It had been rumoured for months, but the New Jersey Devils finally took the plunge as they traded defenceman Simon Nemec to the Calgary Flames. The entire deal, as reported by Pat Steinberg, is Nemec and winger Maxim Tsyplakov for a first-round pick in 2027, a first-round pick in 2028, a second-round pick in 2026, and prospect defenceman Etienne Morin.

What Calgary Gets

The Flames are clearly in a spot where they need to start looking to the future. They kickstarted the rebuild by trading both Rasmus Andersson and MacKenzie Weegar, and that opened up a lot of ice time for younger blue liners like Zayne Parekh and Hunter Brzustewicz. Now we can add one more name with Nemec.

Nemec is a fascinating player. Drafted second overall in 2022, it feels like he's been around forever but he's just going into his age-22 season. He has 155 regular season games to his name, which means if he stays healthy, he'll cross the 200-game plateau in the middle of next season. The Flames are still in the early stages of the rebuild process, so even if Nemec ascends as his talent level would suggest, there are other young defencemen providing competition for the top offensive minutes, and the team itself is likely to struggle to score for at least another year or two. This is a case where Nemec could improve his game and not be that much more productive than he was in New Jersey (career pace of 26 points every 82 games).

There are reasons to be very optimistic about Nemec's upside. Back in a March Ramblings, I wrote about how some of his key offensive 5-on-5 tracking data was comparing favourably to names like Rasmus Dahlin, John Carlson, and Mikhail Sergachev. Those metrics largely had to deal with things like playmaking and transition work, which is why a Ramblings I wrote back in May is also important here. That Ramblings showed an improvement in the share of shots that Nemec took while he was on the ice. In short, the 2025-26 season saw him not only with good offensive tracking numbers in playmaking and transition areas, but the shot rate improved as well. That kind of across-the-board upswing, paired with his age, indicates this a player starting to scratch the surface of his offensive upside.

Aside from some internal competition and a lack of scoring, the third issue plaguing Nemec is suspect defensive play. Unless a defenceman is an all-world offensive talent, coaches will not give a lot of ice time to a young defenceman who is poor defensively. The hope is that Nemec's defensive ability was temporarily sacrificed to improve his stellar offensive skills, and that the defensive side of things rebounds. If that can happen, we are looking at a top-pair offensive blue liner capable of playing well north of 20 minutes a game with top PP time.

While Nemec will have some competition for offensive minutes, he is out from the shadow of Luke Hughes (and to an extent Dougie Hamilton). He was clearly not going to be a Top Guy for the Devils, at least until his game was undeniable, and now he gets that chance in Calgary. He is in a worse situation, but has a better opportunity, and that makes his long-term outlook brighter, even if his short-term outlook takes a hit.

As for Hughes, this should leave him as the unquestioned top PP defenceman. We have seen Hamilton take some minutes in recent seasons, but Hamilton is now 33 years old and there's no guarantee he stays with the franchise, either. Even if the competition from Nemec was minimal, that competition is now gone. With the Devils having all that draft capital now, it's a wonder if they don't go out and try to trade for another impact defenceman, but that's a bridge to cross once we get there.

This isn't great news for either Parekh or Brzustewicz. The former had a bead on the top PP unit for 2026-27, while the latter figured to maybe get some top PP time, but mostly secondary minutes. Now, there is genuine competition for the top role, and if the team struggles with the man advantage, we probably see some juggling at least between Nemec and Parekh, if not all three.

Veteran Flames defencemen like Olli Maatta and Brayden Pachal likely see a bit less ice time, too.

Who This Helps

Luke Hughes

Calgary Forwards

Who This Hurts

Zayne Parekh

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Hunter Brzustewicz

Simon Nemec (for now)