Under Brad Treliving, the Flames have mostly ignored the college system in the draft. With the 25 picks before the 2018 draft, the Flames only selected college bound kids twice (Brandon Hickey and Mitchell Mattson).
This previous draft, they flipped the script and drafted three players who were* headed to college. The switch made sense. In the early Treliving years, the team was bare bones and leaned heavily on CHL talent to quickly ascend to the pros. Now past rebuilding, the Flames could afford to wait a while.
Demetrios Koumontzis was the second college player selected in the 2018 draft.