ScorchStack, Issue #4: The Worst Calgary Flames of all time
We made it to four (and a bonus) whole issues. That means it's time for a special issue
Earlier in Offseason 1.0, we were feeling optimistic. Covid numbers were still low enough that we thought two or three weeks inside would put this whole pandemic business to bed. The government was going to pay us to stay home. Ordering takeout was not a shameful admission that we have no culinary skills, but a heroic gesture to keep the local economy afloat. The world had been turned upside down, but maybe that’s what it needed.
We were without sports, but the sports media had to heroically trudge on and remind us of the good times. TSN and Sportsnet both ran pieces about the all-time Flames roster. It was pointless navel gazing, but in a world that was shaping up to be offseason content for a long time, maybe reminding people of the special bonds they had with these athletes meant something.
Now, it is Offseason 2.0. Hockey came and went, a surreal two weeks of brief joy followed by familiar stinging pain that, no, life is not different, it has not changed. The government is now no longer giving you money, but assuring you that things are normal even as it is increasingly apparent that it isn’t. We are going back to school, back to restaurants, back to the office, even as the evidence piles up that this is what is causing the cases to rise. We are back to being sacrifices for the money gods.
We are miserable. We are in hell. Here is the hockey team from hell.
Who gets to be on the team?
The only statistical threshold to cross was a minimum 50 games played for the Flames, and 20 for goalies. We’re not including draft busts and AHL call-ups who were over their head. You had to hold down a job in the NHL and be bad at it. No one-shit wonders.
As for what constitutes “the worst,” it’s a mixed bag. There’s the obvious quality of just being bad at hockey, but there’s also the subjective factors of underperforming modest expectations, being a media/fan darling regardless of on-ice performances, being a shitty player loved by the coaches for baffling reasons, and the unexplainable revulsion some players just inspire. All six of us voted on the list with our own reasons in mind, and then we stripped it down to a whole game day roster of barf.
So without further adieu, here is our selections for the all-time worst Calgary Flames.
Goaltenders
Trevor Kidd, 1991-97: 178 GP, .898 SV%
by floob
Everyone familiar with the situation will tell you that any General Manager on earth would have drafted Trevor Kidd where the Flames did. Disregard these people. They are your inferiors.
Doug Risebrough could have done nothing and had Martin Brodeur delivered on a silver platter. They could have not drafted a goalie in the first round and given a shot to, I don’t know, Keith Tkachuk. Wouldn’t THAT be something? Although this probably changes the trajectory of Big Walt’s whole life and maybe that ends up with Matthew never being born and you know what, they could have had Martin Brodeur.
Instead, the Flames traded up with New Jersey to get Trevor Kidd with the 11th overall pick in the 1990 NHL draft. New Jersey, picking in the Flames spot, “gambled” on Brodeur. I know he’s overrated too, but I would tolerate those Enterprise commercials a whole bunch more if I had experienced a lifetime of Brodeur in a Flames jersey. Instead, we got four years of THE KIDDER (fuck him for making me call him that)
Alas, death comes for us all, and for the Calgary Flames, it came in the form of Trevor Kidd. He was supposed to be good! When you trade up in the first round to get A Guy, there are certain expectations you have for that player, and, well...one day we’ll learn it’s imprudent to hope.
Remember that when Kidd, uh, established himself as a full time NHLer in Calgary, it was only 5 years on from an exceptional team that had won a Stanley Cup and challenged for others on so many occasions. Certainly they were in the early phases of dismantling the core pieces that made that team so powerful in the 80’s, but they were still a plenty competitive team, and there were expectations that came with that which would be flatly extinguished. Starting goaltender Mike Vernon, a fraud in his own right, was on his way out of town to fight Patrick Roy in the playoffs, and Kidd was left to be the avatar for what was to be known as the new brand of Flames hockey: Being quickly dispatched in the first round a lot and then never making the playoffs again for what felt like a decade.
Over the course of his tenure in Cowtown, Kidd treated fans to a number of unexplained and unearned starts, floundering under the expectations. What followed was an increasing trend of being overshadowed by the team’s various backup goalies, Kidd bemoaning the shared crease time with these various Rolosons and Tabaraccis, leading to their exodus, allowing Kidd yo retain the bulk of the starting assignments, and performing just poorly enough to start the cycle all over again but somehow worse.
Trevor Kidd was traded on August 25th, 1997. Miikka Kiprusoff was 2275 excruciating days away.
