Treliving tinkers with lineup without giving much away

Brad Treliving prefers to do his wheeling and dealing in the off-season, particularly around the National Hockey League draft.

The Flames general manager rarely makes a splash at the trade deadline. So, true to form, it wasn’t unexpected that he would make two small deals Monday to acquire a pair of left-handed defencemen to bolster his blue-line.

By picking up Derek Forbort from Los Angeles and Erik Gustafsson from Chicago, the Flames were able to put a temporary patch on their situation — that is, the fact they’re operating without two of their top defencemen: captain Mark Giordano and shutdown guy Travis Hamonic.

Clearly, Treliving wasn’t seeing enough from his current group, which features Michael Stone in the top four and the relatively inexperienced Rasmus Andersson, Oliver Kylington and Noah Hanifin.

The left-shooting Gustafsson can play the right side, while the left-shooting Forbort, paired with Drew Doughty, has faced top competition on a nightly basis. That being said, Treliving didn’t give much up for a temporary solution (Forbort’s Us$2.525-million cap hit expires this summer; ditto for Gustafsson’s $1.2-million cap hit) as it cost him a fourth-rounder in 2021 and a third-rounder in 2020.

They also off-loaded left defenceman Brandon Davidson in a deal with the San Jose Sharks.

However, one couldn’t help but wonder if their approach would have be different if the Flames didn’t need to fix their blue-line.

All along, the thought was to get a right-shot winger to help out the team’s forward group — Treliving failed to do that.

That could work out just fine. But it seems like the rest of the Pacific Division improved Monday, and the Flames are relatively the same.