Quick trivia question: When was the last time a goaltender won the Calder Trophy as the NHL’s top rookie?

No, it wasn’t Connor Hellebuyck. It wasn’t Igor Shesterkin, either. Andrei Vasilevskiy, Jake Oettinger, Ilya Sorokin, Jacob Markstrom, or Juuse Saros? Nope, nope, nope, nope, and nope.

Believe it or not, it’s been 16 years since Steve Mason won the Calder in recognition of his superb efforts with the Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2008-09 season. Coincidentally, the Millennial generation (of which Mason can count himself a member) is typically defined as consisting of people born in the 16-year period between 1981 and 1996.

By that measure, it’s officially been a generation since a goaltender was named the NHL’s rookie of the year. And since Mason’s win, only four goaltenders — Stuart Skinner, Alex Nedeljkovic, Jordan Binnington, and Jimmy Howard — have been named finalists.

Dustin Wolf is gunning to change that. With his 32-save performance against the Buffalo Sabres on Thursday, the 23-year-old netminder improved to 17-7-2 with a .918 save percentage through 26 appearances this season, further solidifying the Flames’ playoff positioning and reinforcing his own Calder case.

Wolf’s track record speaks for itself. His performance this year speaks even louder. He’s been allowed to seize control of the starter’s job as a rookie, something many of the most established star goaltenders in the league today never had the opportunity to do right away. And his results have been phenomenal.

It’s exceedingly rare for a goaltender to become a starter without spending at least one or two full seasons in a backup role. Saros leaned on Pekka Rinne; Vasilevskiy had Ben Bishop; Sorokin started out behind Semyon Varlamov. Hellebuyck played in just 26 games as part of a three-goalie rotation in his rookie year.

Gone are the days of Martin Brodeur and Patrick Roy immediately taking the reins at the top level. Mason’s bravura 61-game performance at age 20 in 2008-09 might end up being the last of its kind for a long time. Wolf may already be 23, but Skinner, Nedeljkovic, Binnington, and Howard were all at least a year older during their Calder-nominated campaigns. All of them debuted on perennial playoff teams, and, in hindsight, all of them look more like beneficiaries of their systems than truly elite in their own right.

Sure, the Blues were dead-last in the NHL when a 25-year-old Binnington arrived to save the day midway through the 2018-19 season, but they were also squarely in the middle of a stretch in which they made the playoffs 10 years out of 11. Nedeljkovic’s Hurricanes haven’t missed since 2018-19 and likely won’t for the foreseeable future. Howard had the luxury of being slotted in behind Nicklas Lidstrom and Pavel Datsyuk on a Red Wings team that had just reached back-to-back Stanley Cup Finals. And you can’t mention Skinner without first talking about Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl.

Wolf, on the other hand, is currently plying his trade behind a Flames team that has woefully underachieved since losing both Johnny Gaudreau and Matthew Tkachuk in the 2022 off-season. Pundits and fans alike almost universally projected these Flames to finish near the bottom of the league. And yet, because of the little goaltender who could (and can), the Flames have built themselves a small cushion over the likes of Vancouver, Utah, and St. Louis for the eighth and final playoff spot in the West.

Plenty has been made of the Flames purportedly giving Wolf the lighter share of difficult assignments over the first few months of the season, but that doesn’t matter much when his tandem partner, Dan Vladar, has struggled against good and bad teams alike for quite some time. Vladar has an .889 save percentage this year and an .888 over the past three seasons. There’s no such thing as an “easy game” in the NHL, but the Flames certainly seem to have an easier go of things whenever Wolf is in net.

If his numbers are to be believed — and indeed, they are — Wolf should be competing for the Vezina Trophy, not just the Calder. His .942 5-on-5 save percentage is tops among all goaltenders with at least 20 games played this year. The same goes for his .874 high-danger save percentage. Hellebuyck, the hands-down Vezina favourite, is right behind him in both categories.

Where Hellebuyck has a distinct advantage over Wolf is in his workload. He’s been Winnipeg’s undisputed starter since Day 1, whereas Wolf is still working on winning that role for good. He’s certainly getting there — Vladar has only played twice this month — but he’ll likely need to maintain his current numbers over 50 or 55 games to even have a hope of winning the Calder.

It’s going to be impossible to fit each deserving nominee into the Calder picture this year. Right now, it’s a four-horse race between Wolf, Mack Celebrini, Lane Hutson, and Matvei Michkov. And while the other three have been excellent in their own ways, only one player in this year’s Calder conversation is truly a once-in-a-generation rookie.

Wolf has a chance to become only the sixth rookie goaltender since 2000 to surpass the 30-win threshold in his first full season. And unlike Matt Murray and Corey Crawford, both of whom had the benefit of breaking into the league behind championship-calibre rosters, Wolf is doing a lot of this on his own. How many Flames wins this year belong, first and foremost, to No. 32? It certainly isn’t a small number.

The words ‘generational’ and ‘historic’ are overused in hockey circles, but they both apply to what Wolf is doing with the Flames this season. On top of being Calgary’s MVP, he’s both the NHL’s most valuable rookie this year and its most valuable rookie goaltender in more than a decade.

Don’t take what you’re seeing for granted. It’s really special.

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