Wilson: How Joel Farabee transformed from spare part in trade to Flames' top forward

When Calgary Flames general manager Craig Conroy acquired Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee in January 2025, the latter was essentially included in the trade as a salary dump.

A 14th overall pick in the 2018 NHL Draft, Farabee battled injuries, inconsistency and head coach John Torterella for years before being discarded by the Philadelphia Flyers.

As a newly minted Flame, his performance seemed to verify the Flyers’ doubts.

Farabee scored just three goals and six points his first 31 games with Calgary, finishing with a career-worst 25 points that season. A poor return on his $5-million per-year contract.

At the onset of the 2025-26 season, Farabee was a player facing an identity crisis. Previously considered the heir apparent to Claude Giroux, Farabee was a cap dump on a rebuilding team with his offensive production trending downwards.

Farabee was at a crossroads. The dream of becoming an offensive star was gone. Now he needed to prove he had a place in the NHL at all.

He wasn’t scoring enough to anchor a scoring line. He wasn’t known as a checker. He’s not big at 6-feet,190 pounds. He’s a left shot, left wing, the one position Calgary already had an ample supply of. Building a depth chart that included Farabee in a meaningful role seemed a significant challenge.

Farabee bounced around the lineup initially, playing with a long list of players including Nazem Kadri to Mikael Backlund, Yegor Sharangovich and Connor Zary. Farabee’s scoring was good enough out of the gate to (mostly) keep in the top-six rotation, though. Through the first two months of the season he was operating at about a 0.5 point-per-game pace, ranking him fifth among Flames forwards.

More notable, however, were his on-ice shot and scoring chance impacts. After 27 games, Farabee was fourth among Flames forwards in terms of shot attempts at even strength (53.4%) and first in terms of expected goals ratio (58.8%).

By game 54, he was neck and neck with Blake Coleman at the top of the forward rankings by these measures, a position he held until the end of the season. By then, only three Flames forwards finished in the black in terms of expected goals (Coleman, Farabee, and Kadri), with most of the roster operating well in the red (47% or below).

Being able to reliably push play north is how Farabee gained more trust with the coaching staff and enabled him to carve a new, prominent role.

After Sam Honzek was injured, Farabee spent most of his time on the Flames’ hard-minutes checking unit with Coleman and Backlund. Coleman’s departure this off-season further cemented Farabee into the role, with him and the captain heavily featured together at both even strength and the penalty kill.

Now, through the first 10 games of this season, Farabee has arguably been the club’s most consistent forward. The 26-year-old leads the Flames in points (nine), ice time (185 minutes) and shots on net (24). He is a fixture on the both special teams and is often deployed against the opposition’s best players at even strength.

And he’s wearing the alternate captain’s “A” on his jersey.

Farabee’s transformation resembles Backlund’s journey from disappointing first-round pick to a Selke trophy-calibre forward.

At 24, Backlund was spinning his wheels at the bottom of the rotation. His scoring wasn’t noteworthy and he couldn’t seem to nail down a regular role. But by 26, he’d established himself as a top-tier checker and penalty killer, bumping him up the depth chart while increasing his production. It’s the big step that saved his career and put him on the path to becoming one of the franchise’s longest-tenured players.

There’s no guarantee Farabee will become another Backlund, of course. He’ll have to maintain and build on his two-way play to get close to that level.

Farabee’s contract ends in 2028. At first it seemed like the team would need to ride out the deal and then flip him for whatever they could get. But now he is a strong bet to sign a long-term extension.

From a spare-part throw-in two years ago to Calgary’s top forward in October, Farabee is cementing himself as a veteran, two-leader for the Flames. At 26, he’s the right age to help usher in the club’s next round of core players.