Ryan Huska has bought himself some breathing room, but the Flames’ recent surge hasn’t erased the questions hanging over his bench.
Calgary opened the season looking lost. After five games, the Flames sat dead last in the standings, with little going right offensively, defensively, or in goal. Since then, though, they’ve ripped off a 7-3-0 stretch and climbed to 7-8-0, suddenly looking like one of the league’s hottest teams.
That turnaround has changed the mood, but it hasn’t cleaned up every issue around Huska’s handling of the roster. The Flames were never expected to contend for a Stanley Cup or even make the playoffs, and development was always supposed to be the point for this young group. Still, the early weeks exposed some lineup choices that raised eyebrows.
Morgan Frost began the season as Calgary’s number-one centre, but he has since slid to the third line. With the offense sputtering badly, changes were inevitable.
One of the biggest came when the Flames put Connor Zary on waivers, a move that caught plenty of people off guard. Zary and the club had not seemed fully aligned for a while, and his lack of year-over-year improvement helped push him onto the waiver wire along with defenceman Brayden Pachal.
To fill those spots, Calgary recalled Jonathan Castanga and Aydar Suniev from the AHL after both got off to strong starts with the Calgary Wranglers. But the immediate usage didn’t exactly scream offensive push.
Huska slotted both on the fourth line, with Castanga logging 9:09 and Suniev 11:41. Both are now regulars in the lineup.
The Zayne Parekh situation has also fed the conversation about how Huska is managing the young players. Parekh is the kind of puck-moving defenceman modern teams are built around, the sort who can drive the offensive zone with speed and fluidity.
Early on, Huska paired him with Jake Middleton, a depth defender brought in for reliability. Middleton struggled, and Parekh felt the effects.
Huska stuck with it for a while, but once the pairing was broken up, both players looked better.
That’s the larger issue: the game keeps changing, and the coaches who stay ahead of it are the ones who adjust fastest. Huska, at least in these early weeks, has not always done that.
Even so, the Flames’ recent run hasn’t happened in a vacuum. During the ugly opening stretch, Calgary allowed 27 goals while scoring only seven.
Not all of that can be pinned on the goaltenders, but when a team is leaking chances, a timely save can change everything. Calgary wasn’t getting many of those early.
Then Devin Cooley stepped in and, in his own words, figured out that if he just plays out of his conscious self, as he puts it, he can play at an elite level. He started against the Carolina Hurricanes and then played very well over the next three games before the first Battle of Alberta of the season. That momentum ended when he was injured on a collision with Colton Dach, and the pressure shifted back to Dustin Wolf.
Wolf has not looked like the goalie from his excellent rookie season two years ago, but he has had chances to steady things since Cooley went down. He was sharp in his first start after the injury against the Seattle Kraken, then followed a difficult outing against the Colorado Avalanche with a bounce-back performance against the San Jose Sharks. It would be too simple to credit the entire turnaround to goaltending, but it has mattered, and Wolf will have to keep it going.
Special teams have also helped keep Huska out of the crosshairs for now. The power play is sitting top five in the league at 30.6%, which has covered for some of the problems at five-on-five.
At even strength, the numbers are much less flattering: Calgary ranks 28th in goals for per 60 at 1.86. That split says plenty.
The special teams have been excellent, but they only tell part of the story, and the Flames still have real issues at even strength.
So yes, Calgary has gone from disaster to one of the league’s better teams over this stretch. But Huska’s seat is still warm. The real question is whether this run lasts, and whether he can keep adjusting as the roster and the season keep shifting around him.
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