ALL EYES are on this situation...

The Newborn 2026-27 NHL season already couldn't be off to a worse start for the Calgary Flames, but just to add salt to the wound, we already have some drama just two games into the season. What the heck is going on with the Connor Zeri Ryan-Huska situation? We're going to get to 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 you 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. Like I said, it's a bit of an oh boy situation. What is going on here with the Calgary Flames? What's going on with Zeri? What's going on with Huska? I mean, we can start with what happened last night in terms of the game. We played in Vancouver. It was the first tank bowl of the season and we lost 4-1. Had a 1-0 lead and then a weird goal for the Canucks. Was it in? Was it not in? It wasn't, but only because Cooley wears white padding. It was just insane to me. Vancouver, Elias Pettersson was almost targeting Perreck the whole game. Huge hit on him that led to the Canucks' third goal, but hey, a loss is a loss. It helps, I guess, the tank drive for the season, which is, again, not, you know, it's really tough to watch. It really, really is. No one's cheering for them to lose as we're watching, but once we lose, it's okay at the end of the day. I'm just going to bring up the full box score here for the Flames for you guys. Feel free to, you know, pause or zoom in, take a look at the entire thing, but I'm just going to get into the guys who did end up on the score sheet here. So, we'll start with Cooley. He gave up three goals on 25 shots, the 880 save percentage. Once again, not a great stat line for a goaltender, but you can't fault Cooley for this loss. He made some really good saves. It just, it was too bad that the Flames ended up losing this one, to be honest. The one goal was Matt Coronato. He scored and yet was a minus four on the night. That is just brutal for him. Faraby and Parekh also getting assists, which is good that people are somewhat getting on the score sheet. This Flames team, they just can't score at all, to be honest, which I'll have more on in just a second, but I wanted to focus on whatever's going on with Zeri and Huska, to be quite honest with you, and I didn't realize this situation was going to get this bad this quick, but obviously Zeri did not play last night. He was benched in just the second game of the season. So, Pat Steinberg here pointed out this was before the game. He said, head coach Ryan Huska says Connor Zeri sitting tonight is a coach's decision. Here's the quote. We had a lot of guys that could have been in that category. It's understanding the importance of taking care of the puck. Connor's a good player. He'll get himself right back in there, which is, I don't know. That's a weird way to say that to me. This is just a bizarre situation and kind of all eyes within the fan base are on what's going, or all eyes on the fan base are on this situation for Zeri. Is it going to end up in a trade? Is it almost just an inevitable another Sam Bennett situation where Daryl Sutter kind of did the same thing to Sammy Bennett, did not give him the right opportunity? We saw Bennett sit out a little bit. Lo and behold, he goes on to become a cons smite winner, Olympian, and Stanley Cup champion. So, I don't know. I really don't like what's going on here with Zeri, to be honest, and I'm not saying Zeri's the problem. Gurpal Singh here says, is it safe to say Zeri's future with the Flames is cooked? Getting scratched in the second game of the season isn't a good look and it's clear him and Huska aren't on the same page, yet the team isn't moving on from Huska anytime soon. It almost seems inevitable that one of those guys has to leave in order to fix this, either Huska or Zeri. Huska, as we've discussed on the channel, the perfect coach for a tank, really. He plays boring, boring hockey, not winning hockey, as we've seen throughout his entire tenure. I've nothing against the guy, but I just don't know if he's the right coach to develop these guys properly, and clearly that's the case with what's going on with Zeri. I don't think Zeri's as big of this, like, prima donna guy that maybe he's made out to look like. He seems just like a really funny dude. He's just in a horrible situation. You can't blame him if his attitude does get a little bit worse because of that. It's not his fault. InTheDome here points out Game 2 and Huska's already doing Huska things. Still baffled by the idea that he's right guy to develop these players. Zeri in Game 1, five shot attempts and assists, two high danger chances, which led all forwards, and a penalty drawn. But Huska said a lot of guys could have sat, but that's the guy watching from the press box. Interesting message to send. Just to me, hearing that a lot of guys could have been the ones sitting out is such a weird way. That doesn't sound very supportive of your players. It's kind of like, hey, none of these guys are that good. They could all be a healthy scratch at any point, which is, sure, after a 6-1 loss, maybe you're like, yeah, no one played well, but I like our guys. You don't say, yeah, any of these guys all suck, and a lot of them could have been healthy scratch, which isn't exactly what he's saying. It just can get taken that way, and it's very strange from Huska, who's usually pretty careful when he speaks. A well-spoken, obviously very media-trained guy, of course, like all coaches should be. But again, just