Johnny Gaudreau is leaving Calgary. What do the Flames do now?

In the end, Brad Treliving said there wasn’t much he could do.

Johnny Gaudreau, on the eve of free agency, told the Flames he will not be returning to Calgary. On July 13, for the first time in his career, Gaudreau will be an unrestricted free agent.

“It’s a disappointing day, to say the very least,” Treliving said on a Zoom call Tuesday night. “This wasn’t one that was a dollars decision. There’s nothing more we could have done. It’s not the decision we wanted to hear, but we respect it.”

Treliving expanded that it is his “strong belief” that “this was a family decision” and made a point to assure fans that the front office did “everything possible” to keep Gaudreau in Calgary.

In the next 24 hours we’ll know what all this means for Gaudreau and his family, and there will be no shortage of interested parties, especially those in the Tri-State area if we’re accurately reading the tea leaves on what “a family decision” entails.

What it means for Treliving and the Flames, though, might take a bit more time. The list of ramifications of Gaudreau’s decision is long. And the timing for Treliving is brutal. But with free agency opening only 15 hours after Treliving spoke about Gaudreau hitting the market, it’s time to start plotting out potential paths forward.

What are the Calgary Flames going to do now? There are three separate, big-picture approaches to the offseason now that they know Gaudreau’s fate. Let’s get into them.

Door No. 1: Status Quo with UFA Replacement

Let’s start with the obvious: There is no ready-made replacement for Johnny Gaudreau on the market right now. There is no 100-point winger the Flames can plug and play on the first line with Matthew Tkachuk and Elias Lindholm next season.

Even if we consider Nazem Kadri a great Plan B for the Flames, he’s not a winger, he’s not the same kind of play driver or playmaker. He’s not Gaudreau.

But, this very well could be the route the Flames take; doing nothing but turning the cap space they saved for Gaudreau into one primary piece.

Kadri is an intriguing option. He just won the Stanley Cup with Colorado — where he was a force in the playoffs — and had a career year, scoring at a 100-point pace. Kadri could be the perfect second-line centre behind Lindholm, just as he had been behind Nathan MacKinnon – at times the No. 1 centre when MacKinnon missed time. This could be more of a 1A/1B situation with two highly skilled, offensive-minded centres running the top two lines for Calgary.

Great as Mikael Backlund is and was in the playoffs, that kind of tadem is not something the Flames have had. Adding Kadri could allow the Flames to deploy a forechecking third line that could be led by Backlund and Blake Coleman and give Tyler Toffoli a solid centre to maximize his scoring ability. Kick Andrew Mangiapane to the top line, plug Dillon Dube and/or Jakob Pelletier into the middle-six and the top-nine isn’t awful.

There is the salary cap to consider, still. And contracts that need to be signed for Tkachuk, Mangiapane and Oliver Kylington. But this pathway assumes the status quo only without Gaudreau. Part of that status quo will likely include moving out one of Calgary’s big contracts in favour of some cap flexibility – some of those options I’ve outlined here.

We can plug in a number of other UFA centres here if Kadri prices himself out – or still doesn’t want to play in Calgary. Dylan Strome is talented and needs a fresh start, and will get one as a UFA. I like Andrew Copp a lot. There are wingers we could consider instead.

Because negotiations with Gaudreau went so close to free agency opening, the Flames are in a tough spot when it comes to replacing him. Most of the logical top-line left wingers are gone. Filip Forsberg re-upped with the Nashville Predators. Kevin Fiala was traded to (and signed with) Los Angeles. Alex DeBrincat has been moved to Ottawa.

There are still some other options, though. Using Gaudreau’s previously earmarked cap space to sign someone like Andre Burakovsky or Mason Marchment would give the Flames a top-six winger and probably enough money to address holes elsewhere in the lineup. Again, it’s a step down in talent – more so with Marchment than Burakovsky – but this is a path the Flames might have to take.

If that doesn’t sound good to you, don’t blame me. This is what happens when you lose Gaudreau.

