Part of those big expectations came from the trade he was a part of, as they got Matheson and a fourth round pick in exchange for Jeff Petry and Ryan Poehling in the 2022 offseason. He’s currently in the fifth year of an eight year contract with a $4.875 million cap hit, one that neither the Habs or Pens signed, but the Panthers, the team that drafted him in the first round in 2012.

It’s one of the many injuries that the Habs have to deal with at the moment. On top of the most likely career-ending injury that goaltender Cary Price is dealing with, Paul Byron is also on long-term injured reserve, with Brendan Gallagher, Sean Monahan, and David Savard all finding themselves on injured reserve.

The team has performed admirably despite all the injuries, as they find themselves with a 14-15-2 record and only seven points out of a playoff spot in a season many expected the team to be much closer to lottery contention.

After some wins, Senators fans threw burgers on the ice to celebrate his nickname, the “Hamburglar”, with the previously unknown netminder becoming a cult hero instantly. Injuries limited him to just 11 games between the NHL and AHL the next year, but his time winning games with the Senators were over.

Hammond spent most of the next four years in the AHL and had a solid career in San Antonio, Iowa, Rochester and Iowa. He played one regular season game and three playoff matches with Colorado in 2017-18, but wouldn’t return to the NHL until the 2021-22 season. Hammond had a perfect 3-0-0 record with the Montreal Canadiens last year before moving to New Jersey, where he had a 1-5-1 record in seven games.

Hammond finished his career with two KHL games in Chelyabinsk this year, losing both of them, before getting released in mid-October.

While Hammond’s NHL tenure was a short one, nobody will forget it anytime soon. He was a true underdog that took the league by storm and made a name for himself out of seemingly nowhere.

Over the summer, the Flames lost 23 goals from last season’s power play due to the departures of three players, but they added three players who combined for 14 PP goals on their old teams. The hope was likely that the team might take a slight step back, but adding the new faces to the PP and providing opportunities for some old faces to have bigger roles would keep the Flames’ PP in the top half of the NHL’s rankings.

That has not come to pass.

The big problem with the power play doesn’t appear to be the personnel. As mentioned, they’re the five most productive options they have available to them. But the current Flames’ attack on the man advantage is very passive and lacks urgency. There’s not a ton of player movement within their attack, and as a result the power play tends to be a series of passes between relatively stationary players, which makes them predictable and easy to disrupt.

When they do have success, it’s usually because they either score quickly off the face-off before the opposition has a chance to get set up, or because the Flames attackers break formation and improvise due to a shot block or another bounce.

When you have a Gaudreau making strong passes or a Tkachuk causing trouble the blue paint, your club can have a tactically predictable power play. When you don’t, you have to have a dynamic, energetic power play. The Flames have talented players on their top power play unit. They need to let them inject some creativity and movement into their man advantage play so they can score some goals.