The dream is still ALIVE for the Flames...

The 2026-27 NHL season is most likely going to be an excruciating one for fans of the Calgary Flames based off of their season opening performance, but we have to remember that current pain gives a better chance of the future still being bright and the dream remaining alive. 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 on your Calgary Flames. We would love to welcome you to the Flames Digest family, and it's probably my favorite topic during this rebuild is talking about the prospects and how, you know, even though we got smoked the other night, the dream is still alive to win a cup in the future. It might take a while. It'll take a while for our guys to develop and for everything to shake out the way we need it to, but where am I getting all of this from? Well, Mr. Stephen Ellis, certified puck knower Stephen Ellis from The Athletic. So he just dropped a new article. He wrote the NCAA men's hockey schedule kicks off later this afternoon. I take a look at 20 NHL affiliated prospects to keep an eye on this year. Now this came out yesterday, but as you can imagine, so 20 NHL affiliated prospects just in the NCAA. How many do the Flames have? Well, Stephen Ellis, he had to limit himself to just three, but still three of the top 20 is quite crazy. The first one crack in the list for us. No surprise at number two on the top 20, he has Carson Carl's the left-handed defenseman, 18 years old at UND. So Carl's was one of the best young defenders in the CHL last year, which made him a prime target for college programs. North Dakota will utilize him in a busy role this year with the potential to line up beside fellow 2026 Keaton Verhoeff. When you combine Carl's elite defensive awareness, seamless two-way game, punishing physique, and off the charts hockey IQ, you get a truly premium defensive prospect. You won't find many more defensemen as well-rounded as him in the draft, and he hits like an absolute truck. Carl's is the type of prospect who will work his tail off no matter what. Don't be surprised if Carl's is in the NHL by the spring, although North Dakota would rather chase a national title. Lots of, you know, great verbiage there, crazy adjectives to just describe how amazing of a player this guy is, Carl's. I mean, we spoke about him lots around the draft, before the draft, to be quite honest, and then quite a lot after the draft, of course, as well. But, you know, we talk so much about having all of these defensemen. We talk about Perak, Nemec, Brustevic a lot lately, Kuznetsov. We gotta remember, there's, you know, pretty much almost guaranteed top-pairing left-handed defensemen in the system, as well, in Carl's. The future is just so, so, so bright for us. I'm just so excited. Can't forget that he's around. Just absolutely pumped to have him. I'm glad he's number two on Mr. Ellis' list here. Now, the other guy who no one's forgetting about him, and we just can't wait to see what he does this year, but it's Ethan Wittenbach, the left wing, 19 years old at University. So, the season actually did start yesterday. There's more games today, and I think almost everyone's playing today, Wittenbach included, but he played yesterday. I'll have an update on that in a second. Ellis here says, though, Wittenbach was a man on a mission last year. The 2025 fifth-rounder finished first in NCAA, scoring with 59 points, which is utterly incredible for a player taken as late as he was just a few months prior. The Roslyn, New York native is an undersized forward, but always moving, carving his way through the ice to get into scoring situations. I mean, he's just a really good player, despite his size. He has never been a high-end producer at any level. He was more productive as a freshman NCAA forward than he had been at any other point. I mean, that's the time to do it, right? Wittenbach's recent performance at the World Junior Summer Showcase continued to open eyes. If the knock against him was that he was primarily beating up on lower-end teams in college, then he started to really silence people with his play in Windsor. Wittenbach was the best player at tournament, regardless of team. It'll be interesting to see what he's able to do as a sophomore at Quinnipiac. And it's true. If people didn't believe, you know, that he was all that great at the NCAA level last year, despite, you know, leading Quinnipiac, a team not expected to do that well, quite far, and leading the nation in points, I mean, they definitely saw what he could do at the World Junior Summer Showcase. It's funny, because Carl's, to a lot of people, was actually a little bit disappointing at that tournament. Wittenbach, not at all. He was absolutely excellent, as was Stock Salius, as we know. Now, the third guy on this list, number three for us, on this top 20 here in the NCAA, is Cole Reshny, a center, probably our top center prospect right now, 19 years old, also at the University of North Dakota with Carl's, of course. So, Reshny was one of the most impressive NCAA freshmen last season, putting up 35 points in 36 games, while playing a leading role on one of the top teams in the country. Reshny's ability to produce, no matter the situation, makes him so intriguing. He's not huge, but he