Barn Burner: Boomer & Pinder with Rhett Warrener - Byron Bader (FULL INTERVEIW)

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

Byron Bader On The Flames 2025 NHL Draft, Top Prospects & More | FN Barn BurnerCami & Pinder are joined by Byron Bader to break down the Calgary Flames’ 2025 NHL Draft class and top prospects.They dive into how the Flames handled the draft, which picks have the highest upside, and what the future could look like for the organization’s prospect pool. Byron also shares insights into player projections, development trends, and how Calgary stacks up league-wide.#calgaryflames #calgary #nhlshorts #nhlhockeyislife #nhl #stanleycup #nhldraft Let us know what you think in the comments below ⬇️BARN BURNER BLONDE https://originbrewing.myshopify.comFLAMESNATION MERCHhttps://nationgear.ca/collections/shirts/FlamesnationBARN BURNER SHORTS https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLj_bcGtvvo-cW2DHEDZ6dEO5ePDmlhZc9&si=jo8iNGxT4ImhS2Y8📲 Follow us:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/fnbarnburner/X (Twitter): https://x.com/barnburnerfn?lang=en🎧 Listen on:Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/barn-burner-boomer-pinder-with-rhett-warrener/id1648562889Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3Mc6Qd5U22R2zbMlQ7RxIiProducer: Jack Haverstock Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From one guest to another, from Merrick to Bader, hockey prospecting.com is the website. He is the creator, the founder, the guru, the man with the mind. Byron Bader joining us on the Crystal Waters, plumbing and heating hotline. Sir, happy summer. How are you? Yeah, I'm excellent. How are you guys?

We're well. It is Stampede. So, you know. So he's lying. I need a healer at some point here. But, hey, have you been out? Have you taken the kids to the ground? yet and done the ride? I did. Yeah, we did the parade on Friday for like the first time since I think I was

maybe 10 or 11. Yeah. So you have to pay for the bleachers now. Just found that out. So we found a spot just sitting randomly by a building. And then we made our way to the park that had the free days that was up until about 1.30 or so. That was absolutely bonkers. I feel like there was 200, 300,000 people there. That was crazy. And then the next night, I just went to a tent and, drank for a bit and stayed away from the stampede. But that's, that's been that. You know, I spent my $300 doing very little. And it's, it's been, yeah, typical stampede.

You've invested in civic pride, Byron. We can't really put a press tag on that. It's the Cadreys Stampede. I love your work. It's always a great time a year to talk prospects because, A, you know, you get the draft at the end of June. People are like, okay, who are these guys? You did a phenomenal job on our prospect show,

chatting with Mike and Pike about the class, before it happened. Your rankings looked quite different from a lot of these scote-assembled ones. And over time, it's actually proven to be, the model's very sharp at, you know,

picking up some guys up that fall through the cracks sometimes. Biggest takeaway from the draft before we get into some more granular stuff with the flames and then organizational rankings. Yeah. I mean, my biggest takeaway is probably like, you know,

we had a couple years where, you know, the shorter guys were getting a little bit more respect. getting drafted a little much earlier than they ever were before. And now it's kind of gone like right back to the top of the order, like right back to drafting huge. Like a lot of the teams, you know, that was their focus. Like Chicago, they didn't take a guy under 6-1 and that was Frundel who's built like a truck.

And then you had, I think you had like 25 guys that were D-Men that were 6-4 or bigger that were drafted, which is the most ever. And like a lot of these guys look like, you know, If they do make it, it's going to be in a very six, seven replacement type role. So, yeah, bigness was a focus of the draft it looked like. Large and locals, as Pike would always say. Big and big, and you can't teach big. Tell me what the Flames draft class.

You love their 24 class from Vegas and have been heaping praise on them since that draft the summer ago. It sounds like they had another very good value hunting draft this year. Yeah, yeah, exactly. I mean, it wasn't quite to the extent of last year where it was just like every time they went up, it was like value, value, value. And then kind of at the end, they took some overagers that maybe don't have much of a chance. But like this year was was pretty well as well.