One quick final note: Thanks to the wayback machine, his personal website is still accessible. I unironically love it. Play the Flash game called Shoot The Puck. You are down 5-0 to the Panthers and you have to score as many goals as you can on Trevor Kidd to win the game before the clock runs out. It is exceptionally easy. It sucks and I love it so much. There are the most underwhelmed voiceovers in the game you will ever hear and I’m relatively certain they are provided by the big man himself. If you take one thing away from this week’s issue, please let it be that I NEED you to look at it.
Mike Smith, 2017-19: 97 GP, .909 SV%
by floob
(It dawned on me writing the Kidd section and now the Mike Smith section that these two goalies are the exact same person)
I set out to write this section on former Flames goaltender Mike Smith, but then I astutely observed I was in a good mood and stepped away from my computer, knowing that had I pressed on, I would rise from my chair, walk out of the room, not stopping until I arrived in the waiting area of a therapist’s office.
It took some time, but now I’m back and in a considerably worse headspace, so let’s have a chat about Mike Smith. I am convinced the only people in the world who hate Mike Smith more than I do are his wife and kids, so this was a tough one to get to.
Mike Smith plays goal like he’s in the middle of an exorcism, let’s just get that out of the way. Never have I seen a goalie so frequently give a puck dumped into the corner a fighting chance at finding the back of the net. Before Mike Smith, I had never seen a shot labelled for the top corner slip through a goalie’s five hole. Instead of watching a shot and reacting to it like any normal damn goalie would, The Mike Smith Strategy For A Puck Fired From The Red Line Or Closer was to guess. That’s it. Guess where the end location was. Usually that location was behind him. I am convinced he was trying to utilize whatever it is he believes to be sonar. Like he’s a dolphin. I believe Mike Smith might be a dolphin. A dolphin and an asshole. Gee whiz, what an asshole. Nobody on earth can botch four routine shots in one game and blame his teammates for the loss the way Mike Smith can.
Everyone knew he sucked EXCEPT for those who pulled a headset over their ears and plied their trade in an NHL broadcast booth. Hockey Men always called him a third defenseman in reference to his puck handling skills, which sounds nice, but what they never told you is that defenseman was Cory Sarich. I’ve squandered precious time determining if I love anything as absurdly shitty as Sportsnet loves Mike Smith; the closest thing I could surmise was that brief two minute window between eating at Subway and having an upset stomach.
WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT ARE YOU DOING? WHAT IN THE UNBELIEVABLE FUCK ARE YOU DOING?
The above video ruined Jarome Iginla night, which I do not need to tell you as you will also never, EVER forget, and I do not believe I’m being hyperbolic by saying that dismal performance was so unforgivable it should have been punishable by death.
I once claimed I never wanted to see Mike Smith venture anywhere three inches beyond the confines of his crease. I have since amended that desire, allowing for him to trek as far as is required to reach the bottom of the ocean.
He is somehow both a human and a spore. A fun game I liked to play was to count the number of times a broadcaster would say how well Smith was playing at the same time a graphic on screen would display his sub 900 (sub 800?) save percentage. I swear it happened like twelve times. I can’t watch Mike Smith replays without hearing a slide whistle in my head. One day I’m going to tap dance on his bones.
Also Mike Smith plays for the Edmonton Oilers now, so he is my favourite goalie.
Cut from the team:
Henrik Karlsson (bad nickname)
Jeff Reese (managed to let in a bunch of goals in the lowest scoring era the NHL has ever seen)
Joey MacDonald (plenty of reasons)
Reto Berra (bad in everything but the shootouts, tied to drafting Hunter Smith in the second round even though that’s not really his fault)
Defence
Dennis Wideman, 2012-17: 280 GP, 32G-104A-136P
by Konnie
Once touted as an effective Offensive Defenceman before his rights were acquired by the Flames, Dennis Wideman proceeded to be alright, save for his 56 point season in 2014-15.
But let’s be real, the only reason we even remember Wideman for his blatant crosscheck to the back of referee Don Henderson, effectively ending his career and ruining his life. What followed was probably the weakest defence (hehe) of their actions on the ice, with Wideman infamously texting a teammate and saying “the only problem and the only reason I’m here is cause the stupid refs and stupid media”. he was promptly suspended 20 games for the event, which got later reduced to 10 games because of an arbitrator who did not feel like putting any effort in his decision.
