The Calgary Flames spent Saturday morning sharpening the details on day three of training camp, with an up-tempo session that leaned hard into pace, puck movement and quick transitions as they get ready to open the preseason Sunday against the Seattle Kraken.
The club is still working in two groups, and the lines stayed organized around that split for the day’s practice. Team Red featured Matvei Gridin with Morgan Frost and Matt Coronato, while Sam Honzek skated with Mikael Backlund and Joel Farabee.
Connor Zary centered Ryan Strome and Yegor Sharangovich, and the fourth line had Maxim Tsyplakov, Martin Pospisil and Adam Klapka. Chase Harrington and Alex Nylander were listed as extras.
On the blue line for Team Red, Kevin Bahl paired with Simon Nemec, Yan Kuznetsov was with Zach Whitecloud, Jake Middleton skated alongside Zayne Parekh, and Joel Hanley was with Brayden Pachal. Dustin Wolf and Devin Cooley handled the net.
The power play groups on Red were also laid out clearly: Parekh, Gridin, Coronato, Farabee and Frost made up the first unit, while Nemec, Sharangovich, Tsyplakov, Strome and Zary formed the second. As QR Calgary’s Pat Steinberg noted, the only obvious change from the first two days was a switch in which power play unit Parekh and Nemec were working with.
Team Black had a different look up front. Rory Kerins skated with Tyson Gross and William Stromgren, Dryden Hunt centered Ben Jones and Aydar Suniev, and Brennan Othmann worked with Sam Morton and Andrew Basha.
Jonathan Castagna, Will Dineen and Luke Philp made up another line, while Alex Gallant, Carter Wilkie and Ryder Boulton rounded out the forwards. Abram Wiebe and Hunter Brzustewicz were together on defense, with Andreas Englund and Mike Benning as another pair, plus Axel Hurtig with Jake Livingstone and Kyle Walker with Kent Anderson.
Arsenii Sergeev, Kirill Zarubin and Owen Say were in goal.
Semyon Konopsky was not in the main session, but he skated with the goalie group separately. The Flames are continuing to rotate Team Black’s goaltenders in practice, the same way they did during prospects camp.
Black’s power play units were also set: Brzustewicz, Suniev, Stromgren, Kerins and Hunt on the first group, with Benning, Jones, Othmann, Basha and Gross on the second.
The practice itself was built around speed. Both groups spent a lot of time on drills that stressed fast puck movement, quick changes through the neutral zone and getting every player in a line involved in the play. There were odd-man rush sequences mixed in, along with drills that shifted into full-unit rush work as a third skater joined the play and the attack turned back toward the other net.
The power play work followed the same script. The emphasis was on moving the puck quickly, then getting bodies and sticks to the front of the net for deflections and screens.
The message from the morning was plain enough: the Flames and Wranglers are pushing to play faster, both with their feet and with the puck, as they try to climb from last season’s finish and give their young players a better chance to take a step forward.
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For the Senators, the early read on this season may hinge on which version of Ullmark they get on a night-to-night basis. There is reason for optimism in the way he is approaching camp, but there is still plenty of curiosity about how quickly the new support system around him translates into steadier play when the games start to matter. [Read more 🡒]