Grant Fuhr is a big believer in this not-so-big goalie.
Fuhr is one of the most accomplished netminders in NHL history, having backstopped the Edmonton Oilers to a handful of Stanley Cup celebrations in a seven-season span from 1984-1990.
The Hockey Hall of Fame inductee now lives in Palm Springs, where he provides his insights as part of the broadcast team for the AHL’s Coachella Valley Firebirds. In that capacity, he’s had plenty of opportunity to watch puck-stopping prospect Dustin Wolf, the emerging fan favourite who is poised to earn a full-time job this coming season with the Calgary Flames.
“He’s gonna be good,” said Fuhr, who teed it up alongside Wolf — and other standouts from the NHL and PWHL — in Saturday’s Legends of Hockey event, a closest-to-the-pin showdown that followed the second round of tournament action at the Rogers Charity Classic. “With Coachella Valley, I get to see a ton of him. He’s ultra-competitive, he sees the game very well and he never gives up on a puck. He’s a little bit of a throwback.
“Yeah, he’s going to have some ups and downs this year because, one, it’s his first year in the National Hockey League, and two, he’s on a team that is kind of rebuilding. But I think you’re going to be pleasantly surprised by how good he is.”
Wolf, 23, is a two-time winner of the AHL’s goaltender-of-the-year honours and glimpsed his bright future by winning four straight starts with the Flames at the tail end of the 2023-24 campaign, but some still contend that he is simply too small to achieve stardom at the top level. He is listed at 6-foot and 180 lb., underwhelming measurements in an era of masked monsters.
“It still comes down to being able to stop the puck,” Fuhr stressed. “It doesn’t matter whether you’re 6-foot-6 or 5-foot-6, you can stop a puck in a lot of different ways. I know everybody got hung up on size for a while, but the game is different. Now, you have to be athletic and you have to be able to move. And that’s going back to fitting into the wheelhouse of a smaller goalie.
“You look at (Mike) Vernon, myself … We’re in that 5-foot-9 or 5-foot-10 range. You still have to be able to move and you still have to be able to play. Yeah, size is great, but you don’t have to be big to be good.”
WHY NOT US?
Jake DeBrusk moved to Calgary a couple of months ago.
It will, however, be only an off-season home.
There was widespread speculation that DeBrusk might land with the Flames as an unrestricted free agent, but the 27-year-old winger instead inked a seven-year, US$38.5-million deal with the Vancouver Canucks.
Based on Craig Conroy’s approach to his summer signings, it’s safe to assume that the Flames were offering a shorter-term contract.
“It wasn’t something I was ruling out at the beginning,” said DeBrusk — raised in Edmonton, where his father Louie skated for six seasons with the Oilers — when asked about the rumoured interest from the Flames. “I don’t my know if my dad would have loved me too much if I told him that but, at the same point, you have to do what’s best for you and that’s what I did. Obviously, Vancouver stepped up to the plate and they made it pretty easy for me not to look elsewhere.
“They came with an unbelievable offer, an offer that I couldn’t refuse.”
DeBrusk, ex of the Boston Bruins, is pumped to spend the prime of his career on the West Coast.
Although he realizes, with a Canucks crest on his jersey, his new neighbours in Calgary will be rooting against him.
“I bought a house here, so just getting used to the terrain, meeting a lot of people,” said DeBrusk, quick to accept his invitation to the Rogers Legends of Hockey event since it was just a 20-minute commute from his new digs. “It seems like there has been a lot of change in my life the last two months, but people have been really nice to me. It’s been a good summer.
“I’m from Edmonton, so this is a rival city to be in. I feel like I’m in enemy territory. But everyone here has been treating me well.”
WHAT ABOUT CALGARY?
Jayna Hefford hears this question a lot — and that’s a good sign.
Hefford, who won four Olympic gold medals while starring for the Canadian women’s national program, is now senior vice president of hockey operations for the PWHL, a six-team league that was a smash success in its inaugural season.
“I think one of the biggest surprises for me was how quickly the expansion conversation came into play,” Hefford said “I think two months into the season, people were asking us when we were going to expand and where we were going to expand. Obviously, we’re excited about trying to build this and grow it and expand and enter new markets, and we had some great success in Detroit and Pittsburgh with neutral-site games. I think we’re expecting to see a lot more of those type of games this year to really test out some markets.
“As long as we keep on the trajectory we’re on, we’re excited to see where that is going to take us in terms of growing the number of teams and into new markets.”
Like, perhaps, Calgary?
The PWHL currently has a hat-trick of teams in Canada — in Montreal, Ottawa and Toronto — and three more in the U.S.
Minnesota won the championship in Year 1.
“I have talked to a few people today who said, ‘This would be a great city,’ ” Hefford said prior to tee-off at the Rogers Legends of Hockey at Canyon Meadows. “I’ve spent some time here. It’s a great hockey market. I know there’s a new facility being built. We would certainly love to have a presence in Western Canada.
“So there’s lot of excitement from this city and others. We’re going to have to continue to work through it.”
CHIP SHOTS: DeBrusk and Sarah Fillier, the first-overall pick in the 2024 PWHL Draft, won Saturday’s charity shootout, earning a $100,000 donation for the EvenStart for Children’s Foundation. They defeated Hefford and Edmonton Oilers netminder Stuart Skinner in the final of this match-play bracket. The event raised a total of $250,000, spread among eight great causes.