Lindholm has nothing to do with whether or not they would trade for his rights. Even if Markstrom is interested in Calgary they can't talk to him any earlier than any other team so the Markstrom-Lindholm relationship is irrelevant.
Not true.
Discussion with Peters and other players was a facet used by the Flames to determine if Lindholm and Hanifin should be acquired. Asking Lindholm whether it would be a good idea to acquire Markstrom and using it as part of their due diligence is not out of the ordinary. Many other GMs have taken this approach too and it has reflected in certain interviews over the years. If anything, it's basically the minimum teams are probably doing because it's the closest to actually chatting with the player about joining the org without actually talking to the player. We wondered if this is why certain organizations love acquiring buddies of roster players.
I'm not saying that the Flames are playing dirty in trying to woo Markstrom early though, but if they are interested they are definitely using all tools possible to glean information before UFA period.
On the Flames forum, we had a discussion and we don't know what actually constitutes as tampering (not Markstrom, just in general). Benning was slapped on the wrist for openly talking about targeting PK Subban and Stamkos a few years ago and it was actually kinda innocuous. Agents release info about negotiations to put pressure on the team in negotiations and nothing literally happens. It seems you can't talk about your interest in other players, but gleaning information about other players' interest in your seems via indirect means to be allowed? It also seems similar to how NCAA players cannot freely communicate with the club that drafted them due to NCAA rules, but there always seems like there's a deep understanding of what's going to happen before it does (likely via an "indirect" method of communication).
There's also always seemingly one or two dudes that know they will be signing a contract with a different team for an exact amount as of 00:01 of the beginning of negotiation period. We don't know how that happens and how it works and why a team would bother trading for rights to get a leg up if that's the case, but there definitely seems to be some type of back door at times that allows a team to scoop up a player earlier than normal from time to time.
