an NHL game since 2024, so this is less about reputation than about whether he can force his way back into the conversation. [Read more 🡒]