Barn Burner: Boomer & Pinder with Rhett Warrener - TSN's Darren Dreger On Where The Calgary Flames Go From Here 🤔 | BB Clips

Episode Date: January 4, 2026

Boomer and Rhett are joined by Darren Dreger to talk about the Calgary Flames and try to figure out what on earth is happening. The Flames have battled their way back to .500, making everyone who wrote them off look a little silly — yet it still feels like the smarter long-term path might be selling pieces and committing to a real rebuild. Are the Flames actually turning a corner, or are they just delaying the future again? And where do things go from here?VIDEO LINK: https://youtu.be/XqiTvaYY2AY#nhl #nhlshorts #nhlplayoffs #nhlpredictions #nhlhockey #nhlpicks #stanleycup #stanleycupfinal #calgaryflames #calgary CHECK OUT OUR STUFF ⬇️BARN BURNER 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.

We're in a fog over here. We're in the room. We're trying to figure it out. I feel like Don Maloney's giving us all the double fingers, middle fingers over here. He's like, oh, yeah, you print your Mission McKenna T-shirts. You talk about winning the draft lottery. We're better than this. We'll get the 500 by Christmas and you just wait.

500 by Christmas. What the hell is this guy talking about? Rocker. Well, here we are. Jam 2. they're a point back of a wild card. They're a 500 hockey team. Michael Backland is playing the best hockey of his bloody life.

They can't lose at home. They are, what are they, 10, 1 and 1 in their last 12 on home ice? Yeah. I don't know what the hell's going on, Triggs. We're trying to, I can't think, I refuse to think that we were wrong, but it's looking like maybe we were wrong. Might not have been right either. Yeah, I just took wrong.

Right. Yeah, just a little bit off. That's okay. But it's still early. I mean, we're at the midpoint of this season. And, you know, the flames have been through the mud. They went through it early. A lot of teams did.

But because of the parody that is wild across the national hockey, it may go wire to wire, you know, as long as you manage your lows, you know, you should be okay. You can't have any wild eight, nine, ten game losing skids or pointless streaks or any of that nonsense. And I think for the most part, Calgary has done a decent job of, that. But I still think that you can still look at the Calgary Flames as a whole here and see the holes and see the areas that need to be improved on to have a better future, both short term and longer term. So even though it's fun for the fan base now because the Calgary Flames are in the

playoff mix and they're definitely a competitive group, the messaging I keep getting is that, all right, yeah, that's where we're at. There's no for-sale sign that's going to be put up anytime soon, but there are still pieces that require some attention. And if the right offers are made, and primarily I'm talking about Rasmus Anderson, I think that Craig Conroy has no choice but to make that deal. And maybe in the short term, they get a bit of a bump,

depending on what the return is, if it's a decent NHL player. And you get some futures that help you in the longer term and all of that. So it's still open for business in terms of the approach, I think, of Calgary management. It's just that they've got more patience now because the fan base is happy. The owners are happy because the fans are happy. And it's a fun time of year and a fun place to be when you are in that playoff conversation.

I mean, it was a party at the dome the other night. It's been great atmosphere the last. I was there a couple weeks ago. It was awesome. I'm sure the Edmonton game was great. They won 5-1 a New Year's Eve. It's the mood on and off the ice is great. It's just not great.

Apparently, in this room. Because here's what it is. You know, this guy sitting next to me right here. Yeah. No, he's a realist. Just before you came on, I said, we're about two weeks away from him doing the, you're not going to use all these draft picks.

You may as well try and get some scoring help. I mean, if scoring is, you should try to get some help in here. And you'll have, there's a case to be made for it. I made the idiot comments. I was arguing with your coworker noodles last year, earlier in the year. And I'm like, well, if you're going for the playoffs, then go get a score. Yeah. And if you had, do you make the playoffs?

Because the objective is to make the playoffs, right? And you tied in points. And you tied in time. If you had five more goals from someone, are you in the playoffs? And what happens then? Right. And it's, it could be the same. same scenario.

And I know what my beliefs are long term on what the flame should be doing. Mm-hmm. But if they don't agree with me, then go for it. Right. Don't come up to short. Don't walk the line here and go, are you going for the playoffs? Fine. Go ahead.

Then sell and get in and try to win. But if you're just going to, well, tippy toe around it, F that. I don't like that. So what if this scenario were to play out, Rhett? You know, I mentioned Anderson. I mean, we've speculated on Erasmus. Anderson for over a year now, right? And so what if you get a near-perfect package for him at this point?