His suspension created a conspiracy, in which the referees were now against the Flames at all costs, especially whenever Wideman was playing. The paranoia levels got to the point where the actual team itself believed it to be true and launched a formal complaint to the league that the team was getting unfairly treated on calls. In reality however, the tangible theory surrounding Wideman’s suspension was the fact it happened so close to the trade deadline, it would effect their plans of trading Kris Russell.
Usually, a player has to be pretty bad over a period of time to be one of the worst players of a franchise, but if there was any player to get it over a single event, it would definitely be Dennis Wideman. It also helps that he was absolute dogshit after the suspension was over.
Kris Russell, 2013-16: 198 GP, 15G-63A-78P
by Christian
Saying that Kris Russell was among the worst Flames of all time would have been sacrilege three years ago. Even just merely questioning how valuable he actually was sparked one of the most heated 960 radio segments ever. Take a listen, if you haven’t.
Kris Russell is best understood as a transhumanist art installation that presents the human body as a disposable vessel against progress, the misunderstanding of it as heroic ideal part of the package. I am sure in the future when we are all uploaded to the cloud and exist only as data, we will all have a great time running memories.exe and laugh.wav when we remember the dumb hockey man who willingly dived 658 times in front of hard rubber flying at 90 miles per hour to make Bob Hartley happy.
Before you wedgie me for making art jokes based on obscure political theory, I’ll put it in regular English: Russell wasn’t any good at defence, but wowed people by blocking a lot of shots. Instead of working to prevent the shot, he just got in the way of it by lying down on the ice, which is supposed to be the emergency solution if nothing else has worked. That was always his first option.
Instead of being rightfully admonished as a shitty defender, people thought he was defeating those damn calculator nerds and their spreadsheets by using superior tactics (again, Bob Hartley was his coach) to defeat corsi hockey. If the game he was playing was so unsustainable, how come he managed to sustain it? Checkmate (don’t look up how sustainable this was after the 2015 first round), atheists.
We’ll give Russell a few pats on the back for how his post-Flames career has played out. The trade that sent him to Dallas returned the pick that selected Dillon Dube. Then he signed a hilarious 4x4 contract with Edmonton. Also this:
Great dude in that regard. On ice? Go to hell.
Chris Butler, 2011-14: 194 GP, 5G-34A-39P
by Nathan
Jay Feaster will be remembered for a lot of blunders as the Flames’ GM (remember the Ryan O’Reilly debacle?) but perhaps his greatest hit was trading fan favourites for garbage. While bigger names usually dominate that, his first example of this was in 2011 trading away Robyn Regehr (old, nowhere near as good or beloved as his 2004 days) for Chris Butler (24 at the time, yet somehow worse than an aging Regehr???) He didn’t even shop around on the deal!
Butler did absolutely nothing. He had no offensive prowess, wasn’t good at defending, didn’t log big minutes. Yet, he was frequently a top four choice among defenders at the time, and often top two. He had no calling card, except going down on the ice a lot. Then the Flames acquired Kris Russell, and he wasn’t even known for doing that anymore. Butler tied an NHL record once for the worst +/- in a game, registering a -7 against Boston in January of 2012. Yeah, +/- is a garbage, but so was Chris Butler, so the two go hand-in-hand. (ed. note: Butler was also on the ice for a powerplay goal against that game, so he was even worse than that suggests.)
The fact that he’s technically a Stanley Cup champion because of his last season in St. Louis is a travesty. More than Jay Bouwmeester, because at least Bouwmeester played in the playoffs that year.
Michael Stone, 2016-20: 148 GP, 7G-21A-28P
by Ramina
Listen, I appreciate the Flames commitment to obtaining every Mike in the league, but this one went too far. Here’s the thing about Michael Stone: He’s not the worst defender out there but he’s also not not the worst defender out there. Sure he’s quite slow and doesn’t have the best hockey IQ, but at least he’s also bad with the puck.
After his contract was up in 2017, I wrote an article saying something like “The Flames shouldn’t re-sign Michael Stone” and one hour later they re-signed him to a three-year contract. So that was cool, sorry everyone.
I don’t know why they re-signed him. With an AAV of $3.5 million too. And this was after he underperformed and was on the second/third pairing for most of his season since being traded to the Flames. Look, I’m no scientist, but I don’t think it’s a good idea to pay $3.5 million for a third pairing defender for the next three years. That’s just me. The one thing he can do is shoot a hard shot, but it doesn’t help when you’re in your own zone most of the time, and when you finally get a chance, you can’t even shoot it on goal.