a weird situation of things to say here for him. And like we said, this team, I mean, it's so boring to watch, but BigFlamesGuy here says, what's the NHL record for least amount of goals a team has scored in a season? And keep in mind, this is an 84-game season as well. Right now, we're averaging a goal per game, which is not good, but not only that, it's just so, so boring at times to watch this team play. I didn't watch this game in its entirety. I was on a night out, and hey, shout out to The Bouncer at One Night Stands. He's a viewer of the channel. Sick guy. Super cool to meet him. He's watching. You're the best. But it just, whenever I was watching, it wasn't all that fun. It just, I don't know. The Flames are just not an exciting team, obviously. And thank goodness, not all is bad. As we went over in yesterday's video, there are things to be happy about, and it goes with our prospects. So, Mike Gold here points out, Flames defenseman prospect Carson Carls just scored his first NCAA goal in his first game with North Dakota, assisted by Cole Reshne. Is that not exactly what you want to hear? When things are so bad for the Flames, we're already just, genuinely look like the worst team in the league, as well as Chicago. We can't score, you know, and now we have all of this drama as well with Connor Zeri and Ryan Huska. Thank goodness we have some positives to look at with our prospects, and hearing Carl score a goal right away, assisted by Reshne, is so amazing. And the other guy who's becoming just a fan favorite is Chase Harrington. So, Colton Baxter here points out, good lord, what was I doing pre-draft? Harrington is awesome. He was not very high on Harrington, but captain and NHL Flames prospect Chase Harrington extends the Chiefs lead with an unassisted goal. A beauty of a goal there. Obviously, I can't show you the highlight, but he is looking absolutely excellent, which is, again, so good to see. I'm very interested to see what happens with Connor Zeri. I'm sure his name will just be dragged through the mud of the trade rumor mill as we kind of get through these next couple weeks here, because already getting sat is just bad looks. It honestly, it's like what Lioney went through all of last year. It's like Kuzmenko throughout a lot of his career. It might just end up like that, and I do feel for Zeri. Honestly, I'm not going to specifically pick a side, but if I were to, I'd lean towards Zeri's side right now. Now, let's get into tonight's game where, thank goodness, we get to watch our Flames play again. This one back-to-back on the road out west, this time against the Kraken, once again, who we just got smoked by back on Thursday. This one goes at 6 p.m. today in Seattle, of course, so don't exactly know what the lineup will look like. No idea if Zeri is going to be in there. I think there will be a huge uproar in the fan base if he is not in there, but I do feel a little for him again. If we get into some of the head-to-head stats, since I don't have the lineup for you confirmed yet, really interesting in the young season that our Flames, you know, they actually have a good power play percentage. The penalty kill doing really well. Five-on-five shot attempts doing good. The high danger chance is not there because we know we have no offense, obviously, an 0-2 record, and our top scores, I mean, everyone on the team either has zero points or one point, which is quite crazy. Stroma's the most shots with just six, which is, yeah, really, really just not amazing. If we get into the schedule here for October, the rest of October, I don't like this one as much as I like this one, is really good. So, as you can see, a couple losses already to Seattle and Vancouver before we have quite a few more games here. After Seattle, the schedule supposedly gets a lot harder with, obviously, Colorado, and then Anaheim a few times, Vegas, and Carolina, Minnesota. Those are all tough games. The only kind of easier games, I suppose, which no game is easy in the NHL, but I guess maybe more inferior opponents. I'm going to be upsetting so many people, but Detroit and Toronto both don't look excellent so far this season, and that's coming from a flame span, but that's kind of your schedule as we head in, and hopefully, tonight's game is at least entertaining because, my goodness, the past couple have not been. Now, let's get into the comment of the day to wrap up this video, as we love to do here on the channel. It comes from yesterday's video, of course, which was about our prospects and had a lot to do with Mr. Ethan Wittenbach, and Tater Nuts here says, okay, call me crazy. Well, I'm crazy, I'm Mark. He says, okay, call me crazy, but is 75 points possible for Witte? Three points in game one for him is crazy. Also, three out of the top 11 prospects in the NCAA is so awesome. Our prospect pool is so exciting, and based off our performance this year, we should absolutely be adding someone really good to that as well when the time comes. Looks like a lot of people are hoping for Alexi Joseph. Obviously, there's the abandon for Landon Train. We'll obviously go way more in depth in that once the World Juniors roll around and then draft season, of course, but yeah, hopefully, Wittenbach can keep it going because he does look so exciting, as do some of these other guys, Harrington, Carls, Reshny, Potter, all of them. So excited that we have such a good pool already. 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.