Door No. 2: Retool 

This might be the most realistic path forward for the Flames, given what Treliving said on Tuesday night.

“You’re certainly not going out and replacing a player like John,” he said. “The wrong move right now is to make a knee jerk reaction and just rush out and replace the player.

“We just have to take a deep breath. It’s been a long process over the last couple of days, but at the end of the day, we need to move forward and we intend to do that.”

So, you forget about trying to only replace Gaudreau in free agency. You add skill to the lineup where you can – and that could still be in the form of someone like Kadri – but the foundational element of this plan is trading Tkachuk for a package led by a cost-controlled NHL player.

Tkachuk is a restricted free agent, just one year away from potentially becoming an unrestricted free agent. Treliving said there was no update on Tkachuk’s contract on Tuesday and that he’s been in constant contact with Tkachuk’s representatives at Newport Sports.

It’s possible that Tkachuk won’t like the direction or the long-term plan of the Flames without Gaudreau. If that’s the case, and if the Flames sense any degree of uncertainty regarding Tkachuk’s desire to stay — or if they can’t get him signed to a long-term extension — they should deal him while his value is high. Even if it’s hard to win a trade with Tkachuk going out the door.

The hope here is that the player they acquire is the closest possible approximation to Tkachuk and build around the remaining pieces they already have. That’s tough work because there aren’t a lot of players like Tkachuk. The flip side is that he’s extremely valuable, and teams might give up a haul to bring him in.

You keep Mangiapane either on a bridge or long-term deal, which you can actually afford now. Keep Kylington on a four-year contract and hope he repeats his 2021-22 breakout. Call up Jakob Pelletier and see if he’s ready for a top-six job. Maybe move out some older players or bad contracts and use the cap flexibility to continue to improve the roster.

In this scenario the Flames would be built around Lindholm, Mangiapane, Pelletier, Free Agent X, Tkachuk replacement Y, Kylington, Rasmus Andersson and a No. 1 goalie in Jacob Markstrom, among other familiar faces.

The core group would be different. It will be incredibly hard to improve on the previous group, especially with free agency opening on Wednesday at 10 a.m. Mountain. But it’s not outlandish to think Treliving’s plan won’t resemble some version of a retool.

Door No. 3: Tear it down

The middle is death. Flames fans have learned that the hard way over the years.

It’s not that the Flames don’t have good players. They realistically have enough to be competitive. But do they have enough to be legitimately good? To win games that matter?

If Doors No. 1 and 2 don’t seem like they’re going to make the Flames a contending team, what’s the point? That’s where Door No. 3 comes in.

Trade Tkachuk for future assets instead of a win-now play. Move on from Mangiapane, who will be 30 by the time a true rebuild bears fruit; he scored 35 goals and should get a nice return. Trade Kylington — everyone needs a top-four defender. Chris Tanev could still net something.

Try to find a way to move Jacob Markstrom, who has a full no-move clause. You can’t rebuild with him in net; he’s too good. And hey, he might even waive if he knows a tear-down is coming.

Go down the list. Move players out if you can get good assets in return. If you can’t, wait them out. That shouldn’t be too hard. The only players signed past 2024 are Markstrom, Rasmus Andersson and Blake Coleman.

Coleman, who signed with the appeal (and sell) of being on a contender, should probably just be traded wherever he wants to go as an official apology.

It’s probably not happening in Calgary. We need to consider — above all else — that the Flames’ ownership might just not be willing to take the financial hits that come with a rebuild.

But this isn’t unprecedented elsewhere in the league. We’re watching far worse happen in Chicago, to the point where No. 1 centres aren’t being qualified and franchise icons are either asking for a trade or set to play for a team that isn’t even pretending to want to win games in 2022-23. On the other hand, the Rangers – through a combination of skill and luck and being in Manhattan — managed to pull off an aggressive rebuild. In under four years, the franchise went from writing an apology letter to their fans, to an Eastern Conference Final.

Will it happen in Calgary? Probably not. Should it happen? It’s, at the very least, a good debate.

(Photo: Eliot J. Schechter / NHLI via Getty Images)