They went, you know, going like, you know, third round to like Macy O'Phillips going to that giant D-Man that every team seemed to want to have. You know, that was a bit early to go to like a pick like that when there was value on the board. but like, yeah, they got a solid four or five picks that, you know, obviously the Reschney one sort of leading the charge looks really good. I was hoping him or Kindle was going to drop and they would actually take him and lo and behold, that actually happens. So that was good. And then, yeah, they got three or four other value guys that, you know, these guys, I mean, obviously they don't make it even most of the time. But like, you're getting a guy that makes it, you know, 30 to 50% of the time rather than, you know, a bunch of guys in the later rounds that make it, you know, 10 to 20% of the time.

So just, yeah, overshooting your draft slot a little bit. They did pretty well again this year. Where did you have Reshany? And is it 10? I'm trying to remember because you had them quite high. Ditto for Kindle. You were much higher than a lot of the scouts list and it proved to be correct with

Kindle and where he went. Yeah, I think I had them 9th or 10th or 11th. Like him and him and Kindle basically look identical model-wise. You know, they have that same profile where they're sort of April born and they have the like really good production in their pre-draft year and then the almost elite production in their in their draft year and then they're just that little bit smaller so yeah i think i had them ranked in that sort of nine-ten hole um yeah and i was pretty surprised that both of them kind of went before pick 20 i thought one of them might drop into the 20s i was kind of the scuttle but you know

going into the draft um was that they were one of them at least was going to drop and then you know it seemed like the consensus on them seem to be growing and growing as we're kind of leading up to the draft. So it was kind of cool to see both of them go kind of in that. Yeah, before pick 20. So that's the draft. But when the draft's done, now all of a sudden there's an entire new collection of prospects added to a prospect pool for all 32 teams. You just finished your 32 team organizational rankings for prospects. So I believe the thresholds are like less than 100 games for a skater, less than 50 for a goalie,

something along those lines. But essentially you have ranked one through 32, the best systems in the NHL. Who are the big movers and shakers this year? Because it felt like the Islanders would have had an awful system a few years ago. But then they get a haul in the Brock Nelson deal and three first rounders this year.

Like were they the biggest mover this year? Yeah, I think they moved up seven spots. Like they were for about four or five years straight. They were like number 30 to number 32, like just a dreadful system. and they just had nothing in there. And then they moved up a little bit with last year's draft when they got Eisenman and a couple other, you know, better value picks than they typically had.

And then, yeah, they boosted up seven spots. So they jumped from, I believe, 19th to 12th. Tampa Bay actually had kind of like an under the radar draft. They jumped up seven spots, but then they're probably going to fall right back now because that was before they traded Isaac Howard. That was literally two days before. so that was nice of them to do that for me. No, press pause there, sorry, because while we got you on the topic,

what does the model think of Isaac Howard, who's 21 versus Samuel O'Reilly, who's 19, both really strong production? Isaac dominated NCAA hockey, but at 21, if you're going to be an NHL, you probably should be doing that, right? Like, Johnny did this a year younger than Isaac for comparison's sake. Yeah, so, I mean, the big thing with Isaac Howard and O'Reilly as well as at the draft, Isaac Howard was profiling pretty well. Like he's born right on the fringe of sort of younger and older. I think he's born March 30th. And he had like a really good profile on the model.

And then he fell off quite a bit because of his D plus one year where he just didn't have a whole lot of production. But he's sort of a he's rebounded from there. So he's kind of only, you know, out of the five years, he's only had really one year where it was really off. And then in terms of O'Reilly, he's, you know, he started off at a much lower point. Like his production and his drafter was probably, I don't know, 40, 50% lower than what Isaac Howard's was. I think he's born on that exact same March 30th day, which is funny.

And he hasn't really grown out of that yet. I mean, he's two years younger, so that might still come. But I would say that Howard projects much better in terms of making the NHL and turning into something, you know, even an average producer or more. And O'Reilly to me right now is sort of, you know, it's kind of hit or miss. if he's even going to make the NHL. So, yeah, I would say Howard profiles better. I mean, obviously, yeah, like he said, like Johnny was doing things earlier.

