As the 2024-25 NHL regular season fast approaches, a playmaking defenceman who has accumulated 505 points in 809 regular-season games in the league finds himself working to prove he can still compete at hockey’s highest level.
“I want to get to 1,000 games and try to win a Stanley Cup,” Tyson Barrie told Global News this week.
The 33-year-old blueliner who hails from Victoria, B.C. is on a professional tryout contract with the Calgary Flames, aiming to secure a roster spot.
“I certainly don’t want this to be the end of the line for me.”
Spending much of his NHL career being a team’s power-play quarterback, Barrie put up impressive offensive numbers during seasons in which he played for the Colorado Avalanche, Toronto Maple Leafs and the Edmonton Oilers.
But when the player, a popular teammate during his time with the Oilers, was traded by Edmonton to the Nashville Predators late in the 2022-23 season, he experienced challenges he had not previously faced in his NHL career.
“I was a healthy scratch for the first time in my career which I was a little surprised by,” he acknowledged. “That was something I didn’t agree with.”
Barrie said the difficulties he had in Nashville and the offseason were something he wanted to face head on.
“The key was just talking through it and using some resources — whether it’s family or therapists — just to talk through what’s going on,” he explained. “It does wonders for the mental health.
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“If you want to stay in this league, you have to dedicate yourself and really put the work in and that’s what I did this summer.
“I’m just hoping to prove some people wrong and show that I have a lot of game left.”
Barrie finds himself competing with a number of players, including some talented prospects, to earn a spot on the Flames’ blue line as the club is retooling its roster, in part by trying to inject more youth into its lineup.
The person Barrie needs to impress the most is Flames head coach Ryan Huska, a man he knows well as he served as his coach when he played junior hockey with the WHL’s Kelowna Rockets.
“(Tyson) would probably tell you the same thing: this is the hardest he’s worked to make sure that he puts himself in a position to earn a contract,” Huska said. “He’s not taking anything for granted, and I like his approach.
“Tyson’s got a very special skill set.”
Huska noted the key is for the coaching staff to figure out how it could try to incorporate that skill set into the lineup. The Flames are looking at whether Barrie can play on the left side of the blue line, even though he is a right-shot defenceman.
“(The key) is being versatile and trying to learn and add to your game,” Barrie said. “You never know where the next opportunity is going to be.”
— with files from Global News’ Moses Woldu
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