The Flames' Next Step Has Bigger Stakes...

Ladies and gentlemen, it is finally here! We have the final home opener at the Saddle Dome, as the Calgary Flames take on the Seattle Kraken in the first game of the 2026-27 NHL regular season. With the team's new leadership group, our next steps have even bigger stakes. 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, and it is the final first here for the Flames. The final first home opener at the Saddle Dome, the final first season opener at the Saddle Dome, and look, it's going to be a bit of a bittersweet night since it is the last year in the Dome. The nostalgia vibes, you know, it's just, it really is going to kind of hit us, but I think for the most part, we're just pumped that Flames hockey is back and it is game day. Game coming out 7 p.m. I mean, I'm sure the game will start a little bit later than that. I have no idea why I said coming out. I think it's because I was thinking there's a video is going to be coming out not long before the game starts, so if you're watching this after the game, hopefully it went well. If you're watching it before or during, hey, I hope the game goes well or is going really well, but what's really interesting to note for me is the lines because there's certain people that are a little bit upset about it. Now, the Flames, the lines at practice Wednesday, the last one before the season opener, we have a night one lineup. So, Grittin, Frost, Coronado, who saw that coming as the top line? Super excited to see them, you know, actually have some NHL action. Once again, they were the best thing to watch towards the end of last season, as well as Perreck. Honzik, Backlund, and Theraby are the second line. Zary, Strom, and Sharkey on your third, and then the best Flames, Siplikov with Pospisil and Klapka, Offman, the extra not playing tonight. Ball and Nemet, Kuznetsov and Whitecloud, Perreck and Middleton as your third, pairing Hanley, Pahal, of course, the extras, and then Wolfe and Cooley. In terms of what the actual, what's the first pairing, second pairing, third pairing, I'm assuming they'll probably play similar amounts of time, to be quite honest. Perreck and Middleton, though listed as the third, I don't think they'll play third pairing minutes. I think it'll, again, be quite equal, and we know that Huska Lights likes to kind of throw some things around, but like I said, some people weren't, you know, too happy. So, Trevor Neufeld here is one of them. He says, the Flames play the Kraken tomorrow night, which is actually tonight. I mean, that's just a fact. Two, Bretton Offman had 34 pins and two assists against the Kraken in two games this preseason. He drove them nuts. Three, Offman won't play today because Maxim Siplikov is more important than entertainment value. I know a lot of people would have rather had Sunyav in the lineup to begin with, but with Offman, you know, cracking the Flames, they would have, well, that's pause. With Offman cracking the lineup, cracking the roster, I should say, he couldn't even get into the lineup tonight, despite what he did, you know, against Seattle in the preseason and what he did towards the end of last season. I guess Trevor here isn't a big fan of Siplikov, despite him, you know, again, being the best player on the Flames. That meme's going to live on forever. Another thing that I did want to kind of focus on actually was the new leadership group. Well, some of it's new. Now, obviously, Backlund is the captain, despite probably, you know, Siplikov deserves the C. If only Mata were still here, he'd have the C for sure. But Backlund, of course, is our captain. Now, the way they've done the alternates or assistants, whichever one you want to call it, is kind of weird to me this season. So, it was supposed to be Huberto and then Whitecloud. You know, great choice in Whitecloud there in terms of the leadership. You know, he really just is that guy that they go to in the locker room. Huberto, as we know, not really playing. So, he, instead, his A has been divided up between Faraby, who I was a little bit surprised to see, but Faraby Strom and, you know, already turning into fan favorite Middleton, which is a little bit interesting. Let me get this up from Eric Francis. So, he writes, as expected, Zach Whitecloud was handed an A for his jersey in a dressing room ceremony this morning, which was actually yesterday. He joins Huberto. With Huberto injured, Faraby Strom and Middleton will rotate wearing the other A. I don't know if it'll be, you know, just one guy every third game or if it'll be this guy wears it during home game, this guy wears it during away game so that they don't have to do it on too many different jerseys or something. I don't know why they do that in the past anyway, but that's kind of, I guess, the reason why so many guys were given A's this year instead of just Huberto and Whitecloud despite the flames over the past few years have been doing that anyway. So, this is, a little article from the Flames. They write, Flames announced leadership group back when back with the C, Huberto and Whitecloud serve as alternates, but as we just learned, kind of divided up a little more. So, the Calgary Flames announced today, which was yesterday, their leadership group for the 2026-27 season with Backlund serving as team captain for the fourth consecutive year. Again, despite a lot of people think that maybe Maxim there should have earned the C. He will be joined by Hubie and Whitecloud as alternate captains. With Huberto currently sidelined due to injury, the Flames will rotate the alternate captaincy among Fairbie, Middleton, Strom during his absence. And I know I essentially just said that twice from two different people, hear it from Eric Francis or hear it from the Flames. So, if you didn't like it the first time, I hope you liked it the second time. The reason