Update: With three more games cancelled, the Flames won’t be returning to play until December 27th against the Oilers. With Ryan Nugent-Hopkins put into protocol today, an outbreak on the Oilers shouldn’t be ruled out just yet either.
Mikael Backlund entered COVID protocol today — bringing the number of available players on the Flames down to four. Matthew Tkachuk, Blake Coleman, Michael Stone and Daniel Vladar. Some of the cases have been confirmed to be the Omicron variant. Thoughts out to those affected. Hopefully everyone is asymptomatic and back on the ice as soon as possible.
One other member of support staff entered protocol as well.
Potential Acquisition: Mark Giordano — Cap hit: six million until the end of the season
This is a fun one albeit a bit ridiculous.
Most would agree that Mark’s time in Calgary should be in the rear view mirror and the last offseason was the time to turn the page for this team. Moving on made sense for the team and their record drastically improved this season with all four top 4 defensemen now in their prime years.
All of that said, there has to be just a tiny part of any Flames fan’s heart that would rejoice in bringing Mark back for one more run at the Cup. Especially if the wins kept coming with him in the lineup.
Conversely, the Flames still haven’t chosen a captain. Mark could take on that role and hit the ground running when he got here. Usually it takes a couple months for Gio to start playing to the best of his abilities. This time he would theoretically be closer to that point.
Would he be on the first pairing? No.
The second pairing? He shouldn’t be.
Could he take Zadorov’s place on the third pairing though? Yes, he could.
Just consider that for a moment. Darryl Sutter has Nikita Zadorov and Erik Gudbranson playing solid minutes and they haven’t been a complete train wreck statistically. While Gio has slowed down considerably, he could still take on one of their roles and be able to avoid being a liability on the ice.
This season Mark’s season isn’t going well in Seattle. You could look at his three goals or five assists or even his -9 rating over 23 games and connect the dots. Just take a look at his game log since November. You can see that he’s not having much fun on the ice.
What could it cost? The price at the expansion draft for the Flames to keep Giordano was states as “too high… by GM Brad Treliving. One can assume it was likely a first round pick. Even a second would be too much. The Flames don’t even have a third round pick up trade this year.
Assuming a bidding war doesn’t start for the venerable defender, could the Flames justify a fourth round pick this year for him? Would a third next year be enough? Given Mark’s situation would Seattle GM Ron Francis trade Giordano as a favour to the player?
Then there’s cap space. Seattle has the ability to retain 50% and make this trade work at the deadline, but there’s really not much incentive to do so other than honouring the wishes of a devout community builder and first leader of their freshly minted ice hockey team.
Obviously, this idea is a pipe dream, but a fun one to consider.
Every cup run could use a grizzled vet for motivational purposes. 89 had Lanny, 04 had Lowry — 21 it could be Gio. Flames fans would lose their minds if it happened, but most agree that it shouldn’t. Also, Brad Richardson, Trevor Lewis and Milan Lucic are more than enough veteran leadership.
It’s an acquisition that is easier to justify with the heart as opposed to the head. There are a million reasons not to do it, but it’s fun to think about what life would be like if it happened.
Trevor Neufeld