The trade deadline can be, in a word, chaos. But thankfully the National Hockey League is regulated by a collective bargaining agreement that attempts to structure that chaos. As the Calgary Flames amble towards what could be a busy deadline, here’s a primer on the weird CBA details you need to know to make sense of it.
Roster spots
The Flames presently have 23 players on their active roster:
- Two goaltenders (David Rittich and Mike Smith)
- Seven defensemen (Rasmus Andersson, Mark Giordano, Dalton Prout, TJ Brodie, Travis Hamonic, Noah Hanifin and Oliver Kylington)
- Fourteen forwards (Derek Ryan, Mikael Backlund, Johnny Gaudreau, James Neal, Matthew Tkachuk, Curtis Lazar, Garnet Hathaway, Sean Monahan, Austin Czarnik, Elias Lindholm, Michael Frolik, Mark Jankowski, Andrew Mangiapane and Sam Bennett)
Michael Stone is on the injury reserve list.