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It’s clear when watching the Calgary Flames this season that Johnny Gaudreau is almost always aware of where his linemates, Matthew Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm, are on the ice. Chris Tanev doesn’t have to look for Oliver Kylington, he already knows where his defence partner is at all times.

That innate chemistry throughout the lineup has propelled the team to the top of the Pacific Division as one of the biggest surprises in the NHL.

The same dynamic exists off the ice among the coaching staff and management.

In recent years, Calgary’s current front office has made several decisions that have set up the Flames for today’s success. 

Right now, they have a No. 1 centre signed at under $5 million a season (Lindholm), one of the league’s top scorers at $6.75 million (Gaudreau), and a 30-goal scorer at under $3 million (Andrew Mangiapane). The team’s top four blueliners (Rasmus Andersson, Noah Hanifin, Tanev and Kylington) are making a combined $14.75 million, and its Vezina-calibre goalie Jacob Markstrom is signed at $6 million. 

Since the end of the 1980s, the organization has had challenges in building a consistent contender. In the 31 years since becoming the only visiting team to hoist the Stanley Cup at the Montreal Forum, the Flames have won just four playoff series (three during that 2004 run, and one in 2015). 

While it’s still far too early to judge this season, things do look different now. The Flames’ current process can be summed up in one word: alignment.

“You all have to be on the same page in terms of things you value,” Flames general manager Brad Treliving said.

“When you’re bringing a player in, you’ve got to have alignment in terms of where you see the player fitting. It makes no sense for management to think one thing and the coaching staff to use the player in a different role.”

Flames assistant general manager Chris Snow manages the team’s data department and is a conduit between them, Treliving, scouts, and the coaching staff.

“You want the scout to have an opinion that aligns with the data that aligns with the background work that you do on the player,” Snow said. “The majority of the time, there is alignment, and if there’s not [alignment], there should be. If there’s not, then one of those three components of the equation is out of line. In those instances where there’s not alignment, those are opportunities to learn by talking it out and adjusting and enhancing one of those three branches.”

Much of that is balancing enhanced stats and the eye test. Does the data support the observation?

“The data and the scout won’t disagree, so much as, ‘What is the scout valuing, and what is the data valuing?’” Snow said. “It’s an evaluation proposition, meaning if the scout doesn’t necessarily like a player for his competitiveness because he lacks that, the data might magnify that the player seems to be highly intelligent and highly skilled. And then it’s just an evaluation question. What do you value and what is the fit for that particular need on the team?”

Snow is a former baseball reporter who was hired by the Flames in 2011 after three years in the Minnesota Wild front office. Snow was friends with Josh Byrnes, then the San Diego Padres general manager, and in 2012 went to the MLB’s Winter Meetings to observe and learn from the process. In the hotel lobby, he stumbled upon Wells Oliver, the Padres’ director of baseball systems.

“My enduring image of him is finding him one morning sitting cross-legged on the floor in the atrium of the Gaylord Opryland Resort, banging out computer code,” Snow said. “I thought, ‘I have to have this guy.’”

Byrnes did his old friend Snow a favour, and Oliver worked part-time for the Flames for three years building their data systems (and far more than the 15 hours a week he was paid for). 

“He got us off the ground to an impressive extent with our database and the site,” Snow said.

That process was on full display during the biggest in-season trade of Treliving’s tenure, when the Flames acquired Tyler Toffoli from the Montreal Canadiens Feb. 14.

“With our lineup at the time of the acquisition, the Gaudreau-Lindholm-Tkachuk was pretty much cemented. They’d played more minutes than any [line] in the league and they’d excelled,” Snow explained.

“And then you look at the line of Backlund-Coleman-Mangiapane, and that line was excelling two ways. So, the need was really who can add additional offence at both five-on-five and power play, who’s a right shot, because you look at us and we didn’t have a right-shot right winger, and just additional execution. If you look at our team, we have players who can carry the play in shots and chances, but our shooting percentage and finish was league average…[Toffoli’s] profile year-in and year-out really indicates hockey sense, skill, and versatility, any line, any wing, any situation.”

Many were surprised when the Flames didn’t sign a replacement for Mark Giordano after the longtime blueliner was chosen by the Seattle Kraken in the expansion draft. The Flames, however, saw it as an opportunity. 

“In a salary cap system, you have to integrate young players,” Snow said. “Certainly, we wanted our defence to get bigger and more competitive, and that was with the signings of [Nikita] Zadorov and [Erik] Gudbranson. There was opportunity for one additional player to grab hold of it, and Oliver Kylington did that right out of training camp.”

Head coach Darryl Sutter frequently uses the information Snow’s staff gathers. Flames management and coaches met last summer to define key terms, traits, and player types the organization would target.

“It’s an evolving process,” Sutter said. “We spent a lot of time trying to connect analytics more with individual performance, team performance, opponent performance, back-to-back performance, home-road performance, a lot of those things and then we tie it in with management’s side…I think today’s player wants that information because it’s not a criticism. It shows them their performance based on something a computer is kicking out. It can help players in so many different ways.”

The Flames’ data department has evolved over the years, and Snow now has David Johnson, Michael Charron, and Connor Rankin providing input. Johnson has a computer science degree, Rankin previously played in the Western Hockey League, and Charron had a career in the financial sector before joining the organization. 

“Long story short, I watch a ton of hockey, which helps generate numbers for the analytic team to look at and help make decisions,” Rankin said. “My eye test can’t be skewed by the analytical numbers because you don’t want a bias watching going into a player, or vice versa, you don’t want to love a player from watching him, but you look at the analytic numbers and it’s not very good.”

Charron describes his duties as a mix between supporting the coaching staff, keeping track of players around the league, and ad-hoc projects.

“It’s taking information and data that we track and maintain and making it easily digestible for the coaches,” he said. “You’re looking at what a team does well, how can they beat us and how can we beat them. It’s just making the coaches aware of things the data suggests about an opponent.”

Many decisions await the Flames’ brain trust over the coming months. 

The trade deadline is Monday at 3 p.m. ET and there are several key free agents (including Gaudreau) who need to be re-signed. Once again, the decision-making process will be put to the test. But first, fans expect the team to win its second playoff series since Treliving took over in 2014.

“I don’t want to get ahead of ourselves,” Treliving said. “We haven’t qualified for playoffs yet. That’s goal No. 1. From myself on down, coaches, players, we’re not getting ahead of ourselves. We’ve got work to do to get become a playoff team. We’ve got to earn that right…my job is to see if there are ways to make the roster better between now and Monday.”