Jonathan Huberdeau is back in the crosshairs, and this time the pile-on comes with a twist: his deal is being talked about as “cheap” in a league where the market has gone completely off the rails.
That’s the reality after Cale Makar’s contract came in at $20.4 million per season. Fans have been comparing numbers and, in some corners, looking at salaries they once called outrageous and treating them like bargains. Huberdeau’s name keeps coming up anyway, and not in a flattering way.
A recent tweet put it this way:
“Calgary’s GM was playing chess while the rest of us were playing checkers. Everyone laughed at Jonathan Huberdeau making $10.5M a year… now the NHL contract market has gone so crazy that it’s starting to look like a bargain.
Absolute genius. Never doubted it for a second.”
That’s the strange spot Huberdeau is in. The league’s salary ceiling has warped perceptions so much that some deals once seen as huge now look manageable. But for the Flames, Huberdeau’s contract still draws criticism because the production hasn’t matched the price tag.
Last season, he played 50 games and finished with 10 goals and 25 points. At that rate, Calgary was paying $420K per point. He did bounce back in 2024-25 with 28 goals and 62 points, but that still falls short of what the Flames need from a player making more than $10 million a year.
The bigger issue is flexibility. The contract is viewed as virtually untradeable, even as teams have managed to move other difficult deals.
The Edmonton Oilers, for example, sent out the entire Darnell Nurse contract and got two pieces back. Nurse was once considered one of the league’s worst contracts, but Edmonton got out of it.
The question hanging over Calgary is the same one that keeps following Huberdeau: can the Flames do something similar, or are they stuck with a deal most people still believe they can’t move?
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The timing matters, too, because teams around the league are constantly looking for flexibility while balancing their own expensive core pieces. Calgary can study how other clubs navigate hefty contracts and cap pressure, but Huberdeau remains a difficult case for a team trying to build around a limited number of premium assets. Even as the broader market keeps shifting, the Flames still have to find a path through the same unresolved question at the center of their cap outlook. [Read more 🡒]
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Flames Rebuild Debate Just Got More Frustrating For Calgary Fans
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A recent poll from The Athletic only added to the sense that the road back is long, with Flames fans and neutral observers alike ranking Calgary among the NHL teams least likely to lift a Stanley Cup in the next decade. The timing stings even more because the conversation around this postseason has again turned to the leagues playoff format, a reminder that in the NHL, getting in is one thing and being built to matter once the games begin is something else entirely. [Read more 🡒]