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Brian Burke's pre-Christmas trade freeze will apply to the Flames

Brian Burke's famed pre-Christmas trade freeze, which is artificially about two weeks longer than the NHL's own holiday transaction freeze, will begin on December 9th according to a report from CBC's Elliotte Friedman.

"The Calgary Flames have made two small moves this week, and now there are obviously ramblings that Mikael Backlund is available too: rumblings I don't believe are incorrect," Friedman said during CBC's Hot Stove segment on Hockey Night in Canada Saturday night. 

"One of the reasons that the Flames are starting to move now is that they will take Brian Burke's pre-Christmas trade freeze. In the NHL it's December 19th, the team will do it on December the 9th," Friedman continued.

Reading between the lines of Friedman's report, it seems much more likely that the Flames will move a younger player with potential (like Backlund) and wait a bit to move their more veteran pieces:

"I do think there will be - depending on what the Flames want - quite a bit of interest in Backlund. I think there are teams who are interested in seeing what he does with a fresh start.  

As for the guys who are UFAs to be: the Stempniaks, the Stajan's, the Cammalleri's, the Russel's, I think what they're going to do is they're going to the World Juniors, then come back and then say "okay, let's map out our plan: how many of these guys are we going to try and re-sign and what else are we going to do.""

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