The Disrespect is getting TOO Loud... (And it's wrong.)

The disrespect being put on the Calgary Flames heading into the 2026-27 NHL season is starting to get a little too loud, and it's honestly just wrong. Sure, the Flames aren't coming into the year as cup contenders, but recent rankings for the team and players is eye-opening for the wrong reasons. We're going to get into all that more in this video, but first I want to welcome you to Flames Digest. I'm Mark Griffith. If you're new around here and you love the Flames, make sure to subscribe so you can stay up to date on all the latest news, updates, reports, and rumors revolving around your Calgary Flames. We would love to welcome you to the Flames Digest family, and YouTube's telling me that still only around 35% of the people watching are subscribed, so if you could do me that favor, hit that subscribe button. It really, sincerely does mean so much, really helps out the channel a lot, plus you get to join the best community of Flames fans on the internet. But let's get into how we're kind of just dead last in essentially all the rankings I've seen so far, and look, it's still the dog days of the offseason, but I'm not just talking about standings projections, which I will get into some of those, but I'm going to start with more of the players, and I guess the player groups. So Hockey Alchemy here has recently come out with their top blue lines heading into next season and their top forward groups, and look, I mean, no one expected the Flames to come very high in either of these categories, but it's a little bit, I guess, startling to see where we are in both. So I'll just start with this. So it starts with the top, so the top blue line. So we're talking defense, and I'd say our defense group, our D-Corps, is better than our forward group, but either way, they have, you know, obviously an S-Tier, A, B, C, D, so S-Tier. You obviously got, you know, good teams up there. You have the Avalanche, the Sen somehow up there, the Wild, the Hurricanes, of course, and the Oilers are up there. I guess you get rid of Darnell Nurse, and all of a sudden you're an S-Tier D-Corps, but some of you might have already zoomed in and looked to see where the Flames are on this, but my goodness, here it is zoomed in for you. The Flames, dead last, according to Hockey Alchemy here, like the chapter of this video, dead last. Do we really have the worst D-Corps in the entire league? Worse than Vancouver? And obviously you see teams down there you expect to see, like Seattle, Chicago, Vancouver, who I just said, and obviously ourselves, but really, we are last in the league, which is pretty crazy to see. We have some really, really good defensemen, almost too many is becoming the problem. So the fact that we are ranked, at least according to Hockey Alchemy here, last, as you can see, the 32 ranked, or sorry, the, oh my goodness, I need to learn how to speak. The 32 teams are ranked by their active top six D on the live depth chart, and their projected GRA and their tip value equals the sum top six GAR. I said GRA the first time. I really need to get my eyes checked. Please, Specsaver, sponsor this. I could use some glasses, but either way. What does that equate to? Who cares what the formula is? The Flames are last. I do not agree. I think the disrespect is getting a little bit too high there. If we move on to the forwards now, that's not what I meant to hit. That's what I meant to hit. So Hockey Alchemy, once again, the top forward groups in the NHL heading into next season. So they obviously have some top teams in there. You have the Hurricanes, who just won the Cup, of course. The Avalanche, who are always there. The Panthers, the Devils, the Lightning. It all makes sense to have those kind of teams in there in terms of the forward groups. Fair enough. Where do the Flames rank? Once again, they are dead last. This one, I would say, is a little bit more valid. I would still say the disrespect is quite loud. For this one, though, I'll let it go. Yes, our forward group isn't amazing. We did just trade away Blake Coleman as well. It kind of makes sense. We're down there again with Vancouver, the Rangers, Chicago. It's crazy that Vancouver ranked higher in both of these, according to Hockey Alchemy, once again. I don't think this is just, obviously, purely opinion-based for anyone. There are formulas involved. Do I know what they mean? Do I know what GAR is? Not really. I called it GRA just because I love GTA. I can't wait for GTA 6 during the hockey season. But either way, the Flames, dead last in forwards, dead last in defensemen as well. And I find that to be quite crazy, to be quite honest with you. Moving on, kind of goes with what we were just talking about. But I saw this from, I believe it was the account Slapshot on Instagram. So, tiering every team's 2026-27 number one winger. Again, there's your good old S tier that has the top of the top in the league, A, B, C, D. And this one has an F. And our top winger is in that F category in Matt Coronado. Now, this one, obviously, way more opinion-based. Is Coronado even our top winger? Some would say it's Gritton. Some would say it would be, you know, still like Huberto or someone like that. Matt Coronado, very valid shout here. But in comparison to the rest of the league, put in the F tier once again. Now, I'm assuming this goes, you know, literally 1 to 32 if you want to do it. So, at least he's ahead of Vancouver and Seattle there with McCann and Besser. But still, that's as bottom as it gets in terms of the tier. So, the massive disrespect once again. But you compare it to the other guys, I guess there's some validity. Maybe I'm too much of a homer and buys and think that Coronado's unreal. So is Gritton and maybe some other guys. But once again, dead last in terms of these rankings that we're seeing all over the place. Another one here is right back to the Ford