Calgary Flames: Five New Years resolutions for 2019
By Ramina Shlah
3. Get rid of Michael Stone’s contract
Oh boy, what to do with Michael Stone. When the Calgary Flames first re-signed Stone, I was completely against it even before the signing. But then it happened and it was even worse. Three years at $3.5 million AAV.
This season, Stone has barely played. Given, he has been injured with a blood clot in his arm, which is a serious injury don’t get me wrong, but even before that, he was a healthy scratch with Juuso Valimaki and Rasmus Andersson filling that third pairing.
After this season, Stone still has one season left on his contract which also includes a modified NTC. The Flames should try and trade Stone to one of the teams that Stone has provided. Given, it may be difficult and the Flames may need to retain some of his salary, but for they should do it if given the opportunity. A possibility could be that the Flames have already tried trading him, especially when he was sitting in the press box as a healthy scratch, but no teams were taking a chance on him.
With only one year left, if the Flames can’t trade Stone, they should buy him out. With only one year left, they’ll only have to pay his contract for two more seasons at half the price. Meaning, since they have to sign Tkachuk, they’ll have money to potentially sign a goaltender as well.
No matter what, this team can’t justify paying Stone $3.5 million next year just to sit in the press box yet again. It’s also not entirely fair to Stone, which I know, isn’t that great of a player. But he’s been signed and that’s the fault of Brad Treliving, who should have known better than to sign a player like Stone to that amount, especially with the defence prospects they had waiting for their shot in the NHL.