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Calgary Flames netminder Dustin Wolf listed in Daily Faceoff’s top 25 NHL-affiliated goalie prospect rankings
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Photo credit: Terence Leung/Calgary Wranglers
Ryan Pike
Sep 12, 2024, 10:00 EDTUpdated: Sep 11, 2024, 10:57 EDT
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It seems like Calgary Flames fans have been playing a fun game since 2019 whenever a prospect ranking entity releases a list of the top goaltending prospects in hockey: “Oh, I wonder if Dustin Wolf will land on this list?” Since 2019, the answer has been “Of course, but where?”
Over at Daily Faceoff, Steven Ellis released his annual top 25 NHL-affiliated goalie prospects list earlier this week. And shocker: Wolf is on the list.
Wolf’s listed at third on Ellis’ latest list, trailing only San Jose’s Yaroslav Askarov and Minnesota’s Jesper Wallstedt.
Here’s Ellis on Wolf:
At last, it’s time for Wolf to shine. He finally lost top goalie honors for the first time since 2018-19 (when, funny enough, he led the WHL with a .936 save percentage), but still put up a 20-12-3 record in the AHL with four shutouts and a .922 save percentage. There have been few goaltenders with a better run in their career than Wolf, who also went 7-7-1 in the NHL with the Flames. Granted, the NHL team had a season to forget and that might not be the best way of evaluating Wolf’s performance, but I do think he needed to show a bit more. Wolf is on the smaller side at six-foot, so there are concerns about whether his skill will translate to the NHL, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a top-10 goalie in the NHL by December, either. When Wolf’s on his game, few can be as dominant as he can. Don’t be surprised if he has established himself as Calgary’s clear No. 1 by Christmas.
Since being drafted in 2019, Wolf has been very good at getting in the way of pucks, to the point where people keep giving him awards for it. We don’t need to belabour the point, but he was the Western Hockey League’s goaltender of the year in 2019-20 and 2020-21 – including one season as the top goalie in the entire Canadian major junior system – and the American Hockey League’s goaltender of the year in 2021-22 and 2022-23 – including winning the AHL’s most valuable player trophy.
A “down” year by Wolf’s standards are a year where he’s merely a strong contender for a goalie of the year award. He didn’t retain his AHL accolades because he spent a third of the 2023-24 season in the NHL due to injuries to Jacob Markstrom and Dan Vladar. Well, Markstrom’s in New Jersey now, so we’ll see if Wolf plays enough NHL games this coming season to graduate from Ellis’ list.

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