Sunday's 18: Four Risers, Four on the Bubble, and Ten Who Filled Out the Sheet

Saddledome — The Flames lost 4-2 to Seattle on Sunday night and it did not matter, because the Flames were mostly not there.

Ryan Huska said so on Friday. “Each group’s going to play a home game, each group’s going to play a road game,” he told the club’s preseason preview, and Sunday was Team Black’s home game. The new collective agreement did the rest: a player with 100 or more career NHL games can dress for only two of the four exhibition games, and 22 players in this camp are in that bucket. So Backlund sat, Huberdeau sat, Frost and Coronato and Farabee sat, and the 18 skaters who took the ice were the Black group, five sophomores who played NHL games last year, and four veterans there to satisfy the league’s eight-veteran minimum. FlamesNation’s Ryan Pike had a name for the group on game day: “the bubble boys.”

That makes Sunday a different kind of box score. Nobody on the ice was auditioning to lead the team in goals. They were auditioning for a spot in the 23, or a spot on the Wranglers’ first line, or a spot at all. Here are the 18, sorted by what the night said about that.

The risers

Aydar Suniev scored both Calgary goals, and he is still waiver-exempt. The first came at 13:01 of the opening period, Honzek with the assist, and cut Seattle’s lead to 2-1. The second, at 10:26 of the third from Jones and Wiebe, tied the game at two before Seattle scored twice in the final nine minutes. “I was working on my shot all summer and I’m glad it’s paying off,” he said afterward, via Flames TV. Suniev went to the Wranglers at last year’s cut because he could be sent without waivers, and he still can, which is the awkward part of a two-goal night: the player who did the most on Sunday is the one the club can move most easily. Calgary’s problem, if it wants to keep him, is finding the wing.

Sam Honzek played his first game since November 15 and set up the first goal. That was the night in Winnipeg he collided with Backlund and lost the rest of his season. Through three days of camp he had Backlund’s left wing with Farabee on the other side, which is not where you put a player you are easing back. Sunday he skated with Jones and Hunt instead, and the club’s own preview called him the player to watch. The assist on Suniev’s first was the answer to the only question that mattered, which was whether he looked like the player from before the collision. He did.

Zayne Parekh started the game and has been running the first power play since Saturday. The arena’s own board had it: Nylander, Kuznetsov, Kerins, Parekh, Gridin for the opening shift. On day three of camp the power-play units flipped and Parekh took the top unit from Nemec. Parekh, on the 17th: “Me and Nemo are going to compete there.” One game does not settle that, but a 20-year-old getting the first shift of the first exhibition game with the veterans in the stands is not an accident either.

Matvei Gridin was on the top line every day of camp, and Sunday he got the first shift too. Gridin, Frost, Coronato has been Huska’s first line since the opening skate, with Frost saying the three of them “were kind of hoping for” it in the off-season. Sunday he played without both of them and still started the game, with Nylander and Kerins. He is waiver-exempt, like Suniev, but nobody at the Saddledome on Sunday was talking about Gridin and the Wranglers in the same sentence.

The bubble

Brennan Othmann played 53 seconds and took 20 minutes in penalties. At 5:05 of the first, inside his first minute of ice time, he put an elbow into Seattle’s Ville Ottavainen along the boards in the Flames’ end. John Hayden arrived, the two of them grabbed hold, and what followed was more of a wrestle than a fight, the kind where the linesmen wait for a gap and take it. The sheet says elbowing major, fighting major, game misconduct. Othmann’s night was over at 14:55 on the clock, with Calgary already down a goal.

The context is what makes it a story. Othmann signed on Friday, a one-year, two-way deal at $975,000, and this season is the first in which he needs to clear waivers to go to the AHL. Daily Faceoff’s read on the signing was that “barring a strong showing in camp, Othmann will most likely return to the Wranglers,” except that returning him to the Wranglers now means putting a 2021 first-round pick, acquired from the Rangers for Jacob Battaglia, in front of 31 other teams. He scored two points in two games for Calgary after the trade. On Sunday he had one game to make the waiver question harder for Craig Conroy, and he spent it in the dressing room. Nothing about his reputation says fighter, either. It was a bad night to pick to become one.

