The Calgary Flames began their 2022-23 training camp in earnest on Thursday morning, hitting the ice for the first time as a formal group and starting to craft this year’s edition of the team. With a bunch of new faces in camp from an eventful off-season, Thursday was the first time to see everybody together.
As was the approach last season, the Flames’ coaching staff have opted to put together an NHL group, an AHL group, and a third group largely of players that were holdovers from the rookie tournament in Penticton.
— Calgary Flames PR (@NHLFlamesPR) September 22, 2022
Via our pal Pat Steinberg, here’s how lines and pairings looked on the first group:
Jonathan Huberdeau – Elias Lindholm – Tyler Toffoli
Cody Eakin – Nazem Kadri – Sonny Milano
Dillon Dube – Mikael Backlund – Blake Coleman
Milan Lucic – Kevin Rooney – Brett Ritchie
Martin Pospisil – Adam Ruzicka – Trevor Lewis
MacKenzie Weegar – Chris Tanev
Noah Hanifin – Rasmus Andersson
Nikita Zadorov – Nicolas Meloche
@Juuso Valimaki- Michael Stone
Jacob Markstrom
Daniel Vladar
The Flames are obviously without Andrew Mangiapane or Oliver Kylington for the time being, but the forward group is starting to come together in a way that seems to make a lot of sense – if you swap out Eakin for Mangiapane, it looks like a really plausible (and deep) forward group on the first three lines.