Silver lining is that nothing came out of the two picks Arizona originally obtained but didn’t get due to other trades. I don’t fully understand it all because I’m stupid, but the two picks went to New Jersey and Edmonton, and none of the two players have done anything, that’s all you need to know.
Anders Eriksson, 2007-08: 61GP, 1G-17A-18P
by Christian
The late 90s Detroit Red Wings were undoubtedly some of the best teams in the NHL’s history. They could do whatever and still power their way to the Cup. Case in point, they drafted Anders Eriksson in the first round, won a cup with him, traded him for Chris Chelios, and then laughed as he spent the rest of his career floundering around the league, making bad decisions everywhere he went.
Eriksson was 24 when he was traded for Chelios. At age 27, he had been sent back to the AHL. During the lockout, he went back to Europe where he looked to stay for the rest of his career, but managed to make his way back to Columbus at age 32. The Flames picked him up at age 33 (fun fact: they also signed him to a one year deal right before the lockout- they got a mulligan on him and still went for it when he was older and shittier).
So what happens when a guy who flunked out of the clutch-and-grab era in his prime years despite being a clutch-and-grab player returns to the new NHL while also being significantly older? He gets to play the bulk of the season because Darryl Sutter is his GM.
Steve Staios, 2009-11: 57 GP, 4G-9A-13P
by floob
(Time to pull the curtain back a little bit here. In putting together this team, we here at the ScorchStack compiled a list of every Flame who had suited up for at least 50 games, with all of us checking off the names of the players we felt was bad enough to make it. From there, the players who were either selected unanimously or had more votes than anyone else at their position filled out our roster. Ultimately, we had two positions that we needed tiebreaker votes to declare a winner. One of the tiebreakers was the last center position between Mark Smith and Markus Granlund. The other was choosing the last defenseman, that being either Steve Staios and Deryk Engelland.
I had voted for Engelland and had written this blurb under the assumption he would win.
Which he did not.
So instead of starting fresh with a new entry, what I’ve done is altered this section and edited out any instance where I mentioned Deryk Engelland by name, replacing it with Steve Staios. Let’s see if you notice a difference)
For reasons that to this day remain unclear, Flames General Manager Brad Treliving lost his damn mind on July 1st, 2014.
Known as Free Agent Frenzy around the hockey world, it is a day where all the top unrestricted free agents in the NHL have their shackles removed and are allowed to sign big money contracts on new teams, their earning power at its absolute peak in that moment. Often, you will see players command far more money than they are worth. Exploiting the marketplace of desperation for all you can is just all part of the process.
Then there was the curious case of Steve Staios. Already a 32 year old journeyman defenseman used primarily for depth and a little bit of toughness, Steve Staios was certainly not the kind of player who any team would value as a prize free agent. Undeterred, and with an apparently miraculous agent, Steve Staios met with Treliving, somehow emerging with a three year deal, worth $2.9 million per season, an almost $2.4 million annual raise over his last contract in Pittsburgh; a team he recorded 12 points in 56 games for the season prior where you were bound to get 30 points just by accidentally being around when Sidney Crosby and Evgeni Malkin were on the ice.
This deal was so zany that TSN’s Bob McKenzie has to clarify that the deal was for $2.9 million annually and not the total sum, which was bad enough on it’s own, as Steve Staios was not a good defenseman.
Over the course of his tenure in Calgary, Steve Staios lived up to the contract by providing the following highlights:
Fighting two Canucks at one time at the end of a game during a 2014-15 first round playoff matchup against the Vancouver Canucks
That’s it
Indeed, Steve Staios was lauded for his leadership abilities, grit, and steady defensive play, none of which was true or particularly mattered at all, nor was it worth what he cost the team financially during that time. In fact, I am convinced that all the grief Steve Staios left at the feet of TJ Brodie - by replacing Mark Giordano, having himself a Norris calibre year cut short due to injury, as Brodie’s partner - was the sole catalyst for the downfall we saw out of Brodie in the years to come. Steve Staios has not been missed.
Cut from the team
Deryk Engelland- narrowly outvoted in the tiebreaker (or was he?)