why this might have a little bit of bigger stakes is because more guys have that leadership, which will give them better opportunities. Both, when I see this, you know, both Strom and Whitecloud are guys who their names are going to be involved in trade rumors and hearing that they're captains gives them a little bit more trade value and gives them maybe a bit more of a reason to play a little bit better. Not that I expected them to play bad or anything, but just gives them a little bit more motivation, which is great to see. With Huberto out, it just gives these guys more of a reason to have that leadership. And I'm not saying you have to have a letter on your sweater. A letter on your sweater, that sounds like a beautiful song just being waiting to be written and performed by yours truly. I'll put it up on my SoundCloud. Follow me, Spiff Griff. But anyway, it's not like you need a letter on your sweater in order to have leadership. Of course, there are probably other leaders in that locker room that don't get talked about quite as much. It's not like you need to be a veteran either. We've seen some young guys step up and be great captains in the past. You think of guys like Crosby, Taves, even just recently in Celebrini, of course. So, that's what's going on with the leadership group. That's as we head into tonight's game, which again, I'm just so pumped to watch it. By the time this video is out, it will be right around the corner. I think this video will come out before puck drop. At least I certainly hope it does. But the Flames should be an exciting season. I'm so excited to hear what you guys have to say in the comments of this video once the game is on or over. But another thing I quickly wanted to touch on before we get to the comment of the day is how we're still being a little bit slept on. And I'm just going to go into one long tweet here from Western Hockey Scout at Pete Hughes here because he went on, I wouldn't call it a rant, but he just wrote a really long tweet. We're going to look at the whole thing. It's four whole screenshots, not just this one. He writes, I know people will say I'm a homer, but I truly think Calgary might have a generationally good prospect crop still with one more high pick this year likely coming before the Reshny, Wittenbach, Carls, etc. show up in the spring and all the analytics suggest these crop is good. It's crazy when I see other NHL teams ranked ahead of them for U23 talent. San Jose is Celebrini, but they can't touch Calgary's depth. Montreal has the only shot at under 23, but nothing close to prospects anymore. They have the young NHLers above us as does San Jose. But when it turns, you look at everyone under 23, we do have that depth. Continuing, he says Reshny, Wittenbach, Carls, Perreck, Nemitz, Gritton, Sheikha Zlamov, who's been going crazy lately, Sheikhi, Potter, Mews, Sunyav, Stoksalius, Harrington, Hextall, Treyball, etc are all tracking like potential impact players. The Flames will be scary in a couple years. I've never seen this kind of depth in a system since the Detroit Red Wings in the 80s and 90s. Yeah, good comparison there. Detroit went on to be an okay team in the 90s and 2000s. Calgary is also building a team with all the attributes you need. Reshny, Carls, Harrington, Ball, Mascio, Phillips are all super tough. Phillips will play. He's scary and a unicorn in today's NHL. So again, depth there. Throwing Ball in there is kind of crazy, but just showing that, you know, they have the toughness for the future. Sunyav wasn't even on some pundits' top 10 Flames prospect lists. Neither was Stoksalius, who was just Sweden's 1C in the summer showcase. Sunyav just had an expected goals for percentage of 73.37. Not only is that a palindromic number, but it's astronomical in terms of percentages for GF percent. In the two harder games in the preseason, but he has no business being sent down, as we have already spoken about in this video and on many other videos on the channel. Love that Sunyav is in there too. Exceptional work by Craig Conroy. If Reshny can turn out as a Nick Suzuki Braden point, Carolina just proved you can win without a number one big center. The Eastern media is really sleeping on Calgary. Calgary has, or sorry, Calgary had five players in the top 23 of the NCAA under 21 scoring, which is 22%. It's absurdly absurd the depth Calgary has. Frost is also the top center available for this summer's UFA class, if they choose to sign him as a future 3C. It'll bring back a first at the deadline if not. The Flames have so much going for them for the future and, you know, yes, this is quite a homer tweet. It's really bigging us up, but it just shows how much we do have for the future and we can gain even more with our current players as well. So, in my mind, we are slept on quite a bit by a lot of these lists, a lot of the Eastern media. I do agree with Pete Hughes here. I really, really think that he's onto something here and I think the Flames will hopefully, fingers and toes crossed, be a really, really good team in just a couple of years. Now, let's get into the comment of the day to wrap up this video, as we'd love to do here on the channel. It comes from yesterday's video, of course, and it just goes really well with, you know, the game starting tonight. But Andy C here says, almost showtime. Looking forward to the season opener at the Dome. Lots of exciting young studs to watch for. Expecting great seasons from Perreck, Ponzik, and Gritty. Let's go Flames. A Flame emoji and a Finland flag. Maybe you're Finnish. That's awesome. Also says, also so happy for Chase Harrington and I'm sure Sunyav will be up in no time. Pumped for the season. Pumped for the futures. All I have to say is go Flames, go. Thank you so much for watching this video. Please subscribe if you like what you saw here today. Have a wonderful rest of your day.