There is a postscript, and it belongs to the other guy. Seattle put Hayden on waivers on Monday, along with Morrison and Avon, who between them scored half the Kraken’s goals on Sunday. Hayden is 31, played three NHL games last season and spent the rest of it in the American league. Two players took hold of each other at 5:05 of a game neither of them needed to be in, and a day later one of them was available to all 31 other clubs. That is what the last week of September looks like from the bubble.

Rory Kerins started the game, which is more than his contract guarantees him. Kerins was waived last October 2 and cleared, then put up 22 goals and 57 points in 56 games for the Wranglers, third on the team, with 12 points in his last six after coming back from injury. The club re-signed him June 25, one year, two-way, $850,000. He was on the Black group’s first power play in camp and on the ice for the opening faceoff, which tells you where the coaches have him. He needs waivers again to go down, which tells you where the front office might.

Hunter Brzustewicz is, in Pike’s words, “the easiest guy to send down because he’s waiver exempt.” He was on the third pair with Wiebe and on the Black group’s top power play. He went to the Wranglers at last year’s cut for the same reason he might this year, and none of it is a comment on his play. Exempt is exempt.

Yan Kuznetsov started the game with Parekh and looked the least like a bubble player of anyone in the group. He skated with Whitecloud on Team Red for all three days of camp, then dressed with Black on Sunday and took the first shift. Pike’s June depth chart had him an NHL lock, and he was waived at last year’s cut and cleared. Sunday looked like a coach getting his second pairing a game, not a tryout.

The other ten

Nylander, Hunt, Hanley and Pachal are the four 100-game veterans on the sheet, which means Sunday used up one of the two exhibition games each of them is allowed. Nylander is here on a professional tryout. The other six, Jones, Castagna, Gross, Basha, Stromgren and Wiebe, are the Black group, the players Pike’s camp breakdown called “the AHL group” on paper. Jones and Wiebe got the assists on Suniev’s second, and Stromgren, like Othmann, needs waivers for the first time this year. None of them did anything on Sunday to move themselves up a tier, and none of them were asked to. The league requires eight veterans in every exhibition lineup and the club needed 18 skaters. That is the reason the ten were on the ice, and it is not a knock.

Devin Cooley played the full 60, as Huska said he would, and Arsenii Sergeev backed up. Seattle’s goals were Nelson at 4:51, Firkus on the power play at 9:23, Morrison on the power play at 11:59 of the third and Avon into the empty net, shorthanded, to close it.

The one who did not dress

Chase Harrington, 51, was scratched. He opened camp on Backlund’s left wing, rotating with Honzek, and by day three he was on the extras sheet with Nylander. He is a Team Red extra, and Team Red’s home game was tonight against Vancouver. The lineup came out at midday and he is not in it: Gridin, Frost and Coronato lead a group that FlamesNation reckons is more or less the one that opens the season on October 1. Unless he travels as an extra to Seattle on Thursday or Edmonton on Saturday, Harrington’s first NHL camp ends without a game in it, which is what Ryan Pike expected on Sunday. His week is the shape of a profile anyway, and that runs here on Friday.

Three more were gone before puck drop. An hour before the game the club sent Kyle Walker, Kent Anderson and Alex Gallant to the Wranglers, all three on American league contracts, taking camp down to 45. Gallant is the name to hold onto. He is 33, entering his eighth season in this organization’s minor-league system, and he is the closest thing the Wranglers have to an old-fashioned heavyweight. He will wear a letter at Winsport, he will not play every night, and when he does play people will know it. That is a piece for another day.

Sunday was the bubble’s game. Calgary has to be at a 23-man roster by 3 p.m. on Monday. Between now and then the Flames play three more, and by Huska’s plan the 18 who dressed on Sunday get one of them.

Updated at 12:30 p.m. MT, after the Flames posted their lineup for the Vancouver game: Harrington is not dressing.