The Calgary Flames are heading into 2026-27 with a handful of players carrying a very specific kind of weight. For some, it’s about earning a bigger role. For others, it’s about protecting value, justifying a contract, or proving they still belong in the team’s long-term plans.
Connor Zary is one of the clearest cases. He once flashed top-six potential, but 2025-26 was a step in the wrong direction.
He finished with 12 goals and 13 assists for 25 points in 74 games, while his average ice time slid to 14:22 per night. Ryan Huska kept moving him between centre and wing, and Zary’s own end-of-season comments suggested the coaching staff wasn’t fully aligned with him.
The path forward is pretty simple: he needs a stable role. On top of that, the Flames may not view him as a permanent piece, either.
Pat Steinberg reported that Calgary was quietly shopping Zary this offseason, though interest around the league was limited. That leaves Zary with plenty to prove in 2026-27 if he wants to rebuild his standing.
Morgan Frost is in a different kind of pressure cooker. July 2027 will mark his first trip to unrestricted free agency, which makes this season the biggest contract year of his career.
Frost led the Flames with 22 goals in 2025-26 and has totaled 55 points in 114 games since arriving from Philadelphia in early 2025. That production is useful, but it still doesn’t quite match the level of offensive impact teams want from a top-six centre.
If he wants a long-term deal with real money attached, he has to show more than steady secondary scoring. Calgary’s younger centres are coming, and Frost needs to make a strong case that he can be either a legitimate 2C or a high-end 3C who drives play.
Then there’s Simon Nemec, who arrives with the kind of expectations that come with a major trade price. Craig Conroy paid a steep package to get him, and that means the pressure starts immediately.
Nemec is expected to handle top-four minutes and bring structure to a game built around his offensive instincts. He’s coming off a solid 2025-26 season in New Jersey, where he scored 11 goals and played nearly 20 minutes a game.
Calgary wants that two-way package to show up right away, along with heavy usage on the power play.
Samuel Honzek also enters the season at a crossroads. The former first-round pick still hasn’t established himself as a full-time NHL player, and injuries have played a big part in that.
He started to show promise in 2025-26 before a season-ending injury in November wiped out the rest of his year. Now fully cleared for training camp, Honzek has to stay on the ice and earn a permanent roster spot.
With the Flames’ prospect pool getting deeper, this is the year he has to prove he’s part of the future and not just another talented player with too many questions.
Jonathan Huberdeau faces the heaviest burden of all, and it’s a very different one. He’s tied to a $10.5M cap hit through 2030-31, so the contract itself never goes away.
After a 28-goal bounce in 2024-25 hinted at a return to form, a lingering hip issue wrecked his 2025-26 season. He finished with 10 goals and 15 assists for 25 points in 50 games before season-ending hip resurfacing surgery in March.
Huberdeau is now fully rehabbed and ready for training camp, but the pressure around him is obvious. Another rough year would put him back in the conversation as the worst contract in the NHL for a fourth straight season.
For Calgary, 2026-27 is shaping up as a season of individual judgment. Frost and Huberdeau have to prove their value. Zary, Nemec, and Honzek have to prove they belong in the organization’s future.
In Other News...
Morgan Frost Faces Huge Chance In Calgarys New Top Center Role
Morgan Frost is headed into a very different kind of season in Calgary, one that could define how the Flames are built down the middle after Nazem Kadris departure. The expectation is that Frost will slide into the top-center job and pick up the kind of ice time and responsibility that comes with it, a major shift for a player whose last three seasons have shown enough production to suggest there is more to unlock if the role expands.
The appeal for Calgary is obvious: a healthy Frost playing all 82 games would get a full runway to show whether his game can translate when the workload rises and the matchups get tougher. The projection built around his recent track record points to a real opportunity rather than a finished answer, which is exactly why this season feels so important for the Flames as they try to figure out what their center group looks like next. [Read more 🡒]
Flames Nearly Pulled Off Star Trades That Could Still Haunt Fans
A few of the biggest what-ifs in Flames history keep circling back because the franchise has spent years coming close to headline-grabbing moves without ever fully crossing the line. The latest reminder comes from the old trade chatter around Jack Eichel, when Calgary was right in the mix during the 2021 sweepstakes and the clubs willingness to chase a true No. 1 center fit a long-running pattern of aggressive, high-stakes discussions that also included near-deals involving Matthew Tkachuk, Jarome Iginla and Miikka Kiprusoff.
What makes those rumors linger is how much they could have altered the arc of the team, especially with different eras of the roster hanging in the balance. Calgary fans have lived through enough near misses to know that some of the most painful moments in hindsight are not the trades that happened, but the ones that were close enough to imagine in full detail and yet still slipped away before the finish line. [Read more 🡒]
Flames Could Face A Tough Expansion Choice Around Dustin Wolf
A fresh mock expansion draft from The Athletic has put a spotlight on one of the trickier roster questions facing Calgary as the club continues to build around Dustin Wolf. Based on projected 2026-27 rosters, the exercise suggests the Flames would be in position to protect Wolf and the rest of their rebuilding core, but the goalie picture would not come out perfectly clean if a new team were to enter the league.
The wrinkle is the kind of depth issue contenders and rebuilders alike hope to avoid: a valuable backup or organizational insurance piece could become the odd man out in a theoretical expansion scenario. There is no official NHL expansion draft on the calendar, but the discussion is still useful for Calgary because it shows how quickly goalie depth, contract timing and long-term planning can collide when a team has one clear starter and a young core worth shielding. [Read more 🡒]