Forwards
LW- Craig Berube, 1992-93, 2001-03: 234 GP, 10G-17A-27P
by floob
Long before Craig Berube was guiding the St. Louis Blues to a Stanley Cup victory that I feel will have long lasting and negative implications for the future of entertaining hockey, he was being relieved of his duties as head coach of the Philadelphia Flyers. Prior to that, he was responsible for some of the most terrible hockey the Calgary Flames had ever seen.
Craig Berube was a, let’s say featured piece of the trade that sent Doug Gilmour to the Leafs in return for all the garbage Toronto had lying around. Like Craig Berube. Craig Berube was part of that garbage. I don’t need to revisit this trade. If you’re familiar with the existence of the Calgary Flames, someone has told you about this trade. I hate this fucking trade.
Berube played four seasons for the Flames, two years following his trade to the team, and two more exactly a decade later, when he was on the 18th green of his career, and he was only marginally worse. In his first season with the Flames, he was outpaced in points by Mike Vernon (please don’t research this, there is some context to this that undermines my point and I spent all my energy for this feature complaining about goalies).
The Flames flipped him to Washington for a draft pick, and over the next 6 seasons with stints in Washington, Philadelphia, and Long Island, he would rack up a whopping 78 points in 545 games. Also he would utter a racial slur during a game towards Peter Worrell.
All of this was enough to convince the Flames to bring him back. Hockey is for everyone. Even Craig Berube.
December 8th, 2001:
Berube was the Main Offender for this absolutely bananas 22 minute brawl between the Flames and Mighty Ducks that apparently is only available on video that was filmed on a knitted sweater. If you don’t want to watch the full video, I do not blame you, but here is the box score for that game. lol.
It was one of the craziest things I have ever seen in one game, and Berube started it all. Which I guess is pretty cool. Anyway the Flames lost that game convincingly, and Jarome Iginla had 52 goals and 96 points that season, but the Flames had players like Craig Berube, so the Flames missed the playoffs. A line brawl or the best player in the game looking to taste postseason glory: who is to say which would have been better?
C- Jason Wiemer, 1997-2001, 2005-06: 252 GP, 34G-32A-66P
by floob
While I do not think about Jason Wiemer very often, I do think about him way more than anyone not related to him ever should. From time to time that name will float into my ears, and the above quote from my friend Rory will invariably be the first item that comes to my mind. It’s what he said to me, I believe in earnest, leading up to the 2005 NHL trade deadline after Wiemer had signed on to play his second stint with the Calgary Flames.
“Do you think a team out there would go for that?” was what I remember replying.
Jason Wiemer had a 96 point draft year in the WHL with Portland, convincing Tampa Bay to allocate the 8th overall pick in 1994 on him (to be fair, look at this abysmal draft class). They then spent the next four years trying to recover from blistering sticker shock, as he defined himself as a bad player on a humdrum team. In 1998, hyping him up as a tough guy and “worse at his role than Sandy McCarthy”, the Lightning offered him up to Calgary for Sandy McCarthy and two draft picks, one of which would become Brad Richards. For reasons unknown, Flames GM Al Coates agreed to the deal, and Brad Richards would go on to break the hearts of every Flames fan alive a few years later.
Anyway, most of the career highlights for Wiemer’s time in Calgary can be found on hockeyfights dot com, the Jason Wiemer of websites, which you should not do because none of that is worth your time. Jason Wiemer should not have been worth anyone’s time, and yet, the Flames brought him back after the 2004 lockout. It didn’t work out. It never could.
As a side note, I always think his name should be spelled Weimer, but it isn’t. Fuck him.
RW- Garnet Hathaway, 2015-19: 175GP, 16G-24A-40P
by Konnie
If there is one thing that Flames fandom loves, it is talentless goons making the team after grinding their way in minors. While Hathaway is by far the most attractive player on this list, his hockey skill lack so far behind in comparison, so it’s only surprising we know of him as a hockey player and not as a supermodel.
Despite a rather lacklustre tenure during his time at Brown University and the Adirondack Flames/Stockton Heat, Hathaway always caught the eye of management for his rough style of play. He would get called up, despite players like Andrew Mangiapane being better in every way, get inserted in to the lineup and be a net negative player. He couldn’t drive offence to save his life, would bleed chances against like a hemophiliac, and would take dumb penalties cause of his stupid “grinding” style of play.
