It would be easy to miss that the Calgary Flames amassed 96 points last year, unless you own a Joe Nieuwendyk jersey. It wasn’t quite enough to earn the Flames a playoff spot, as they lost out to the Blues on the regulation wins tiebreaker (further proving what a farce OT and the shootout are, but that’s a rant for another time). Without making the playoffs, the label of “surprise team” usually get attached to someone else. Still, those 96 points came out of nowhere, given they’d only had 81 the season before and didn’t add all that much in the summer of 2024, In fact had punted their starting goalie, Jacob Markstrom, which didn’t signal a team that was ready to do much of anything in ’24-’25.
The biggest reason they vaulted into the playoff discussion last season, Dustin Wolf, was just handed a seven year extension at a $7.5 million hit. To summarize, that could end up an absolute steal before too long, if it isn’t already.
Wolf was top-10 in save-percentage last season at .910. He was top-20 in goals-saved-above expected, according to MoneyPuck. What’s most exciting for Flames fans about that is that Wolf was by far the youngest on those lists at just 23. No one else in the top 10 for save-percentage was below 28. Only Anaheim’s Lukas Dostal was under 28 on the list of top-2o goalies for goals-saved-above-expected.
Arcs aren’t always clean for goalie development. There are some tantalizing names that started over half their team’s games at 23 or younger and managed to match Wolf’s .910 or better. They are names like Carey Price, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Sergei Borbrovsky, Jake Oettinger, Jonathan Quick, and Semyon Varlamov. There are also some cautionary tales in there, like Matt Murray, Steve Mason, and Petr Mrázek, who never hit those heights again. However, the first list indicates that Wolf is more likely than not to move into and remain in the NHL goalie penthouse.
What should tickle Flames fans is that the likes of Vasilevskiy, Bobrovsky, Shesterkin, and Price have come in at cap hits that start at $9 million or $10 million or higher. With a rising cap, other goalies will push those numbers higher. Having Wolf locked in below that, should he continue to evolve, would be saving the Flames some dough.
Wolf’s extension comes on the heels of the Flames locking in Connor Zary and Matthew Coronato this summer, signaling who will be anchoring the team for the next little while. With Zayne Parekh looking likely to crack the blue line this season, that’s clearly who will be the linchpin on the back end in front of Wolf for years to come.
The problem for the Flames it that the rest of the roster is caught in between. Jonathan Huberdeau is 32 and signed through the heat death of the Earth. Nazem Kadri is 34 and isn’t really a #1 center. Mikael Backlund may be entering his last season, and is 36 even if he isn’t. Morgan Frost and Joel Farabee are in what’s supposed to be their primes, but are also on their second team because they haven’t ever really shown they can be central to a team’s interests. They’re role players at best.
The pipeline isn’t really rich either, with future forwards Samuel Honzek and Cullen Potter looking more like middle-six players than players that can return Kadri back to his role further down the lineup.
Coronato, Parekh, and Wolf promise a lot for the future. But Huberdeau, Kadri, Blake Coleman, and Mackenzie Weegar are on the downsides of their careers. They very well may balance out the promise of the kids with their decline. How does Calgary shuffle them out over the next year or two to get younger and better? Especially in a league where impact free agent signings were already hard to come by and will be even trickier with a rising cap that makes it easier for teams to keep their stars?
Huberdeau’s and Kadri’s trade value would be pretty low given their contracts, and that’s only if Calgary was in a sell-mode. Coming off 96 points in a division that still looks pretty weak is not a spot a team usually sells out of.
Keeping Wolf around installs a floor for the next seven years. The problem is the ceiling might be in a spot that causes a crick in everyone’s neck.
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