Jonathan Huberdeau’s overtime is the win both sides have been chasing

From the start, the Calgary Flames and Jonathan Huberdeau were a match made in heaven.

All Huberdeau wanted was for a team to show him respect. The Flames just needed a star to love them back.

Flames chief executive Brad Treliving had to look no further than his trash can to find a suitable template for the deal he signed his newly acquired star winger on Thursday night.

Eight years at a $10.5 million cap hit. Sound familiar? It should: Calgary allegedly offered former franchise cornerstone Johnny Gaudreau the exact same deal.

You won’t find many players in the National Hockey League producing like Huberdeau and Gaudreau. Both wingers scored exactly 115 points last season, good enough to share second place in the Art Ross Trophy race.

The Flames lost Gaudreau for absolutely nothing when he decided to sign a seven-year contract with the Columbus Blue Jackets on an unrestricted freelance basis. And given the prospect of losing both Gaudreau and dissatisfied 100-point scorer Matthew Tkachuk forced Treliving to pull a rabbit out of his hat, whose back was pressed squarely against a 50th-story window.

Well, you can forget about the rabbits. In one of the boldest trades an NHL executive has made in years, the Boston Pizza heir shipped Tkachuk to Florida for a huge package centered around Huberdeau, the most compelling Gaudreau facsimile the sport has to offer.

MacKenzie Weegar, Cole Schwindt and Florida’s 2025 first-round draft round out the impressive haul the Flames received for Tkachuk, who immediately signed an eight-year contract with the Panthers.

At the time, the deal was received differently by both sides. Florida received an extremely important building block to work with 2021 Frank J. Selke Trophy winner Aleksander Barkov for the foreseeable future. Calgary added two players signed only for the 2022-23 season that would at least help keep the competitive window open for a while longer.

However, Treliving’s work was far from over. There was no way the GM would go into the 2022-23 season with two star players in contractual limbo after a year of asking himself the same questions about Gaudreau and Tkachuk until they both left.

The flames absolutely would have to sign Huberdeau this summer. The only alternative would have been to trade it back in, and that just wouldn’t work.

Gaudreau, Tkachuk and Huberdeau are the only players in recent memory to switch teams immediately after scoring 100 points in a season. Can you imagine the reaction if all three left the Flames in the same summer?

The Flames got what they wanted. So did the player who would have taken an enormous risk Not To sign as much as possible immediately following his career-best 115-point season.

Allan Walsh, Huberdeau’s agent, currently represents more than two dozen active NHL clients. That summer, none made more than $7 million per season. Now Walsh is acting on behalf of the league’s ninth highest-paid player. Talk about an incentive to sign…

Are the flames ready? My goodness no. Weegar needs a new deal, as does promising young center Adam Ruzicka. The oversupply of NHL defensemen on the team needs to be addressed. Treliving could add another striker or two.

These agenda items will be dealt with in good time. For now, gone are the days of Flames leaders constantly playing with one foot out on the ice. The Huberdeau era has officially begun and the rest of the pieces can now fall into place.

If all else fails, Jonah 10 got his Huber batter.

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