And yet, go to any ask any Boiler Bob from Chestermere, and they insist that his style of play is what the Flames really needed and was bringing more to the table than Johnny Gaudreau. Garnet Hathaway would spend a whole night of being a liability on the ice, and he would get nothing but praise because “oh well he tries hard out there on the ice”. A true 200 Hockey Men player.
LW- Brandon Bollig, 2014-15: 125GP, 3G-6A-9P
by Nathan
Brandon Bollig came to be a Calgary Flame in two of the most disappointing ways possible. First, he was a patented Brian Burke truculence trade which whatever. Maybe John Tortorella was going to storm the dressing room again. Second, the Flames helped out Chicago by taking their salary dump of a plug and giving them a third round pick. Somehow, even with the bar for Bollig's expectations set lower than a limbo bar for ants, he still managed to be a disappointment.
I recall an article comparing the 2010 vs. 2013 roster of Chicago’s teams - and which players filled the same role - that said Bollig was the next Bryan Bickell. It was a bad article, but I’ll be damned if the Flames front office didn’t have the same thought and thought they were striking gold. The only problem with that is that Bickell actually could play hockey when he wasn’t in the box for truculence, and Brandon Bollig’s best highlight during a sports broadcast was when it was discovered he was a child actor.
I actually went and found what fellow Scorchstacker Mike had to say about this, because the Flames were so bad with Bollig that it was a better use of his time to blog about Bollig as a child actor instead of watching the game. Here’s what he said:
“With his acting dreams behind him, Bollig looks to help the Flames overcome an incredible adversary by way of the Ducks by way of grinding it out and being physical on the fourth line. The Flames trail 5-0 right now in the third period.”
Look for a review of that film soon for Scorchstack, and thus the debate can begin over who was worse: Brandon Bollig the hockey player, or Brandon Bollig the actor.
C- Mark Jankowski, 2016-20: 206GP, 36G-28A-64P
by Ramina
Mark Jankowski was drafted in the first round in 2012 and has not been good at all since then. It seems like the Flames really hold on to those first-round picks because they don’t want to admit they could be busts. But alas.
Here’s the thing about Jankowski. He will have one very good game, score anywhere between two and five goals that game, and then do absolutely nothing for the next 40 games. Yet the Flames keep him around for that one good game he may or may not have every few months. I will give him a little bit of credit, though. His dick-goals/60 are probably one of the highest in the league.
Hey remember when Jay Feaster said Jankowski will be the best player from the 2012 draft ten years later? Two more years baby! There’s still time!
Here’s a fun game if you guys want to make yourselves unnecessarily angry. Look up the 2012 NHL Draft and look at all the players who were drafted ahead of him.
RW- Troy Brouwer, 2016-18: 150GP, 19G-28A-47P
by Nathan
Troy Brouwer was doomed the moment he signed in Calgary. Why? He was part of the worst free agency in recent history, the fateful summer of 2016. While he wasn’t the worst deal signed that day, his four-year deal worth $18 million was never going to be worth it.
However, what truly endeared Brouwer to Flames fans was just how badly he didn’t even try to live up to it. Despite given ample amounts of Brouwerplay time by Glen Gulutzan - who truly didn’t know how to make things work beside angrily trying the same thing over and over again before furrowing his eyebrow and giving it one last shot - Brouwer scored just nineteen goals in two seasons before being bought out. That’s a nearly 1:1 ratio of goals to millions that he signed for. That’s bad.
Thankfully, the Flames learned two valuable lessons from Brouwer. One was that it would be a terrible idea to throw a bunch of money at a free agent who had a massively overinflated sense of self-worth that would become a lightning rod for entirely warranted criticism who refused to adapt to changing circumstances. The second was that nearly every free agent signing from 2016 was horrific, so none of those contracts are worth touching no matter what, especially one that was for seven years worth $42 million that was even more egregious and had a no-movement clause.
I love learning lessons.
LW- Brandon Prust, 2006-09, 2009-10: 78GP, 2G-5A-7P
by Nathan
Brandon Prust is notable on here because it’s one of the few worst Flames who got to come back and even further degrade their legacy. However, the difference is that it was months apart instead of years like the others, which makes you wonder just what the Flames saw in Prust that necessitated bringing him back.
It certainly wasn’t his play on the ice, as he managed just a single goal in both of his stints in Calgary. He didn’t even have the leverage to demand being put into games and making his team lose, as he would go on to do with Vancouver.
