Calgary Flames assign defender Yan Kuznetsov to the AHL’s Wranglers

A second-round selection of the Flames back in 2020, the 21-year-old Kuznetsov was called up on Friday following the injury to Dennis Gilbert in Thursday’s game in Nashville. Essentially, Gilbert becoming unavailable dropped the Flames to having just six available defencemen heading into a back-to-back set in Philadelphia and Chicago. That would leave them vulnerable to any last-minute injury or illness situations that arose, so they summoned Kuznetsov from the AHL as insurance. The three days in the NHL represented his first-ever recall.

Kuznetsov ended up not making his NHL debut, but when you consider the situation it made a lot of sense. They opted for an off-ice workout – visiting the Rocky Stairs – in Philadelphia on their non game-day in an effort to conserve energy given all the travel, and combined with a pair of matinees, Kuznetsov didn’t really get a chance to practice with the NHL group. The Flames have tried to set up their rookies for success this season, and throwing Kuznetsov into game situations cold wouldn’t really do that.

After Kuznetsov’s assignment to the AHL, the Flames have 22 players on their active roster (two goaltenders, seven defencemen and 13 forwards) and three players on the injury/non-roster list. They’re now at $82.894 million in cap commitments, which puts them $549,000 below their accruable cap space limit and so they’re banking cap space again.

The Flames are back in action on Tuesday evening when they host the Ottawa Senators.