Johnny is that much younger, that Johnny profiled way better than both these guys. But, yeah, I mean, I think Howard's going to fit perfectly with the Oilers and certainly going to be, you know, like a middle six guy there that, you know, if he gets put in the right spot and he's getting fed open passes, like he could put in 30, 40 goals. Who knows?

Yeah, I think he projects much better, though. And in terms of risers, like we've been talking a little bit about the, the CBA and planned expansion. How do things look for a team like Seattle where we know they had that big win in the playoffs over Colorado. But people have kind of been waiting for them to build something strong here. So now coming on from 2021, how is their prospect cool looking like kind of as, I mean, no one's going to have such a blessed expansion draft as Vegas. So this is kind of going to be the blueprint for expansion teams moving forward. What's Seattle looking like? Yeah.

They've kind of been steadily growing their pool since basically inception. So they actually have like a really, really strong pool. They're fourth on my list. Wow. They have really good goalie prospects. They have a pretty good top five, like especially after adding Jake O'Brien, he profiles really well in the model and having Katten and, you know, and Wright still counts in there because he hasn't crossed over 100 games and he's still new.

So, I mean, they have some good pieces there. The depth is, you know, that's the one piece. that they're sort of need to build out a little bit more. But it's a really good pool, especially because they've only existed for, you know, three or four years. So, yeah, they're getting there. And they'll probably have, you know, certainly a top three prospect pool within the next year.

So I would guess if they keep on going this way. Flames are at eight on your list. That's up from, I believe, 11 or 12 last year. And rightfully so with two great draft classes in a row that they're into the top 10 here. That's exciting. But it does feel like a lot of B pluses and not a lot of eight. A's like you've got Perek, there's an A prospect, and then everyone else is like, that's a solid player that could be a good NHLer.

How would you, you've grouped each team into top five prospects, who are the flames top five and where are the gaps? Or is Reschni a guy that sort of plugs that gap between the other guys and Porek? Yeah, I mean, Perak, like, he profiles like he's going to be a star. Like if he's not a star, I'd be very, very surprised just based on how he looks in the model, how everybody's sort of around him that kind of has. done that same development. They've all turned into stars. So I think he's going to be along the same path. Reshny, yeah, he's maybe not that like A plus prospect, like correct. He's more like a B plus and A

minus, but also, you know, he's only two years into sort of this five year track that I'm looking at. So if he makes a big jump next year, like he goes to college and he puts up like, you know, about a 1.5 points per game, that type of area, he's going to jump up huge and he's going to kind of evolve into one of those a type, you know, you should get a star out of this type of prospect. So you have those two. And then like you said, there's there's a bunch of guys that are sort of all around the same. So I think rounding out the top five, I had precht and then Reschney and then I had Grideen and, uh, Ristavich maybe Ristavich. Yes. I was trying to, trying to remember his name again. Um, and then, uh, I think I had, uh, Potter at the end of that.

So like a decent top five, some good potential in there. But like, you know, when you compare it to like San Jose or Montreal or some of these other top five, Chicago where they have a lot of star potential in the top five, we have two guys. And then there's, you know, a bunch of guys that kind of have, you know, a 50 to 65 percent chance of making the NHL and then kind of like a 10 percent chance that they turn into a star into a star in the NHL. So the flames have a lot of these guys. They actually have more of these types of guys than anybody else in the NHL, but they don't have a lot of those big time game changers. So that's kind of the building point going forward is getting those top picks and getting, or at least, you know, getting massive value, like where they got Reschney at 18th,

if they can keep on adding players that sort of profile similar in the model, then that's going to really build out the top five nicely over the next couple of years. Byron Bader here from hockey prospecting.com. You are based at a Calgary. You do have a rooting interest for the local home team. When you look at the prospect pool and you see the roster and you see a tie break keeping out of the amount of the playoffs, but you also see the lack of a superstar. Like when you put yourselves in the shoes of this management team, do you see great conundrums

or just a very clear and obvious path? Like how do you, I guess, sift through what Craig Conroy should and could be doing moving forward? Yeah, I think it's a very difficult situation for him because, I mean, you look at these teams that burn it down and then they're trying to get that top pick or at least a top three pick. Like, you know, they almost end up bringing it too much down to the studs that trying to get back out of it is a nightmare. Like San Jose's been out of the playoffs for seven or eight years, you know, Anaheim's been out of it for eight years. Chicago's been out of it since 2018. And they're like not really anywhere close yet. you know, Buffalo is 14 years and they've had to rebuild like five times, right?