You really hope it wasn’t for his off-ice contributions, in which Prust has revealed himself to be a racist. He’s very predictably fought back against reverse racism, which is just another fight he’s lost in his career. Actually, Prust’s relationship with hockey and racism is very complimentary, in that he thinks he’s the good guy when the everything else about him tells a different story.
Absolutely bewildering that the Flames brought him back. Maybe it was because they knew Prust would need those games to crack Scorchstack’s Worst Flames of All Time list. Wow, even then our legacy preceded us.
C- Steve Begin, 1997-2003, 2012-13: 159GP, 15G-11A-26P
by Christian
When that’s how they how announce your arrival, you know things are going to go well.
Steve Begin wasn’t very good during his original tenure with the Flames, where he was a blue-collar (read: bad), hard-working (read: bad), no-nonsense (read: bad) player. He won the AHL playoffs MVP trophy with the Saint John Flames with a shock 17 point performance in 19 games, which was enough to catapult him into being a full time NHLer. This being the early 2000s, it was just accepted that you needed at least five blue-collar NHLers on your roster. After the team moved on, you figured he would just go to the dustbin of history.
Nope, Begin returned to the Flames when they hired another guy coasting off his early 2000s success in the 2010s. Never mind that he had already been out of hockey due to injury for a year and had played a grand sum of two NHL games since the start of the 2010 season, he was here to provide identity to a team that everyone knew was going to be stripped for parts at the trade deadline.
The man returned from injury only to get a worse injury and probably spend the rest of his life in pain because Bob Hartley needed him for a lockout shortened season. That was not a smart thing to do!
Oh, also Floob tells me that the Flames cut bait with Martin St. Louis because of how much they liked Begin. He can’t find a source for it, but he is old so I trust him.
RW- Curtis Lazar, 2017-19: 70GP, 3G-12A-15P
by Christian
The fastest way to figure out if a player is a fraud is this: if everything about him seems to suggest he sucks but a lot of people rave about how young he is and how much potential he has, he is a fraud.
Lazar was a fraud, and he stands out more so than others because of just how hard the Flames tried to turn Lazar into Lazarus. Objectively only good at two things, smiling and skating kinda fast in a straight line, here are a few things people actually thought about him:
He could be a top six RW, and should be with Monahan and Gaudreau
He’s a great penalty killer, one of the elite ones in the league
He is a great two way player and should play on the second line
He could score 40 points in the bottom six
Yes, I went back to the FlamesNation comment section for those. They are real comments, you can go look at them if you want to.
You don’t even need the benefit of hindsight to know that none of those things were ever true about Lazar. On ice, he contributed nothing. He couldn’t shoot. He wasn’t able to retrieve the puck or do much with it besides make an extremely safe pass with no one else around. Occasionally you would see a flashy streak go down the bottom of the screen and that would be Curtis Lazar, but if he didn’t put himself offside, the other team had already taken back the puck and he had taken himself completely out of the play.
None of this mattered, somehow. Here are some of the excuses for why he didn’t hit the lofty goals set by the people who didn’t think they set lofty goals. Again, all real:
He had mono (that sucks, but why does it matter a year later)
The Senators ruined him (so why would you trade for him)
The coaches don’t know how to use him (partially true: they should’ve scratched him for every single game, but I don’t think this is what they were getting at)
He played with Connor McDavid in the World Juniors, he can be great (we don’t have Connor McDavid and we aren’t playing against Austrian teenagers)
He had potential (so does everything, that’s how physics works)
He’s young (and still shitty)
It may sound like my beef is with Curtis Lazar fans, but I assure you that he would still make this list if he was just regular shitty instead of over-hyped shitty. It just adds to the fun of dunking on Lazar, as I also get to dunk on a bunch of other people too.
I believe that there are multiple Flames fans who have said more positive things about Lazar than any of the actually good players on the Flames, even though he has been off the team for two years. Of all the hills to die on, they picked a gutter.
LW- James Neal, 2018-19: 63GP, 7G-12A-19P
by Konnie
If I were to sit a Flames fan down and told them to watch a random game from the 2018-19 season, there is a 95% chance that they could not tell whether or not James Neal was playing that game. Brought in as the missing piece to the Flames offence to provide some much needed help on the right wing, he did absolutely none of that, being absolutely invisible most of the time he was out there.
