One-on-one with Flames GM Craig Conroy: 'You have to have that patience'

PENTICTON, B.C.

This really is the Young Stars tournament for us, joked Calgary Flames general manager Craig Conroy when he caught up with The Athletic this week at the tail end of a Flames prospect camp.

For Conroy and the Flames organization, theyre at the beginning of a new phase in their team-building cycle.

Since the start of last season the Flames have shed a huge volume of veteran talent in trades, with players such as Nikita Zadorov , Chris Tanev , Elias Lindholm , Noah Hanifin , Andrew Mangiapane and Jacob Markstrom heading elsewhere in exchange for young talent and futures.

Advertisement This new Calgary youth movement was felt at this years Young Stars tournament, with the Flames roster featuring eight players selected by the club at the 2024 NHL Entry Draft in Las Vegas.

Its likely to be felt as well over the course of this season, with a Flames roster thats poised to be significantly younger and less experienced than anything weve seen in a decade, since the early part of the Bob Hartley era in Calgary.

Over the course of a wide-ranging conversation, the second-year Flames general manager discussed evaluating his organizations prospects in this environment, what the future holds for several of Calgarys veteran players, and navigating the inevitable tension between veteran players who want to win and his responsibility to be mindful of accumulating talent and prioritizing the future interests of the Flames organization.

This interview has been edited for length and readability.

Your team at this tournament is so much younger than the other teams at this tournament.

Does that change how you have to evaluate your prospects in Penticton? A little bit.

Weve had years where we had three or four draft picks at this tournament, and we have eight this year.

So they are young.

They showed their youth in our first game, some turnovers, some mistakes, but they did some good things too.

So you have to look at it that way.

You look at Zayne Parekh , he turned the puck over.

He probably wont do that again.

Wed rather have him do that here now, and take it away, OK, that didnt work.

It mightve worked in junior, but it wont work here, you know? That said, we want to make sure our guys are doing what they do best.

We want to see that skill, we want to see them taking some chances.

They battled back in our first game from not a very good first 10 minutes.

To get it to overtime, it just says theyre not giving up, and I liked that.

Advertisement Is it helpful, especially in that first period of the first game, where experienced American League players are picking pockets, to get a sense of who has that fire in their belly in that moment when the team is under siege? Yeah, you could tell.

They werent happy with the way things were going and the compete level.

So they started to finish more checks, get more involved when they lost the puck in a battle.

Its new for them.

Theyre the strongest kids when they play in junior, or wherever they play, theyre one of the top players.

Now theyre up against players who have been in the NHL already.

So its a learning curve, but they worked hard.

And to be honest, all of these guys have been practising and playing shinny hockey.

So I know how I would feel if Id been thrown into a game like that.

So you give some runway and you understand that theres going to be lots of mistakes, but I wanted to see the effort.

And I thought we did see the effort.

Does the reality of having a much younger, much less experienced team alter how you communicate your expectations for your young players at this tournament? It does when I talk to the coaches too.

I want to see guys in certain situations.

I want it to be OK that when they make a mistake, thats OK, we want them to get put right back out there.

We know its going to take some time.

During the season, when every game is about wins and losses, its a different conversation.

At this tournament we know were going to make mistakes, these are young kids, were one of the youngest teams here, so dont overthink it.

Were not going to be upset upstairs and if we lose like we did with the first game its not like were going to leave the building mad like I would at an NHL game.

We lost, but we held our own.

We battled back and we played against some guys who are good players and have been around for a while.

Advertisement Your organization is clearly entering a bit of a different phase with a bunch of veteran departures last season and this summer.

Does that impact how you think about the opportunity ahead for some of your young players going into main camp? I think it gives them the excitement that they saw a lot of young players play last year.

We had a lot of guys play their first NHL game.

Guys like Connor Zary and Martin Pospisil were up with us pretty much the whole year.

So to see a large group of players and a lot of them were at this tournament last year get that opportunity, I think it makes everybody hungry to prove what they can do.

One thing we talked about going into this season is that we have really good veterans who want to be there.

They know they need the young guys.

Theyre going to bring them in, show them how to do things the right way and hopefully we can build together.

We have some uncertainty maybe in goal.

Who is it going to be? All three of those guys are super excited and feel like theres an opportunity for them.

Specifically with Dustin Wolf , he must be chomping at the bit to get some run at the NHL level.

How much are you looking forward to tracking that battle? I cant wait.

When you talk to all three goalies, they all feel that theres a spot.

Now one of them has got to take it.

Thats where were at and it is exciting.

Wolf is very confident in himself, and you have to be as a goaltender.

As much as its a team sport, youre a little bit on an island back there sometimes.

For all three of our goaltenders, with Jacob Markstrom being gone, they know that the door is open for them to have a real opportunity to be an NHL starter.

Coming back to the veteran players: Youve had some supportive commentary from established players on your roster, including MacKenzie Weegar , but Im sure that theres some thought you have to put into managing veteran players and the tension thats inevitable between winning and prioritizing the future interests of the organization and accumulating talent.

