Calgary Flames

Calgary's crease is a strength, not a question: Dustin Wolf anchors it and backup Devin Cooley quietly posted a .909 across 31 games. The rest of the future is a pair of 21-year-old right-shot defensemen who happen to play the same position. Zayne Parekh, the slick-skating puck-mover on his entry-level deal, spent the year on the top pair. Then Conroy went out and signed Simon Nemec, another young right-shot stud, on a five-year, $7.25M deal, with big-bodied Kevin Bahl locked up alongside them through 2032. It is a good problem for a rebuild to have, two cornerstone right-shot blueliners on the same timeline, even if only one can play the right side, and it points to a clear plan: Calgary is building from the crease out, goaltending and a young, long-signed blue line first, with the scoring to come. Around them, Connor Zary, Matvei Gridin, Cullen Potter, and Cole Reschny fill out a young core. GM Craig Conroy's deadline fire sale shipped out veterans for an avalanche of picks, ending any retool pretense. Finishing as the league's lowest-scoring team and missing the playoffs for a fourth straight year is the cost of admission, but the Saddledome's farewell sets up a clean reset into Scotia Place.