It’s one thing to have an offensive player to go through a bad season where it just did not seem like the puck was ever go in, but when it came to Neal, he just never did anything. Sure he shot around 5%, but Neal was an absolute drag whenever he was out there and just could not get anything going with any teammate regardless of who he played with.
So, with only a year into a 5 year, 5.75 million dollar AAV deal, he was at the point where buying him out was the only thing the team could do. Not only did the team, the media and the fans hate him, he hated them all back. The only way to get rid of him was to trade him to Edmonton, forcing the Flames to take back Milan Lucic and a 3rd round pick.
C- Mark Smith, 2007-08: 54GP, 1G-3A-4P
by Christian
I don’t remember Mark Smith. No one at the ScorchStack really does, either. You’d think that would be disqualifying as there’s no grand, shining Mark Smith moment to hate, but sometimes there are things hiding in the negative space of an image.
I would compare the Mark Smith experience to being a vegan and eating an absolutely delicious meal only to learn later that a boatload of animal byproducts were in the dish. At no point did I want or ask for it, and it goes against my values to have consumed it, but it is now too late and I have to live with the guilt.
So in 2007-08, I undoubtedly watched every Flames game and cheered for Mark Smith for 54 games. He was a part of the team that saw Jarome Iginla score 50 goals and hit 98 points, his best ever season. Mark Smith spent 54 games sharing ice with Iginla on God Mode and did absolutely nothing. He was the guy who only made the team because Darryl Sutter remembered him from San Jose, and who only occupied a roster spot because the Flames were extremely capped out and could only bring the cheapest, warmest bodies to fill out the roster.
It was 2020 when I learned about Mark Smith shitting up the greatest ever Jarome Iginla season, and it sucked to learn that in a year that has been filled to the brim with suck. I feel guilty that I cheered for him and enjoyed the hockey team he was playing on. I do not remember anything about Mark Smith, but knowing he was there all along doing absolutely nothing of value while a year burned off Jarome Iginla’s prime sickens me. Fuck you, Mark Smith.
RW- Ales Kotalik, 2009-11: 52 GP, 7G-4A-11P
by Konnie
Oh, Ales Kotalik. He was traded to the Flames alongside a guy named Chris Higgins in 2010 despite having a lacklustre scoring season and a prominent healthy scratch in exchange for Olli Jokinen and Brandon Prust, a guy who is on this list too. Shockingly, Kotalik continued to under-perform in Calgary. A lot. In fact, he was so underwhelming, he got waived. Twice. He had 5 points whenever he did get into the lineup. So how did he stay in the organization despite the team wanting nothing to do with him? Well he had a 3 year deal that was paying him 3 million dollars of course! WITH A NO TRADE CLAUSE TO BOOT!
After a blistering 6 points in 26 games with the Flames in 2010-11 season, he was promptly traded away to Buffalo in the Robyn Regehr trade. Yes, he was so bad that Buffalo was only willing to take him (keep in mind the Sabres originally drafted this guy) by sending their best defensive defenceman at the time AND a 2nd round pick in 2012. For Paul Byron (who still should be a Flame if not for the fear of losing Joni Ortio) and Chris Butler, another guy who is on this list. The Flames could not even convince the team that drafted him he was worth anything.
The deal was so bad, that when the 2012 NHL draft rolled around, they needed to acquire a 2nd rounder to recoup their loss. Which lead to the Flames trading with Buffalo again to move from the #14 overall pick down to #21 while recouping a 2nd. They picked Mark Jankowski and Pat Sieloff. Woohoo.
Within a span of 2 years, Kotalik was a part of a bad trade to get to Calgary, sucked hard, then got shipped out of town in an even worse trade to Buffalo and then influenced another terrible trade. Kotalik never played another game in the NHL and yet, the Flames still feel the influence of his terribleness.
Cut from the team
Markus Granlund- narrowly outvoted in the tiebreaker. Bootleg Mikael Backlund.
Joe Colborne- big and local
Tim Hunter- big and stupid
Sandy McCarthy- dollar store Tim Hunter
Tim Jackman- dollar store Sandy McCarthy
Lance Bouma- Rode coattails to a nice contract
Thank you for reading our cathartic rant on Flames we don’t like. If you are a fan of any of these players, please send a letter to scorchstack@gmail.com and we will forward it to our customer service department (laughing at you for defending one of these jamokes in our group chat). If you are one of these players, sorry for being mean to you but this is really a two-way street here, pal. Maybe it’s time for some self reflection.