Vegas Golden Knights Expansion Outlook: Calgary Flames
The Calgary Flames have no reason to worry about Vegas Golden Knights expansion draft.
The Vegas Golden Knights expansion draft isn’t til another 4 months from now. But we can pretty much already tell how the Calgary Flames protection list is going to go. The Flames are sitting second in the Wild Card giving them a playoff spot for the time being. In all honesty, I can see President of hockey operations Brian Burke and General Manager Brad Treliving trying to improve their team at the trade deadline.
It’s been an up and down season for the team from Alberta. Entering the season, goaltending was the Achilles heel of the team and still is despite upgrading. The Flames went out and got Brian Elliott and Chad Johnson hoping that would be enough to solve their woe’s in net. I’ll give them this, both goaltenders have had stretches of great play. Johnson has had the better of Elliott most of the season but the tandem has a whole has been far too inconsistent.
As it stands now, Calgary is most certainly going with the 7 Forwards, 3 Defensemen, and 1 goalie system. With both Johnson and Elliott set to hit free agency next year, the team can choose either one to at least make it past the expansion draft. My guess at this point is Johnson gets the protection slip and Elliott walks unprotected. Mark Giordano, Dougie Hamilton and TJ Brodie are the locks on the blue line. The forward position however gets a little tricky.
Of course young stud forward Mathew Tkachuk is automatically exempt due to being rookie. The obvious forwards the Flames will protect are Sean Monahan, Johnny Gaudreau, Michael Frolik and Sam Bennett. Additionally, forwards Troy Brouwer and Mikael Backlund will probably be protected as well. Which leaves us with one forward spot left.
The Flames have will have a difficult decision on their hands concerning their bottom six forwards. They could decide to protect Center Matt Stajan, but he hasn’t been the same player he once was back a few seasons ago. Calgary could also protect Left Wing Micheal Ferland but that’s questionable due to being a bit injury prone in the past. The player I think the Flames protect is 26-year old Alex Chiasson.
Chiasson is a restricted free agent at the end of the season and had a ton of upside coming into the NHL. However the 6’4 Right Wing doesn’t have the best knack of finding offensive consistency like he did for the Boston University Terriers back in his college days. Chiasson does bring a rare power forward trait and displays intense physicality which Calgary loves.
Which begs the question, who will Vegas Golden Knights General Manager George McPhee take off the Calgary Flames? The player that I think suits the needs for the Golden Knights is a hitting machine and his name is Micheal Ferland. The 24-year old is a grinder who is known to be an agitator and will also drop the gloves. The knock on Ferland is his ability to stay healthy and take unnecessary penalties. The fact of the matter is this. Every team needs one of these type of players. Teammates absolutely love him and what he already brings to the Flames. He even took over a playoff series by dishing out 40 hits in a six game series against Vancouver in 2015. Some player’s don’t even reach 40 hits for an entire 82 game season.
The Left Wing has stayed healthy for almost the entire season which is a good sign. The bad news is he only has eight goals, seven assists and 15 points in 54 games played. Ferland was never going to “wow” anyone from an offensive perspective but you’d like to see a little more out of the Manitoba native. Ferland is only averaging 10:43 of ice time for the 16-17 campaign. Perhaps he would need some more ice time to fully max out to his offensive capabilities. As a result, I feel Vegas will do wonders for a player like Ferland that could perhaps get three or four more minutes of ice time per game.
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Golden Knight Prediction: Micheal Ferland