FLAMES RETOOL TRACKER: Jonathan Huberdeau's new-look year offers encouraging signs
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Jonathan Huberdeau wants more points next season. What player doesn't?
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It speaks to his evolving role with the Calgary Flames, though, that nobody else seems overly concerned with him adding more goals or assists.
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A successful season for the Flames' left-winger will not be defined solely by his offensive production.
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This is the team's most expensive player, though, and a guy who is under contract until the 2030-31 season. Only Matt Coronato currently has a contract to be with the Flames for longer.
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Huberdeau is one of the very most important players to the next half-decade of Calgary hockey, plain and simple.
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So, if Huberdeau's contributions are going to be judged by something other than his offence, it bears asking: What exactly does a successful season look like in 2025-26 for the soon-to-be 32-year-old?
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'I want the same guy to come back,' Flames head coach Ryan Huska explained on exit day. 'In conversations with Hubie, the one area he wants to bump up some more — and he knows he's not going to blow it through the roof — he can still increase his point total a little bit more. That can be done without changing what he did for us this year.'
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What Huberdeau did in 2024-25 was focus on becoming a more well-rounded player. It may have been his points production with the Florida Panthers that made him a star, but that has fallen off since he arrived in Calgary in the summer of 2022 as the key piece of the package the Flames received in exchange for Matthew Tkachuk.
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Huberdeau had scored 115 points the previous season. There's no reasonable expectation that he's going to replicate that now.
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After putting up 55 points in his first year with the Flames and then 52 in Year 2, he shifted his focus.
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In 2024-25, he played on the Flames' penalty kill. He improved his play retrieving pucks along the boards, becoming what his teammates jokingly called a power forward.
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The 62 points he put up is obviously nowhere near what he managed with the Panthers, but in the Flames' eyes, the improvements in other areas of his game more than made up for that.
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'I would say I'm most proud of the 200-foot game,' Huberdeau explained on exit day. 'Points-wise, you always want to get more, but I think overall I found a way to be more successful in Calgary with my game and I became more of an all-around player and penalty killing.
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