When the season began, many in the hockey world had two expectations of the Calgary Flames: that they would be fairly bad (at least in terms of their placement in the standings), and that they’d get worse when they sold off some of their pending unrestricted free agents.
Well, through 19 games… the Flames aren’t bad at all. And a good deal of credit for that has to go to pending UFA goaltender Dan Vladar, who’s formed a formidable netminding tandem with rookie Dustin Wolf.
Over at Daily Faceoff, our pal Frank Seravalli crafted his first Trade Targets board of the season, listing 15 players with buzz in the trade market: Vladar is listed in the 11th spot.
Here’s Seravalli:
“Very quietly, 23-year-old Dustin Wolf has entered the Calder Trophy conversation. And third goaltender Devin Cooley has been, well, on fire with a sterling .953 save percentage for the AHL’s Wranglers. That leaves Vladar as the obvious trade piece, now in the final year of his deal before becoming a free agent. He’s responded well following offseason surgery, putting up his best numbers in three seasons despite shouldering the tougher starts while Wolf finds his NHL footing.”
Heading into Wednesday’s action, the Flames have a 91.2 all situations save percentage (fifth in the NHL) and a 94.4 five-on-five save percentage (first in the NHL). They’re among the stingiest teams in five-on-five goals against. Considering the Flames’ defensive rates are generally fairly pedestrian – 23rd in Corsi against, 21st in Fenwick against, 27th in shots against, 18th in expected goals against, 22nd in scoring chances against and 10th in high-danger chances against – that’s pretty impressive. Considering that generally, teams that play strong defence have strong goaltending metrics, the Flames bucking that trend is a testament to how well their netminders have played.
Wolf has gotten a lot of accolades for his performances thus far, and rightly so, but Vladar stacks up really well against the rest of the league’s goaltenders, too. Among the 59 goalies who’ve played 200 or more five-on-five minutes, he’s 13th in save percentage. Among the 64 goalies who’ve played 200 or more minutes in all situations, he’s 24th. (He’s saved 2.97 goals above expected at five-0n-five, but allowed 1.1 goals above expected overall.)
The 27-year-old Vladar had hip surgery in the spring, and folks around hockey were wondering how he would look after that procedure. But after playing through pain for much of the past two season, Vladar says he’s back at 100%… and he looks like it, too. As Seravalli mentioned, the Flames have both Wolf and AHL standout Devin Cooley signed to one-way NHL deals for next season. Vladar seems like the odd man out. But he’s doing a great job so far this season to ensure there will be some interesting NHL options available to him when his time with the Flames eventually comes.
Right now, though, the Flames are pretty happy to have Vladar on their team.
