Having swapped his goalie mask for a cowboy hat at the Calgary Flames’ annual fundraising poker tournament, and in the sort of relaxed frame of mind that is much easier to achieve when you’re not being pelted with 90 mile-per-hour slap-shots, Dustin Wolf was matter-of-factly running through his personal checklist for this current campaign.
“One, I wanted to make the team. Two, the next goal is you want to try to earn as many starts as you can,” Wolf explained. “And the next thing is you want to make the playoffs.
“We are right in the mix and I know myself, along with everybody in this room, has full belief that we’re going to get in. It doesn’t matter how we’re going to get in. It doesn’t matter if we’re the three seed or the second wild-card, we’re going to get in.”
If the Flames do get in, a big part of the how will be all those howls.
Just a few months back, one of the major concerns around Calgary was ensuring that Wolf’s confidence wouldn’t be bludgeoned behind what was supposed to be a bottom-of-the-standings squad. The last thing anybody wanted was to risk ruining the prized puck-stopping prospect.
That has been replaced by worry among the fanbase about a totally different type of growing pain. Now, everyone is wondering if this rookie goalie is poised to complicate the plan for the rebuild or retool or whatever you want to call it.
Remember, many expected the Flames would be picking in the top-10 at the 2025 NHL Draft. It probably shouldn’t come as a surprise that Wolf, a guy who was selected fourth from last in his own draft year, clearly doesn’t give a rip about the lottery odds. Good on him for that.
The 23 year old has won eight of his past 10 starts, boosting his record to 17-7-2 and continuing to bolster his case to be the Calder Trophy frontrunner.
With Thursday’s 5-2 victory over the Buffalo Sabres, the Flames opened up a three-point gap on the other hopefuls in the race for the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference.
Wolf isn’t singlehandedly responsible — and to suggest otherwise would be a discredit to a bought-in bunch — but where would they be without him?
At .918, his save percentage is fourth-best in the league among regular starters.
His point percentage is even more impressive. When No. 32 is between the pipes, the Flames are clipping along at .692. Funny enough, the ‘He’s-too-small-to-succeed!’ crowd has been awfully quiet of late.
Also at the poker tournament, which ended with a record-setting total for the Flames Foundation, alternate captain MacKenzie Weegar was raving about Wolf’s even-keel approach, saying that you’d never be able to guess during a TV timeout if he’d just surrendered a groaner or served up the highlight-of-the-night.
“He comes to the bench and it’s the same thing, whether he makes a huge save or he lets in a goal,” Weegar said. “His demeanour, his confidence in that net, is elite.”
“He just has a confidence about him and I think, at such an early point of his career, he makes a lot of things look really easy,” veteran forward Blake Coleman agreed. “That’s pretty contagious in the locker room. When you see your goalie calm and collected, it makes you kind of just settle in and play your game, knowing he’s there and he’s got your back.
“Obviously, his body of work is starting to speak for itself, but I think for the players, it’s just more the way he goes about it,” Coleman continued. “He’s very calm and cool and collected in net, and he just makes a couple of saves a game that almost give you momentum and energy because you’re just kind of in awe of the way he’s making stops.”
He made a few biggies in the third period of Thursday’s triumph over the Sabres at the Saddledome, a result that required a bit of nail-biting right up until the locals drained two empty-netters.
With the Flames on the penalty kill with about eight minutes remaining, Wolf came up clutch with a pair of denials in a three-second span. Even as JJ Peterka’s sharp-angle attempt rattled off his mask, he was unfazed — and exactly where he needed to be — to road-block Alex Tuch’s crack at the rebound.
With the Sabres still pressing for the equalizer, Wolf robbed Peterka with a sprawling glove save that wasn’t nearly as routine as he made it seem.
“He has been sooo, sooo good,” said fellow Flames youngster Matt Coronato, stretching his words to reinforce his point. “It really is fun to watch him every night.”
Could we be watching Wolf in the Stanley Cup playoffs?
With 36 regular-season dates remaining, starting with a weekend double-whammy in Minnesota and Winnipeg, there’s a lot of ground to cover yet for these Flames.
And there is a lot that will need to go right along the way — consistent scoring from Jonathan Huberdeau and Nazem Kadri, continued improvement by a penalty-kill unit that was six-for-six against the Sabres, a speedy recovery by Connor Zary and maybe some savvy moves by general manager Craig Conroy, who might now be tempted to shop for low-cost (or long-term) additions.
But above all else, Wolf has emerged as the key ingredient. When the rising-star netminder declared at the poker tournament that the Flames are “going to get in,” there’s no reason to think he was bluffing.
“You dream to be in this position. You dream to be a goalie that is starting games for an NHL club,” Wolf said. “And you want to just keep proving people wrong. In my position, everybody has doubted me for so many years and I want to show them that I belong here and I want to keep pushing myself to get even better.
“At the end of the day, playoffs is one thing, but everyone knows the main goal of winning (a championship).”