So the flames, you know, they have some veterans that can kind of keep them in games. They have Wolf who seems to be emerging as, you know, a really good goalie that can kind of lift them up, you know, at least five spots from the bottom, basically. So, you know, you're not going to trade him away. So do you sort of invest in growing that more and trying to put something, you know, in front of him to build it up faster or, you know, are you trying to get into the, you know, into the McKenna or the DuPont sweepstakes? But that's going to involve basically trading out most of your, your good veteran depth and just acquiring picks. But then, you know, if they're looking at that,

that, you know, horizon of three to five years, they want to be really competitive. Like, that's tough to do if you trade out everything like that. So I don't know. I'm kind of of the mind that keep on going the way they're doing, you know, trade out Anderson because that one's probably not going to work. You know, if you get like basically like an overpay for, you know, a cadre or a Coleman, maybe you trade that out and you take those picks to the bank. But then otherwise, you know, you like, like this year, like we, we were all stressing that we were going to give up that pick and then we ended up picking two spots after that Montreal pick, right? So, and then we end up with a pretty good player out of it. So I'm of the mind that. I'm of the mind

that, you know, just it's a lot of luck involved. So just go with how the cards flow. And, you know, I don't think, I don't think we're going to be in that, that sort of top three sweepstakes over the next two or three years. Like, I think the team is just good enough to stay out of that. So, yeah, it's a difficult spot. But I would kind of keep going the way they're going and just make the value picks where they can.

And if something works out and falls on their lap, you know, like the islanders jumped up how many spots this year, like 10 spots. So if something like that works out with us, which it never does as, you know, the flames have never picked inside the top three, right? So if that finally happens, then great. But otherwise, I think you just have to anticipate that

you're kind of not going to be around that spot and just find value otherwise. I love the hockey conspiracy theorists. It's like, oh, no, no, no. Like, Bedard's going to go to Chicago because Chicago then he starred, it's original sex. And like Jack, Jack is full in on McKenna's going to Pittsburgh.

21 years after Sid, which was 21 years after Mario. It's rigged. Penguins are going to pick first. And then it's like, oh, the Islanders just won. They got a new rink. Gary loves new revenue. New rink. Calgary's got a new rink. They're going to win when they get the ring.

Or we go old school, Gilbert Perrault should have been a Canuck. Sure. That was a real one, trust me. I believe you. I don't know. They are due for some luck, Byron, at some point. They are, but when will it happen? Well, I mean, never is what it feels like, but I mean, they're due.

They are due. I agree. It's been 40 long years of no luck. Yeah. Perennial mediocrity. Thanks for your time, Byron. I do appreciate it. Hockeyprospecting.com.

Plug the website and how people can get involved. I know this time of year, everyone's very excited about the young players in the future, especially when teams are closer to rebuild than contender. But your site is incredibly unique. Does a great job. that you've been tracking your own selection so you can actually over the next decade really see like okay my model outperformed these 18 NHL teams were squared off of this many like these guys do a little bit that's pretty cool yeah well it's it's fine because yeah i tweeted about that and i said you know

this would be my prospect system and then like i got a lot of like feedback back like well of course like you look great in the model it's your model but it's like kind of like well can you see can you see where it's going, though. Can you see the players that are popping up on this list and like four or five years removed from the draft, like how big this list of is of potential people? So, you know, you always hear it from both sides. But yeah, it's been fun. Yeah, you can find me at hockey prospecting.com, subscription-based website. It's 40 bucks a year. And you get access to basically all the stuff I talk about on Twitter. And then I'm at Twitter at Byron M. Bader. And yeah, that's where to find me. Thanks, buddy. Have a great summer. Hope you and the family.

get some lake time, some throwing the ball, and you got the stampede off then done. So that's- We're going to Idaho on Sunday. So we're getting it all checked off the list real quick. Safe travel, buddy. Thank you. All right. See you guys.