Calgary Flames: Grading the Off-Season Moves Up Until Now
By Ramina Shlah
Michael Stone Re-Signing: C
After the Travis Hamonic trade, I was quite adamant on not re-signing Michael Stone. He was going to be a little pricey and the top-four was already set. The Calgary Flames didn’t need another Dennis Wideman mishap.
But they signed him. They agreed on a three-year contract with an average salary of $3.5 million. A little pricey for a bottom-two defenceman which is why this is a lower grade. However, why it isn’t lower is because now the Flames are stacked in their blue-line. They have arguably one of the best blue-lines in the entire league. And the Flames after this signing still had a decent amount of cap space left to sign their RFAs and maybe sign one more UFA. And for that, this will be getting an average grade of a C.
Curtis Lazar Re-Signing: B
Re-signing Curtis Lazar was inevitable. The Calgary Flames traded for the youngster on a trade-deadline day trade, so they were of course going to protect him in the expansion draft (which they did). So re-signing him was probably going to happen (and again, it did).
The Flames managed to grab him at a great price as well, $950,000 AAV for two years. Again, this would normally be higher of a grade, but the reason it isn’t is that he hasn’t quite proved himself. While he does have a lot of potential and he’s still young so he’s still somewhat malleable, he has still under-performed compared to expectations.
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This past season with the Ottawa Senators, he had just one assist in 33 games before being traded. When he was with the Flames, he had three points in four regular season games. A big improvement, of course, but you still have to be worried.
The Flames aren’t exactly losing that much signing him, so it’s a good signing. But we’ll just have to wait and see how he performs this upcoming season.