Wilson: Why Calgary Flames should develop Connor Zary at centre this season

Calgary Flames training camp has plenty of storylines to follow this year, but there is perhaps no player facing more question marks than Connor Zary.

The 24-year-old was drafted 24th overall in 2020 as a high-scoring, offensively creative centre out of the WHL.

In the intervening six years, Zary has battled a pandemic, a broken ankle, two knee injuries and a concussion along his journey to becoming an NHLer.

The offence that made him such an attractive draft choice has slipped away at the NHL level. The stop-start cadence of his development, marked by injury, poor fortune and a lack of a clear role on the team hasn’t helped.

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With the Flames leaning into a rebuild and a new cohort of young players bubbling up underneath him, Zary needs to find his footing as a legit NHL centre this season to get his career back on track.

The good news for Zary is the Flames have a clear gap down the middle, which is an opportunity that has not existed for him before.

Zary scored 14 goals and 34 points in 63 games as an NHL rookie in 2023-24. That’s a 44-point pace over a full 82-game schedule. Among regular Flames skaters that year, only Nazem Kadri scored at a higher rate than Zary’s 2.13 points per 60 minutes of ice at even strength.

It wasn’t a Calder Trophy-worthy season, but it was a strong initial step. Beyond the stat-line, Zary often flashed the stickhandling and puck distribution skills that made him dangerous at lower levels. Even as a kid just finding his feet in the NHL, Zary was making defenders miss on the rush, pulling off highlight-reel dekes and generating offence from nothing plays.

The next season got off to a slow start for Zary. Just as he was starting to throw off his sophomore slump in January, he collided with Drew Hellesen of the Anaheim Ducks, injuring his knee. After taking 15 games off to recover, Zary reinjured the knee in a collision with Mikko Rantanen of the Dallas Stars that March.

Since then, Zary’s game has been stuck in a kind of limbo. His offensive creativity has largely evaporated. His defensive game has not notably improved.

Zary’s 12 goals and 25 points last year were the worst totals of his career, placing him ninth in team scoring. For context, Matvei Gridin, a 20-year-old rookie who played in just 37 games, scored 20 points.

Zary bounced around the lineup during a period when he should have been cementing his role. His struggles saw him appear on 14 forward combinations with at least 15 minutes of ice time (six of them as a centre). His most frequent linemates were Blake Coleman and Mikael Backlund (208 minutes), a sign the coach was trying to get the player going by skating him with the best two-way linemates on the team.