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FlamesNation coaching evaluation: the assistants

The Calgary Flames debuted two brand-new faces behind their bench in 2018-19 as supports for new head coach Bill Peters. They primarily used three coaches to assist Peters with various aspects of the game.

Geoff Ward

Ward came to the Flames in the off-season, hired away from the Boston Bruins by way of a promotion to associate coach. Ward’s primary responsibilities were managing the forwards, the power play, and assisting Peters with in-game adjustments (with the assistance of Martin Gelinas, the team’s “eye in the sky”).

The Flames ran with four pretty consistent forward tandems:

  • Johnny Gaudreau – Sean Monahan – Elias Lindholm
  • Matthew Tkachuk – Mikael Backlund – Michael Frolik
  • Sam Bennett – Mark Jankowski – James Neal
  • Andrew Mangiapane – Derek Ryan – Garnet Hathaway

The successes of the forward groupings were the strong first two-thirds of the season for the top line, especially their offensive outbursts, and the emergence of the fourth line as a consistent offensive contributor.