The Calgary Flames are headed into 2026-27 with pressure coming from every direction. The goals have to come.
The standings have to improve. And with the final season at the Scotiabank Saddledome on deck, the organization is staring down a year that will be measured by more than just wins and losses.
That backdrop is why so much of the conversation around this roster is going to center on a handful of players who need to either produce, rebound or justify their place in the team’s future. Here are the five Flames players facing the most pressure.
Jonathan Huberdeau sits at the top of the list because the expectations around him never really disappear. He’ll make $10.5 million this season, and his best year in a Flames uniform came in 2024-25, when he put up 62 points. Calgary isn’t in a position to move him easily, especially not without eating a meaningful chunk of his contract, so the hope is simple: after shutting himself down for surgery, a healthy Huberdeau can help push the rebuild forward.
Matt Coronato is right behind him, and the standard is clear. He scored a career-high 24 goals in 2024-25, then slipped to 18 last year, which was still fourth-best on the club.
But for a team that struggles to score, Coronato is supposed to be one of the core pieces and the Flames’ top winger. Anything under 20 goals would land as a disappointment, even if there’s an argument that the support around him isn’t exactly ideal.
As a natural finisher, though, the expectation is that he finds the net anyway.
Connor Zary’s pressure comes from a different place: unfinished business. Not long ago, he looked like a possible answer at top center, the kind of player Calgary has been searching for.
Then a knee injury in early 2025 changed the picture, and he hasn’t looked the same since. A late first-round pick, Zary still hasn’t hit 15 goals or topped 35 points in any season.
He’s entering the second year of the three-year deal he signed in 2025, but if he can’t finally break through and become a real impact player, his name could start coming up in trade talk sooner rather than later.
Dustin Wolf is on the list for one reason: the city is putting a massive amount of faith in him. The hope is that he can become the kind of goaltender who carries a team, even drawing a comparison to Dominic Hasek, who led the Buffalo Sabres to the Stanley Cup Final in 1998.
Wolf went through his first losing season in professional hockey in 2024-25, though that was tied to a Flames team that couldn’t score enough to back him up. As the centerpiece of the rebuild, Calgary can only go as far as he takes them.
Then there’s Simon Nemec, one of the newer faces in Calgary after arriving in a trade with the New Jersey Devils. At 22, the former second overall pick already has a career-high of 11 goals and 26 points, but he wasn’t the top man on the Devils’ blue line.
Now he’s expected to be one of the Flames’ top defenders for the next half-decade on a $36.2 million contract. The pressure on Nemec is less about proving he belongs in the league and more about making sure his Calgary debut starts the right way, so fans aren’t left wondering why he was brought in at all.
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