By Alex Russo,The Win Column
Copyright yardbarker
Sometimes you look at a trade that happened a while ago and think about how it affected both teams involved. For one team, it is looked at as a great trade that has set them up both now and in the future so incredibly well. Then sometimes for the other team, it is looked at as, well, not as great.
For the Calgary Flames, the trade that sent Elias Lindholm to the Vancouver Canucks in January of 2024 is looking like a home run for the team. They have multiple assets that look like they can be impact players for years to come, while Lindholm was mostly miserable as a Canuck and then walked to the Boston Bruins just five months later.
Lindholm was a great player for the Flames, but the trade that sent him to Vancouver has been a home run thus far. While there is still a ways to go in determining what the return will pan out to be, it looks like Craig Conroy did a great job with a tough situation. So, let’s take a look at how this trade looks today with everyone who was involved.
Elias Lindholm
As I mentioned off the top, Lindholm was fantastic as a Flame. For five and a half years, he was on a bargain of a contract and more than lived up to it and more. It peaked in the 2021–22 season, when he scored 42 goals and 82 points, and was a Selke finalist as the centre on the most dominant line in hockey that year, alongside Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk.
After Tkachuk and Gaudreau left, you were easily able to see that Lindholm took a hit, not having two elite players on his flanks. He was still a good player, but he was very obviously not the same without those two alongside him. The next year and a half were a bit of tough sledding for Lindholm, all culminating in the 2023–24 season, where it looked like he couldn’t care less and just wanted to get out of Calgary. He got his wish.
When he got to Vancouver, things did not get much better. He had just 12 points in 26 games, and not long after he got to Vancouver, it looked like they were trying to move him. There was plenty of smoke, but nothing came to fruition, and he played the rest of the year on the Canucks. He had a very good playoffs with 10 points in 13 games, and he used that to sign a monster deal with the Boston Bruins on July 1, 2024.
The $54M man for the Bruins was supposed to be their new top-line centre, but last year went really poorly for him. Scoring only 47 points in all 82 games while the Bruins had their worst season in years, it wasn’t great, and Lindholm has another six years left on that deal in Boston.
Andrei Kuzmenko
Andrei Kuzmenko was a pure camp dump in this trade to make the money work on the Canucks side. However, he did quite well when he came over that season. He got off to a bit of a slow start, but then he began to produce more and more. To finish the 2023–24 season, he scored 25 points in 29 games, and he was dynamite alongside Nazem Kadri.
Then the 2024–25 season started, and it could not have gone worse for Kuzmenko. He couldn’t score a goal to save his life, and it looked like head coach Ryan Huska had no time for him. He began getting scratched, put on the fourth line, and was even taken off the power play. It was not a good year for Kuzmenko, and after 37 games and only scoring 15 points, he was shipped off to the Philadelphia Flyers.
The Flames would move Kuzmenko, Jakob Pelletier, and a couple of picks to the Flyers in return for Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee. Kuzmenko would then play seven games with the Flyers before being traded to the Los Angeles Kings ahead of the trade deadline. He found his footing again, had a great end to the season, and then signed a new contract with the Kings for this upcoming season.
All in all, Kuzmenko was a fun player to have. He was great in the media with his bright personality, was skilled on the ice, and then helped net a nice return for two players who will be Flames for the foreseeable future. All for a player who was looked at as a cap dump.
Hunter Brzustewicz
Hunter Brustewicz was the big prospect that came back to Calgary in this deal, and it was for good reason. The 2023 third-round pick was in the midst of a huge season with the Kitchener Rangers in the OHL, where he would go on to net 92 points that season. Did I mention that Brzustewicz is a defencemen? It was a fantastic season that got all of us very excited for his future.
Brzustewicz then made the jump to the AHL last season. After a little bit of a slow start and adjusting to the pro game, he had a really nice second half of the year. He was getting better and better with each passing game. Brzustewicz would finish the season with 32 points in 70 games and looked very comfortable at the pro level. He would play in the final game of the Flames’ season last year and did not look out of place. He was strong on pucks, smooth in transition, and had zero panic to his game at all.
Brzustewicz will now eye an NHL job for this season, and he looks like he could be a future top-four defenceman at some point down the line. He will probably play out most of this year in the AHL with the Calgary Wranglers, but make no mistake, there is plenty of upside with this player, and he will be very interesting to watch over the next little while.
There is not much to report on Joni Jurmo. He was a throw-in prospect in the deal, and from the start, it looked like there was no NHL upside.
After just 17 games with the Wranglers last season, Jurmo and the Flames decided to part ways as the Flames terminated his contract this summer.
2024 first-round pick
The first-round pick that was sent to the Flames in last year’s draft ended up being 28th overall, and with that pick, the Flames selected Matvei Gridin. It was a nice pick at the time, as the Russian led the USHL in scoring in his draft year and is as skilled as they come.
Gridin made the jump to the QMJHL last year and lit it up as part of the Shawinigan Cataractes. He scored 79 points in 56 games and was awarded the QMJHL Rookie of the Year. He was stellar, highlight play after highlight play, and was the driver of a Shawinigan team that wasn’t all that talented.
Gridin is now going to make the jump to the Wranglers for his first year of professional hockey, but he has been turning heads as of late with his performance at the Flames rookie showcase this past weekend. He may have an outside chance of making the Flames out of camp if he continues with his current pace of play, but he will most likely spend the majority of this season with the Wranglers, getting accustomed to the pro game.
Let’s call a spade a spade, though. There is so much skill here with Gridin. Lots of speed, great instincts, a fantastic shot, and a motor like few. His upside could be really high, and it looks like at 28th overall, the Flames may have stolen him in that spot. This will be a big year for Gridin to show what he’s got, and I, for one, am very excited to see how this season plays out for him.
2024 fourth-round pick
The Flames also received a fourth-round pick in this deal. They moved the pick at the 2024 draft and moved down, but they acquired two picks in doing so. They received the 150th overall pick and the 177th overall pick in the 2024 draft from the Philadelphia Flyers, and they selected Luke Misa and Eric Jamieson with those picks.
Misa was a straight-up steal in the fifth round. He had 81 points in his draft year, and he followed it up by having an 85-point year in the OHL with the Mississauga Steelheads. Misa has great speed, great hands, and a very good hockey IQ. The only knock is that he is a little bit on the smaller side, which may explain why he fell to the fifth round.
Misa will play this season with Penn State in the NCAA, and he will have the chance to play with the projected first overall pick in the 2026 draft, Gavin McKenna. He will get to play against older and stronger players this year, and it should be good for his development. There could be NHL upside with Misa; it may take a little bit longer, but he has all the skill and drive to do it.
Jamieson was selected with the other pick, and he is a towering defencemen who skates well for his size. He had a nice season last year in the WHL with the Everett Silvertips, scoring 36 points in 66 games. His game mostly revolves around being a solid shutdown player, but he did show some nice offensive upside last year. Like Misa, he will also make the jump to the NCAA this season with the University of Denver. Jamieson could be an NHL player one day; it may be a long shot, but his going to the NCAA will be good for his development, and there could be some nice value with this pick.
Learn from your past success
The Flames did really well with this deal. While there is a ways to go here with the prospects, the Flames got a lot of value for a player in Lindholm who very clearly did not want to be a Flame and mailed it in for half a season before he was traded.
Conroy could learn from this, as he has another Swedish player who his entering the final year of his contract in Rasmus Andersson. You hit a home run with a trade like this before, so it makes lots of sense to try to do it again.