And that near-perfect package would have to include Anderson signing a contract extension, right? Otherwise, the team that acquires him isn't giving up a lesser-quality defenseman, maybe a scoring forward if they've got that depth in their organization and a draft pick. And those are the three principal elements that normally go along with a package of this magnitude. especially again given that the expectation would be that you you're able to as the new team extend rasmus anders would you be okay would the flames be okay if they got a little bit of offensive punch coming back as part of a deal maybe a five six defenseman and then not as good a draft pick you know you can't get everything i mean we're not talking about a future bobby or here in rasmus anderson um but you

Is that worth considering or are the needs moving forward more broad than that? And you need that highest level draft pick. And you need that top prospect more than you need the players, the pieces that might help you stay in the playoff mix or lock down a spot. If I'm training Anderson, it's for the future. Okay. Yeah. It's for the future.

And if I'm not committed to to a rebiggle. then I'll keep him. I'll sign his ass. But I think that's what has some fans concerned. If you are on the release, whatever you want to call it, if you're of that way of thinking. Yeah. That if they continue to win and they're 500 and they're there,

well, how can you trade this guy? How can you do that to the locker room? What kind of message does that send to the guys who have fought so hard to put themselves in a spot to be here to then pluck this guy out of the dressing room? We do that. It seems like we do that game every year. Then stop messing around. And we're into the new year here, right?

The trade deadline is March 6th. So there's lots of time for a team to step up to make the decision an easy one for Craig Conroy. And look, if somebody's willing to overpay for Rasmus Anderson, fill your boots. But make Rasmus Anderson make an educated and sound decision sooner rather than later. And what I mean by that is if you actually, look, I know he's a good dude. I haven't found anyone yet who thinks that. Agreed. He's played his ass off for the Calgary. He has. He has. He's a leader in the organization. So all right. Put something on the table. And I'm sure they've had the

parameter conversations of what it would look like. And I'm sure initially, you know, the flames like is kind of like the look at that. Okay, well, put something competitive on the table where Anderson's got to make, he's got to make the call. I want to stay in Calgary because I believe in the organization. You know, maybe there's some selling on management's point to Rasmus that, okay, you're getting the contract you deserve. But on top of that, here's what we're going to do to try and make it better short term and then longer term.

And that's where it gets a bit more complicated. But we're not talking about a year from now. We're talking about weeks. That's really the window that they're looking at now and dealing with this. I'm not sure what they'll do. Yeah, like I don't. That, that seems like a feasible approach. We've kind of tiptoed and all we're not, we don't talk.

We don't talk once we get into the season. You know that's bullshit. Look, you've talked about wanting to stay. We're happy to keep you. We've been so far apart in numbers. Let's cut through the shit. The cap's going up. We've got out of cap space.

Here's, there's tons of cap space and the caps going up and I get, Pindier is always yelling in our ear saying, well, they're not. No one's going to be up against the cap because it's going up so fast. I don't understand it. It's like, well, then why don't you just pay that guy? Yeah, well, just to quickly jump in here, where Pinder is wrong in that assessment, the cap can climb to $120 million. That doesn't mean that 30 teams are going anywhere near a $120 million salary cap.

And Calgary might be in that group, right? Where you just look, I mean, Colorado is the best team in the National Hockey League by a long shot. And the avalanche owners, even though they're filthy rich, aren't going to be a group that says, okay, spend the 120. No, they're going to our internal organizational salary cap is X. And that, you know, not to go down a CBA path here, but that does have some of the owners a little bit concerned because now you do differentiate between the haves and the have-nots. There will be owners, maybe Calgary's in that group that say, no, you know what, we feel

we can put a competitive team on the ice for $110 million. And that's all you're going to get. That's all you're going to get. It can climb to whatever it is. So the cap is the cap is for teams that are in a position like Vegas,

like Dallas, who are going to swing for the fence every single year, every single year. And they have, and they have the pick of the litter because players want to go to those destinations on top of that, right?

Isn't it kind of funny how it's coming back? Because the cap is, instituted so that everyone had to the playing fields are all the same to a certain extent yeah the Tronos the Rangers they couldn't just go and cite everybody yeah well if they're the only

ones if the cap gets so high the Buffalo Sabres can't compete in a they're not gonna win a big go down the list not a cap the differences make yeah no it's fair it's fair Thank you.