It’s been a quiet off-season for the Calgary Flames, a team in the throes of a rebuild and one with very low expectations heading into next year.
Still, several roster decisions are looming around the corner, and chief among them concerns 27-year-old centre Morgan Frost.
Calgary heads into the season with a roster relatively thin of top-end NHL talent and that’s most obvious down the middle of the lineup. Calgary’s options at centre beyond Frost are Ryan Strome and Mikael Backlund.
Strome is an inevitable trade-deadline move given he’s an offensively productive player on a small ($5-million average annual value cap hit) and expiring contract. Backlund has been an incredible soldier for this Flames organization, but at 37 he is in the twilight of his career. He may also be a viable trade candidate for teams looking for a veteran upgrade at the deadline, but his two-year extension does include a no-movement clause.
That brings us back to Frost, who is also set to become an unrestricted free agent at the end of the upcoming season. The Flames acquired Frost in a multi-player deal that also included Joel Farabee in the return; GM Craig Conroy’s hope was that a change in scenery from Philadelphia could benefit both young players.
Calgary’s season was rife with lowlights last year, but Conroy’s bet on Frost was the right one. Frost immediately flashed in his first Calgary preseason and followed that up with a career year, scoring 22 goals and 43 points.
A good piece of that scoring came on the power play, where Frost also led the team (16 points). And while Frost did see a lot of opportunity, there wasn’t a ton to work with offensively – his most common linemates last year were Matt Coronato, Jonathan Huberdeau, and Matvei Gridin.
Given his production and the play of those around him, Frost ended up grading very well last year. In fact, by Goals Above Replacement – an aggregate measure that calculates the total goals a player contributes relative to a replacement-level player – Frost graded as the team’s second-best forward behind Blake Coleman, and for Frost, it was a high-water mark for his career:
Not only did Frost grade well relative to other Flames, he did so against most of the qualified forwards around the NHL – his all-in production around the 83rd percentile.
By the Goals Above Replacement measurement, he outperformed the likes of Mika Zibanejad in New York, Steven Stamkos in Nashville, and John Tavares in Toronto. I emphasize for comparison’s sake that those are three quality, veteran centres who also played in challenging environments on bad teams with limited personnel around them.
Those players have a much longer track record of success, but they’re also in much later stages of their respective careers. That’s where the decision point for the Flames organization gets interesting.
Unquestionably Frost, like Strome, would have real trade value at the deadline. But given other likely moves around the roster and Calgary’s longer-term bet on the future, I do wonder if getting an extension done for Frost in the next few months is becoming the best option.
He hasn’t ever scored enough to drive the price tag up consequentially, and yet he’s coming off a career year and in his peak performance years age-wise. He could play as a second- or third-line centre for most teams around the league, and you would have to imagine there’s potentially more scoring upside to realize if the weapons around him can improve, too.
The Flames are still a long way from contending and it’s likely we will see more selling (and more pain) as they build towards the future. But increasingly I think Frost could be part of that future, and a hot start to the 2026-27 season may give Conroy all of the evidence he needs to extend.
Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey, Hockey Reference
