Wolf’s impressive start helps keep Flames afloat

The Calgary Flames did not enter the 2024-25 season with lofty postseason hopes. Deep organizational rebuilds intended to increase salary cap flexibility and secure future assets rarely go hand in hand with icing competitive teams.

Calgary is not one of those teams considered a perennial rebuilder — you could argue the Flames haven’t really overhauled their lineup in at least a decade, calling back to the days of Jay Feaster and Brian Burke.

For some fans, this cleanup was a long time coming, and trades in just the past 12 months have seen the team move on from Nikita Zadorov, Elias Lindholm, Chris Tanev, Noah Hanifin, Jacob Markstrom, and Andrew Mangiapane. That’s the type of roster volatility that has you bracing for impact; it’s simply very difficult to find internal replacements for all of those minutes, even if your prospect pool is beaming.

That’s why Calgary’s forecasted point total entering the season was a meagre 81.

But no one considered Dustin Wolf. We talk a lot about how ruinous bad goaltending can be; it’s just as true that goaltending outperformance can mask holes and elevate a team. And everything Wolf showed in AHL stints with Stockton and Calgary seems to be translating to the NHL level.

And as it stands right now, this Flames lineup — stripped down and being heavily utilized for future evaluative purposes — is fighting back. They are playing to a 93-point pace, hanging around in the Western Conference playoff picture, in large part because of a 23-year-old goalie who is playing out of his mind right now.

Finding a Markstrom replacement, considering his track record, was perhaps the most daunting task for this front office. And yet the team may have stumbled into something real in the seventh round in the 2019 NHL Draft. There is a very short list of goalies outplaying Wolf this season, and it’s why Calgary’s staying afloat in the standings.

Using Evolving Hockey’s Goals Saved vs. Expected model, we can compare goaltenders league-wide based on the shot profile each is uniquely facing, and by extension how many goals they have erased from the defensive ledger this season. Look where Wolf grades:

If you are talented enough to make it to the National Hockey League, you are capable of stringing together a great 15-game stretch, and to that end, Calgary’s going to need to see Wolf build on this early-season performance.

But look at the company he’s keeping. He’s sandwiched between names like New York’s Igor Shesterkin and Dallas’ Jake Oettinger, erasing close to half a goal per game for the Flames. I remind you the Rangers just gave $92-million to Shesterkin, not two months removed from Dallas giving Oettinger $66-million. Wolf, meanwhile, is on his second professional contract, making $850,000 per year through the end of next season.

It’s also worth pointing out that playing on a lower-event, lower-tempo team that doesn’t see structural breakdowns as frequently as other teams around the league isn’t the primary reason for Wolf’s outperformance.

If you don’t believe me, consider veteran Dan Vladar’s numbers are in a free-fall behind the same exact Flames defence. It may not be hundreds of games of data, but there is clear divergence in performance between the two, and if it continues, I have to imagine head coach Ryan Huska feeds Wolf a higher percentage of the starts going forward.

You might also wonder how Wolf’s play measures up to the stable goaltending the Flames largely experienced during the tenure of Markstrom, who is now anchoring New Jersey’s net. Comparable would be one way to describe it, which again, considering the salary ramifications and Wolf being so early in his career, that’s incredibly encouraging.

We will need more time before we start drawing real confidence that Wolf is a long-term starter in this league, but everything he is putting on tape right now screams in that direction.

And if Calgary has found a young, cheap, and reliable goaltending option they can lean on for the next few years, that is a rebuild accelerator of the highest order. The team can continue focusing on their draft-and-develop priorities, and, if by chance, a bigger fish comes available on the market down the road, Calgary will have all of the cap flexibility it needs to bring talent in and bolster their lineup.

It will remain an uphill battle for this Calgary team to push inside of the top eight in the Western Conference, at least for this season — even if you assume their play in the defensive third remains reasonably strong, they have an awfully difficult time creating offence and play in a division with the likes of the Vegas Golden Knights and Edmonton Oilers. Enough said.

But Calgary is still hanging around. And for as long as they’re getting this type of goaltending, they’re going to have a shot in many games going forward.

Data via Natural Stat Trick, NHL.com, Evolving Hockey