How the Flames have remained in the playoff hunt
Credit rookie goaltender Dustin Wolf for a chunk of the Calgary Flames‘ success this season.
Through 42 appearances, Wolf has found the win column 23 times coupled with a .911 save percentage, a performance that has kept the Flames in the thick of the playoff race in the Western Conference.
On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk chatted with Cami Kepke about Wolf’s play this season and how there is more to the story than his stat line.
Tyler Yaremchuk: When we had you on last it was early January and we were talking about this Flames team that was outperforming expectations and staying in the fight. Well, it was like, ‘They can’t score. Can they stay in the mix?’ Well, flash forward three more months and they have stayed in the mix. Let me start with a blanket: How have they done it? How has this Flames team, when everyone was waiting for them to fall, stayed afloat?
Cami Kepke: Here by the grace of Dustin Wolf, frankly, and a little bit of a resurgence from Jonathan Huberdeau. But, Calgary is not in a place to rest on their laurels still. They are coming off their first extended road trip of the season where they have gone better than .500. It’s going to be a fight to the end. The odds are not in their favor for the playoffs. It’s like a bad situationship with the Flames where just when you think they’re out, they’re going to come back and win three games. You can’t count them out at any point.
Frank Seravalli: Totally agree. With a team that has played as scrappy as the Flames has, if you were to stack a few things together in terms of the story and how they have gotten here, what percentage would you owe to Wolf and his play in net?
Cami Kepke: I’d say it has to be more than two-thirds. This is a team that is second-last in the league in goals scored. Wolf is holding them in in some low-scoring, almost Darryl Sutter-style hockey games where it is rare for them to get more than three goals a night. Even if Wolf’s numbers haven’t been amazing over the last five or so games, we’ve seen him be able to bounce back. He was yanked for the first time against the Toronto Maple Leafs, and he came back against the New Jersey Devils and won in a game where he was facing a lot of high-danger scoring chances. I talk sometimes about how, sometimes, some scores flatter the Flames. Recently, they lost 4-2 to the Colorado Avalanche, and that was very nice for the Flames. They looked so much worse than 4-2. Wolf came out against New Jersey and had an .898 save percentage but he was so much better than that. The numbers aren’t always reflective of how he plays and how he is responsible for two-thirds of the Flames’ success so far this season.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here: