After an agonizing week of will-they-won’t-they trade rumors surrounding Calgary Flames defenceman Rasmus Andersson, a trade was finally formalized with the Vegas Golden Knights. The 29-year-old Swede is off to Nevada in exchange for defenceman Zach Whitecloud, a 2027 first round pick, a conditional 2028 second round pick, and University of North Dakota defenceman Abram Weibe.
The wait is over and the shoe has formally dropped. Flames fans now find themselves past the eye of the hurricane and, once again, thrown into chaos.
How will the group respond to losing their greatest game-breaker on the back end? At 2.58 goals per game, how much worse can their 28th-place offence get? Is this the push that Calgary needed to truly contend for last place?
Let’s start by saying a few quiet parts out loud. Here are six truths lingering below the surface following the trade.
1. Whitecloud Knows the System
Start with the small stuff, right? That’s how to get people’s attention.
Well, it’s true. Ryan Huska has pulled much from Bruce Cassidy and the Golden Knights. More noticeably, their system in the D-zone.
“Yeah, I mean, when Husk came in, a lot of the stuff that he brought to the table was from Vegas,” pined general manager Craig Conroy on locker clean-out day at the end of last season. “What works, what doesn’t work, you know, and then you try to, it’s a little bit of a copycat league.”
The most notable of similarities between the two teams is their application of a zone defence in their own end.
Rotating players as a way of maintaining pressure and keeping lanes filled, “zone” or “box plus one” has been moving in and out of the meta for decades. The most noticeable difference between Huska’s systems and his predecessor, Darryl Sutter, is a change from man defence to zone.
This helps, right? Courtesy of HockeyShare.
The sheer frequency of rotation makes a zone defence complicated to learn. It takes time for the players to adapt, which is why Zach Whitecloud should be an easy fit in Calgary. He knows the style and won a Stanley Cup with it in 2023.
2. A Deal With Boston was Close
Elliotte Friedman spoke on how close the Flames were to making a deal with the Bruins on a Jan. 17 episode of 32 Thoughts: The Podcast.
“On Saturday night, when I talked about what I talked about, the Boston Bruins believed that they could get a deal done with the Flames, and there would be an extension.” described Friedman of a late-weekend push for the defenceman.
“Everything changed on Sunday morning. And Andersson’s representative, Claude Lemieux, the former player, from what I heard, he called the Flames, and he said, we are willing to go to Boston, but we are not willing to do an extension, and we won’t be doing an extension anywhere right now. And the world flipped. Dogs and cats living together, there was chaos in the streets, everything changed, and the Bruins were out.”
Anyone surprised that the guy who body checked Mike Vernon in Game Six of the 1989 Cup Final would pull another fast one on Calgary?
3. Whitecloud is also a Fantastic Trade Asset
First of all, welcome to Calgary, Zach.
Second, the guy is 29 and has a team-friendly $2,750,000 annual cap hit for the next two seasons. Whitecloud leaves Vegas as the current leader in ice time among defencemen. Oddly, Mitch Marner leads the team by a substantial margin if you count all skaters.
Ice Time Leaders: Vegas Golden Knights
Mitch Marner: 941:45
Zach Whitecloud: 882:02
Noah Hanifin: 876:54
Interestingly enough, Vegas is the only team in the NHL to be led in ice time by a forward; winger-turned-center, Mitch Marner.
Whitecloud generally plays low event hockey, but there is a lot of value in killing time when the opposition’s best players are on the ice.
Between his six-foot-two, 210-pound frame, his ability to log substantial minutes, and a cap hit that can be brought down to a virtually insignificant deadline total, Zach Whitecloud should draw a healthy amount of interest around the league.
4. Term Will Make Retention Difficult
Apologies for getting way ahead of ourselves, but one issue with the notion of Whitecloud being flipped is that the team can only retain on three players at a time.
Currently, the Flames are retaining $2,275,000 of Andersson’s salary and $1,875,000 of goaltender Jacob Markstrom’s salary. A deal including Whitecloud, Blake Coleman or Nazem Kadri gets a little awkward.
Coleman is signed for another year, Whitecloud another two years, and Kadri another three years after this one, so multiple seasons of retention my affect Conroy’s ability to send retained vets over the next three seasons.
5. The Top Four is (Likely) Temporary
It is unlikely that the Flames roll out three defensive defencemen in their top for much longer than a stretch or two. Here is what the pairings look like for Monday against New Jersey.
Bahl-Whitecloud
Kuznetsov-Weegar
Hanley-Brzustewicz
It’s fair to say that these pairings will evolve. One of Zayne Parekh, Daniil Miromanov or Jeremie Poirier will likely find their way on to the roster to balance out their ability to move the puck. Which leads us to the final point.
6. Power Play is Time is Up for Grabs
Derek Wills of the Fan 960 reported an interesting tidbit on Monday morning.
Hunter Brzustewicz gets a shot at running the first power play unit against the Devils. It appears that we’re going to see some changes on the power play now that Rasmus Andersson’s big shot is out of the picture.
Does that mean we see Zayne Parekh running one of the units once his AHL conditioning stint is over? Yan Kuznetsov has started to bring out a massive slap shot. Do we see the big Russian get a shift or two?
Time will tell, but fans are looking at an evolving situation. The next two weeks should be a lot of fun for Flames fans.
Statistics courtesy of Natural Stat Trick, Money Puck, Cap Wages, and the National Hockey League.
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Rasmus Andersson Trade Looms: How Good is the Player?
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Great read as Always!
The Anderson trade was wither the third or second ever trade that the Flames have retaining salary? Wasn’t Marky the first?
Anyways, I feel like for many of the home grown talent that negotiated with Treiliving left under less than ideal circumstances.
If you look at Hanafin, Anderson, Lindholm, Gaudreau, Bennett, and Tkachuk; they all took below market value after their entry-level contracts and non of them wanted to stick around for another team friendly contract…..in some cases non wanted to stick around.
Just a thought.
That has to have generated a bit of discontent. It’s amazing that Ras was under five mill in all of the 7.5 seasons that he was on the Flames.
Rittich to the Leafs was their first ever salary retention! Got them a third that they traded for Nikita Zadorov.