When Jacob Markstrom traded in his Calgary Flames sweater for a New Jersey Devils one, it was reasonable to presume that the Flames would have slightly worst goaltending in 2024-25 than they had in prior seasons.

Yet through 39 games of the season, that hasn’t been the case.

In 2023-24, the Flames’ netminders posted a combined 90.44 save percentage at five-on-five (27th in the NHL) and 89.05 save percentage overall (26th). Through the first 38 games of the Flames’ 2024-25 campaign, their goaltenders have combined for a 92.96 save percentage at five-on-five (third) and an 89.67 save percentage in all situations (13th). The Flames traded away a perennial Vezina Trophy contender and their goaltending metrics actually improved.

While we’ll concede that the Flames’ dividing of the goaltending responsibilities hasn’t been without reproach – reasonable people can disagree about these things – it’s hard to nitpick the results.

If you want to argue that Wolf has had a bit more sheltering than Vladar has in terms of usage, the data supports that claim.

Last week after a practice, Flames head coach Ryan Huska was asked about what goes into deciding which goaltender gets which starts.

“A little bit would be opponent, but a lot of it would be making sure we have a fresh guy,” said Huska. “So, I mean sometimes you’re going to have a goaltender that’s played very well against a certain team and his record is ridiculously good. And a pretty good chance we’ll try to build a rotation around that at times. So Jason [LaBarbera] does all that leg work. He looks into all their records and who’s had success against what teams. But the biggest thing for us is to make sure that whoever plays that night is fresh and they’re, you know, the gas tank is rightful so they’ll give us the best chance that we have to have success.”

After Friday’s practice, Huska was asked about the Flames’ fairly even division of starts between Wolf and Vladar.

“I think it’s worked well to date,” added Huska after a more recent practice on Friday. “I think both guys have been good for us. They’ve given us chances to win. I think as we keep going, you’ll probably see if there is some separation between one or the other guy, that someone’s going to get a little bit more regular starts, if you will. And I’m not saying you’re going to run a guy for 15 games, but two of three is most certainly something that we will start to look at.”

So given all of that, with the Flames heading into a fairly unique portion of their schedule, how should they divide up the goaltending duties over the next little while?

Here’s how the next seven games unfold:

So let’s walk this thing through…

Typically the back-to-back sets would have Wolf in the opening game and Vladar in the second game. But Wolf has better numbers against Los Angeles than Vladar in a small sample size for both – Wolf has a .966 save percentage and one win, Wolf has an .867 save percentage and a loss – so what the numbers suggest is going with Vladar against Anaheim and Wolf in the two games against Los Angeles.

In the next road cluster, it’s a bit closer to what they’ve been doing: Wolf has better numbers against Chicago than Vladar, while Vladar has better numbers than Wolf against St. Louis. So we’d go Wolf against Chicago and Vladar for at the very least the first game against St. Louis. (For the second St. Louis game, we could see a rationale for swapping to Wolf to avoid him going too long without a start.) Neither goalie has a career win against Winnipeg and Vladar has slightly better numbers, so we’d lean towards Vladar for Winnipeg.

That would leave us with this general schedule:

This would give Wolf four starts over the seven games, while Vladar gets three. Both goalies get some favourable match-ups that are pretty consistent with how they’ve been used by the Flames coaching staff this season, but their usage avoids either of them sitting idle for too long. (Vladar has a week between starts, but that’s more of a product of how the back-to-backs shake out.)