How do you thread that needle in terms of communication? When you talk to the guys you tell them that your goal is to go younger, but that, at the end of the day its about them leading this thing.

Advertisement Im not on the ice, were up there, and we want to be competitive night in and night out.

We might lose some games, we might make some young mistakes, but we want to be competitive.

We want to show young guys what it takes to have success in the NHL.

Even when I came to Calgary as a player from a Presidents Trophywinning team in St.

Louis, I never thought anything other than, My job is to win.

Because if we didnt win, I wouldnt have had a job in the NHL for very long! There were a ton of young players when I arrived.

We didnt have Chris Pronger and Al MacInnis on defense, but we had Robyn Regehr and Denis Gauthier.

Then you saw the progression from them.

We need the same thing here.

You look around the league, and even teams like Chicago and San Jose , theyre going out and getting veteran players.

Well we have really good veteran players, so we dont have to do that.

We just have to bring the group together and see who is going to rise.

I guess, we just need everyone to have a better year.

Its not about one person who is going to make or break each game.

Its going to be a team effort, all of us together and thats what its going to take to galvanize the team.

Were going to be underdogs and that isnt necessarily a bad thing.

Launching this project with the benefit of having seen what San Jose and Chicago have gone through, as you pointed out, going out and targeting established NHL players, has that been instructive in thinking about the big picture vision for whats next for the Calgary Flames? Yeah, veterans really set the tone in the room.

I remember MacInnis yelling, Hey, were here to work out! and how the young guys responded.

You need that.

If you dont have it, the young guys dont know what it takes.

It was the same thing I saw too with Patrick Roy, Pierre Turgeon, Vincent Damphouse and Kirk Muller in Montreal and all the leaders we had there.

Advertisement You watch those guys as a young player.

How do they work? How do they prepare? How do they eat? How do they take care of themselves? No matter what stage youre at as a team, you need that core group.

We feel like we have a really good core group of guys with a good attitude.

When it comes to that core veteran group though, theres a time aspect that youll have to manage.

For example, Rasmus Andersson has two years left on his contract.

How do you think about his Flames future? For me hes a Flame.

He can be a Flame for a long, long time.

At some point were going to have those conversations, but he has two years left on his deal.

And I know hes super competitive and wants to win and I think he feels like hes a big part of this.

In fact, he knows he is.

As the season goes along youre going to see all the ice time he gets, all the key spots hes in and for us to have success hes going to need to get back to where he was a few years ago.

Last year was a weird year he had a good year, but we need him to have an even better year.

Andrei Kuzmenko punched up your power play significantly after you acquired him.

Hes a pending UFA beyond this season.

Do you see him as a Flames player beyond this deal? Like every player, you want to get them in and see how it goes.

We had him for a short window last year, so well get him in, see how it goes and then we can have those conversations if everything is going well.

Its a contract, so theyre going to want X and were going to want Y.

Thats part of the business side of this game.

When you look at what he did on the power play, the last 12 or 13 games, we had one of the best power-play percentages in the league.

So we definitely want to see how that starts out.

Now I know its late in the year, a lot of people will say some of those games dont matter.

To me, though, it was still a lot better than it was and he was a huge part of that.

Advertisement To start off the season and see how it goes from Game 1, that will tell us a lot about where were at.

This blue-line group youve got at this tournament is headlined by Parekh, who is a top-10 pick.

Youve got Etienne Morin and Henry Mews , who are top-100 picks.

Then youve got Artem Grushnikov and Hunter Brzustewicz, who were part of the return for really significant deadline trades that you made late last season.

So youve spent a lot of draft and trade capital prioritizing defense.

When you envision the next great Flames team is it built from the blue line out? Even though I was a centre and I want to tell you that its about centres, it is.

Its goaltending.

Its defense.

Thats why we felt like we needed to stockpile good, young assets and we were able to do it over the past year.

Looking forward I think a young centre is something well be looking at, but definitely its about the defense.

And we have to be a bit more patient.

It takes a little bit longer sometimes for them.

You think about young forwards, that seems to happen a bit more quickly.

You have to be more patient with young defensemen.

Now our young defenders probably wouldnt want to hear me say that, but you have to have that patience.

MacInnis always used to tell me that it takes four or five years to really hit your stride as a defender.

And he was excellent right away, but he was that much more comfortable after four or five years in the league.

I never played defense, but thats something that always stuck with me.

What does the future of the Young Stars tournament look like from a Calgary Flames perspective? You know, this is one of my favourite things.

It kicks off the season for me, its exciting.

This is also the first year where we have eight young guys.

We only brought in one free agent this year.

So its really the Young Stars for us.

Advertisement So I always find this tournament sets the tone for the rest of the season.

Itll be interesting to see moving forward how it works, but its a good opportunity for us and for our fans who came down to see our young guys for the first time.

And its a big first step in our journey to get to where we want to go.

(Photo: Bruce Bennett / Getty Images).

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