After Draft Lottery loss, the Flames must continue their gradual, steady rebuild

Credit: Sergei Belski-Imagn Images

When the NHL conducted its annual Draft Lottery on Tuesday, luck wasn’t on the Calgary Flames‘ side.

It never has been.

The Flames remain one of just three active NHL clubs never to make a single top-three draft selection, and the other two — the Vegas Golden Knights and Utah Mammoth — both have less than a decade of history to draw from.

Given their non-existent history of lottery fortune, the Flames’ 9.5 percent odds of moving up from the No. 4 pick to No. 1 felt more like zero percent. Indeed, the Flames came just one ball shy of winning the Gavin McKenna sweepstakes, instead falling two spots in the order to No. 6 overall.

No. 6 is a familiar spot for the Flames. They’ve picked there five times before, most recently in 2013 and 2016, when they selected Sean Monahan and Matthew Tkachuk, respectively. Flames general manager Craig Conroy was part of the team’s front office when they made both of those picks. So he understands full well the importance of getting this next pick right.

Speaking to the media in Calgary on Tuesday, Conroy indicated that the Flames have “six guys that we really like.” He hinted that the direction his team picks at the draft will largely depend on which of those players are taken before it’s their turn. In essence, their toughest choice will be made for them, but they’ll be guaranteed to get someone from their top group.

“You always want to go higher and make a pick, but we do know that there’s really good players in that area,” Conroy told Flames TV on Tuesday. “It’ll just be a matter of who gets picked ahead of us and what we’ll be able to get at No. 6.”

The Flames continued their protracted sell-off during the 2025-26 regular season, trading long-tenured veteran stars Rasmus Andersson, MacKenzie Weegar, and Nazem Kadri to playoff teams in exchange for a veritable haul of draft picks and future assets.

Among the pieces coming Calgary’s way for those three players: two first-round picks, five second-round picks, and a handful of prospects (including Abram Wiebe, who played NHL games for the Flames this spring). The Flames also received Olli Maatta and Zach Whitecloud, both of whom appeared to be little more than cap dumps at first blush before playing some of the best hockey of their respective careers down the stretch.

The Flames didn’t win the top prize at the lottery, but they’re still sitting on quite the stockpile. They’ll have two firsts (Vegas’s and their own), four seconds, and two thirds next month in Buffalo. Conroy has repeatedly declared himself open-minded about trading up from any of those picks, and he’ll certainly have the ammunition to do so.

What he must avoid, however, are the always-tempting deals available to rebuilding teams with the promises of “speeding up” the slow, painful asset accumulation process by swapping some of those picks and prospects for more “established” and “NHL-ready” players. The Flames are already a team with more depth than they know what to do with — Matt Coronato, Connor Zary, and Yegor Sharangovich were all healthy scratches at various points last season — and the players that other teams will be all-too-keen to offer them are almost certain to just be more of what they already have.

This Flames team needs young stars, and those virtually always come from the draft. Why trade valuable capital for another team’s reclamation project — looking at you, Mason McTavish and Kent Johnson — when you can use the picks you have to take home-run swings on players whose probabilities of becoming stars haven’t yet diminished so dramatically?

Just check out Steven Ellis’s post-lottery mock draft here at Daily Faceoff — there will be tons of talent available wherever the Flames pick in the first round this year. If there’s any possibility that they can move up from No. 6, they should. But even where they currently sit, they should be able to add a legitimate blue-chipper, whether it’s Carson Carels, Viggo Bjorck, Chase Reid, or somebody else.

If and when the Flames do find the stars they need, they’ll be able to surround them with the prospects they’ve added to their pool over the past three seasons. By consensus, the Flames already have one of the strongest prospect pipelines in the NHL, and their existing nucleus of young talent includes Matvei Gridin, Cole Reschny, and Ethan Wyttenbach up front; Zayne Parekh, Hunter Brzustewicz, and Henry Mews on defense; and, of course, Dustin Wolf in goal.

The Flames need only take heed of the success the Anaheim Ducks are experiencing in their return to the playoffs this spring. The Ducks played it extremely slow and repeatedly picked near the top of the draft order during their own rebuilding process, which began shortly after they were swept by the San Jose Sharks in the first round of the 2018 playoffs. Anaheim never picked at No. 1, but they got Leo Carlsson at No. 2, Beckett Sennecke and McTavish at No. 3, and managed to pull off a miraculous deal for Cutter Gauthier (a No. 5 pick) to set the stage for their rapid ascent.

Before this year, the Ducks missed the playoffs in seven consecutive seasons. They didn’t hit on all their high picks, but they made shrewd moves and managed to find value in later rounds (see: Jackson LaCombe, Lukas Dostal). They might not have a Macklin Celebrini or a Connor Bedard, but they do have a deep, strong team with legitimate stars at every position. And it took them a while to build it.

The Flames haven’t made the playoffs since 2022, and it’ll be a few more years before they’re ready to start kicking back into gear. For now, they’ve still got prospects to develop, and veterans to sell: Whitecloud, Maatta, Blake Coleman, and Ryan Strome should all have legitimate value.

As long as Conroy and Co. keep making smart, calculated moves, it won’t be long before the Flames find themselves on the rise in the Pacific Division. With the added benefits of playing in Scotia Place, as well as the impending declines of the aging Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers, the door could be open for them to enter a new-age arms race with the likes of Anaheim and San Jose.

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POST SPONSORED BY bet365

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After Draft Lottery loss, the Flames must continue their gradual, steady rebuild

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