group. Got to stay on theme here. So, NHL Forum said, what are your thoughts on the Flames roster? And just put out, I guess, a projected roster of what it could be. Sportsaholic says, Calgary is terrible up the middle. Probably the worst in the NHL. And it's true. If we were doing, you know, your center cores heading into the year, it is pretty bad. Morgan Frost, kind of your only guy that you're like, yeah, he's a pretty good player. Backlund, love him to death. Obviously, not exactly a 1C anymore. Crazy to see him there. Strome looked very good at times for the Flames this season. But again, he's not exactly one of the top centers in the league. And then they have Pospisil slated as the fourth guy there, which is crazy. But no matter who you put in there. Zeri, whoever else, it is true. There are some bright spots in the prospect pipeline for sure, especially Reshny. But as of right now, it's a little bit bleak. And I don't think anyone's going to disagree with that. And once again, if they got ranked on the centers, they would probably come dead last once again. This one I kind of accidentally showed already. But Nick Spencer said, yeah, why not? Get mad at my tier list. And it's once again, heading into next season, you got cup contenders. You got very good teams, playoff teams, just outside where we're normally. The lottery teams and then the tank. And where are we again? The bottom tier once again. And look, if there was every year at a tank, it probably is this one with how many good centers there are, which is exactly what we just need, which we just spoke about. But obviously there's Landon DuPont as well. And yeah, it probably would be wise to be another year at a tank. So not surprising to see us in another tier list ranked in the bottom four teams in the entire league. Another one, Besser for Heart. So coming from a Vancouver account saying my Stanley Cup champion tier list for 2026-27. This is more of standings, but it's just 1-8, 9-16, 17-24, 25-32. But once again, the Flames not only are in the bottom tier here, they are the very last team. And that's coming from a Canucks fan. And Canucks fans are very hard on their team right now, or at least the intelligent ones are. But they are still above the Flames here. If you go roster for roster, I still take the Flames over the Canucks. The Canucks have shipped a lot of people out. And again, hey, maybe that's me being biased. Maybe that's me not being an intelligent Flames fan, if you want to say it that way. But once again, very bottom of these rankings. And these are obviously more standings rankings than players. But the disrespect is quite loud, and it's coming from everywhere. It's coming from formulas. It's coming from opinions of our rivals. It's coming from all over the place, to be quite honest. But once again, another one to be dead last. But what does it all equate to in my eyes? Maybe it's not a bad thing, like I was saying. We've seen recently that this came out a few weeks ago, and we did cover it. But Corey Pronman from The Athletic did his first mock draft for the 2027 NHL Draft. Landon DuPont goes number one. And where did we end up in those rankings as well? With the number one pick, which is hilarious. Because the way these are written is kind of NFL style. If you're bottom of the league, you get first pick. Whereas we all know there's actually a lottery. So once again, we're projected to get first pick, 32nd place in the league. And obviously, get slaved to get Landon DuPont, which would make everything worth it. As would getting one of those top, top centers. I believe it's Pribilov is one of them. There's also Alexis Joseph. There's some really good ones at this point that look sensational heading into next season. So maybe the disrespect is loud. Maybe it's not unwarranted. I think the Flames will be a bit of an underrated team heading into next season. And again, you can call me a homer for saying that. But if it does equate to getting a top pick, maybe it'll absolutely all be worth it once again. I think Team Tank is very much going to be the majority of the fan base heading into the season. We'll see how they play. If they, you know, start with 10 wins in their first 15 games, then everyone's going to be saying, oh my gosh, we're going to win the cup. But maybe we're primed for one of those kind of 2014, 15 or 2018, 19 Flames teams that really unexpectedly does really well in the regular season. But I don't think that will be the case. But who knows? Either way, it could all be worth it. The disrespect is loud now. Maybe some of it's valid. But again, we're going to love and support our team no matter what. Now let's get into the comment of the day to wrap up this video, as we love to do here on the channel. Comes from yesterday's video, of course, which went over some frost to Toronto rumors. But Flames underscore fan one here says, I think Conroy should try and lock Frost up right now for 6-7 mil, because I have a feeling he's going to be a huge breakout, or he's going to have, sorry, a huge breakout year, along with Scorinato and Gritty by his side and ask for the 8 mil range. And it's true. Why not lock him up? He could be part of the future for this team, especially a team that's so thin at center. We're not expecting him to be the 1C of the future, but definitely 2 or 3C, middle 6 in there. So why not? I really do like Frost. I don't think we'll have a huge trade rumor saga with him. Like we have some of the others that were inevitably going to be traded. I don't know if that's going to be the case with Frost, but I've already seen a lot of people saying that he's the number one center heading into next year's free agency, which means he's the number one center heading into the trade deadline. I guess only time will tell. Thank you so much for watching this video. Please subscribe if you like what you saw here today and have a wonderful rest of your day.