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Flames show restraint early in free agent frenzy

Jiri Hudler

Calgary Flames general manager Jay Feaster speaks to the media following the team’s announcement trading captain Jarome Iginla to the Pittsburgh Penguins, in Calgary, Alberta, Wednesday, March 27, 2013. The Flames have trade Iginla in exchange for forwards Kenneth Agostino and Ben Hanowski and the Pittsburgh Penguins 2013 first round pick. (AP Photo/The Canadian Press, Jeff McIntosh)

AP

After years of chasing a playoff berth and falling short, the Flames seem to have embraced the rebuilding process. So while other teams threw a lot of money around on Friday, GM Jay Feaster stayed relatively quiet.

“At our meeting with ownership on May 9, we presented a preliminary list of unrestricted free agents at that time,” Feaster said, according to the team’s website. “One of the things we said to ownership was that we didn’t believe the answers to our problems, our situations, our needs were necessarily going to found in unrestricted free agency.”

The Flames did have the cap space necessary to chase just about any free agent if they wanted, but Feaster insists he’s happy with the way things turned out.

“Our cap space was not and is not burning a hole in my pocket,” he said.

“The one thing we didn’t do, and I think it’s something we have done in the past ... we’ve given a lot of money for a long period of time. It puts you in a tough situation because typically when you’re doing these deals today, you end up having to give full no-trade, no-moves or partial no-trade, no-moves and it makes the job a lot tougher.”

That doesn’t necessarily mean that the team will go into the 2013-14 campaign largely unchanged. Feaster is still interested in players on the trade market and what he does on that end will be another indication of their new philosophy. Still, for now it seems like they’re exercising much more discipline than they have in the past.