With the dust having settled on the Matthew Tkachuk trade, the focus now turns to what the Flames plan to do with pending UFA's Jonathan Huberdeau and MacKenzie Weegar. Both former Panthers have confirmed that they are amenable to signing long-term deals to remain in Calgary, so now it will just be about what Flames GM Brad Treliving can do to entice them to stick around at the negotiating table.
Per Elliotte Friedman on his most recent 32 Thoughts podcast, the Flames are currently doing their due diligence to figure out what the magic numbers for Huberdeau and Weegar are on max-term deals. According to Friedman, other NHL clubs are beginning to speculate what those deals could end up looking like and the Sportsnet reporter dished the details on Friday.
Huberdeau could fall somewhere into the same range that former linemate Aleksander Barkov did, at $10M per season over 8 seasons. Meanwhile, Weeger could ink an extension similar to the one signed by Tampa Bay Lightning defender Mikhail Sergachev on July 13th, at $8.5M per season over 8 seasons.
In all the pair of contracts would cost the Flames $148M over the span of the deals, so Treliving and company had better be sure that Huberdeau and Weegar are the pieces they want to commit that sort of term and that amount of dollars on. If they decide that committing long term is not the route they want to go, the Flames should have no problem flipping both pending UFAs for considerable assets to kickstart a rebuild.