makes up for it with explosive speed and elusiveness, making him a tough player to contain on the rush. He's an outstanding playmaker, legitimately one of the best outside of the NHL. That's big, big words here from Ellis. Reshny is smart, competitive, and has all the makings of a top six forward in the NHL one day. Even if he's not, you know, the answer for 1C of the future for the Flames, which he honestly might be, he can definitely be a 2C for a very good team. So, so happy to have all three of these guys in the system, and just, we have to remember that, though, yeah, maybe not every game is going to be 6-1 like it was for us last game. It's still going to be a rough season, but we have to remember what we're building here, and we're already building upon such a great prospect pool. Now, if we go back to Wittenbach here, like I said, he has already played. Ryan Pike points out, so three points for Flames prospect Ethan Wittenbach in Quinnipiac's 10-2 opening night rout over New Hampshire, so already at three points on the season. Yes, it was against a not very good New Hampshire team. I mean, they scored 10 goals, but it's the beginning of a wonderful season once again for Wittenbach. That's exactly what we wanted to see. We don't want to have a huge sophomore slump. If he drops off a bit, that's completely expected. It's hard to keep up what he did last year, but already three points in the opening night is amazing. Now, continuing to today, hopefully by the time this video is out, none of these games have started, but we have like a million prospects in action today. This is also a list from Ryan Pike's huge shootout. Huge shout out to him. Maybe he could go in the shootout for the Flames. Who knows? I mean, we know who Daryl Sutter would put in, and Ryan Pike's probably better than that, but anyway, look at all of these guys in action today. I won't go over all of them, but obviously Wittenbach is in action there at 2 p.m., and then just go down the list. There are loads of guys playing today. Not everyone, but lots and lots of our prospects, so if you're waiting for something to do before the Flames actually do play tonight, then hey, we have a lot of our prospects in action, which is fantastic to see. Like I said, the Flames do play tonight, so let's get into tonight's game, which is the first Tank Bowl of the year. Tank Bowl V1 for Calgary and Vancouver, of course. That's why it's the Tank Bowl, despite Vancouver. I mean, they already have a win on the year, but it is game day. The Flames play in Vancouver at 8 p.m. tonight, so a bit of a later one, of course, which is expected when you're playing on the West Coast, but it'll be very interesting. Vancouver has only played two games, both against Edmonton, both high scoring, which is quite, quite interesting to see how they fare against a team that doesn't score as much. There's a chance if we got whipped by Seattle, there's a chance we could get smoked by Vancouver, and then we are the frontrunners to, you know, be the worst team in the league this year, as well as Chicago. If we do get into the schedule here for the month, so as you can see, we do have one game completed. It was Anel against Seattle, as you can see there, 6-1. Next couple games on the road, out West, so Canucks today, and then Seattle tomorrow before coming back home for a pretty hard rest of the month here, but if we take a look at our lineup for tonight, this is not the confirmed lineup, but it does usually give us a good chance. These were the Flames lines at practice on Friday. By the time this video is out, maybe the lines have been released for the game tonight, but this is a good indication of what they could be. So that top line stays together, as well as the second line, third line, fourth line. The forwards are the exact same with Offman as the extra. Now where it gets interesting is the defenseman. So ball with White Cloud, which is, I mean, unless they're playing 45 minutes, I don't understand why they're together. It's just too much of a good thing on one line. Nemetz with Hanley. So Hanley in there in a second pairing role with Nemetz, very interesting to me. Parekh remains with Middleton, and then Kuznetsov was on that fourth kind of extra pairing with Pahal. So maybe that means Hanley's in, Kuznetsov is out. Again, this is not guaranteed, but it's definitely something Huska is thinking about, which is extremely interesting to me. And then, of course, Wolf, probably the starter tonight as well, but hopefully it's at least an entertaining game, not super boring, and we get destroyed again. 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. There were loads of comments, and I really do appreciate your guys' support. But Matthew here, good old Matthew, says, one down, 83 more Ls to go. Go Flames, go. And I mean, it was one down, six one loss. Hopefully not all of them are that painful and horrible, but 83 more to go, and we essentially get the chance at the top pick here. It really is. I think more and more people are going to jump on Team Tank as the season continues. Again, that doesn't mean you're cheering for your team to lose. You just accept it nicely at the end of the day when they do lose. 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.