Flames beat Golden Knights 4-1 on pair of goals by Coleman and 28 stops by Wolf
Not sure if the Calgary Flames should stick with the pack of hyenas thing coined by Nazem Kadri or switch to the wolfpack in honour of rookie/prospect NHL goaltender Dustin Wolf.
Wolf made 28 saves, including some monsters in the third period, as the Flames came back from an early third-period deficit to earn a 4-1 victory over the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights at the Saddledome on Thursday night.
Wolf finished with 28 saves for just his second win of the season, but the AHL’s top goaltender for two straight seasons showed his NHL potential with some big stops.
Maybe none bigger than the one on Ivan Barbashev, who couldn’t beat Wolf on a breakaway deke that could have been the difference in what was a 1-1 game halfway through the final frame.
Instead, Blake Coleman gave his Calgary Flames the lead immediately after the big stop, snatching the rebound away from Barbashev and cashing in on a redirection from inside the Knights crease when Nazem Kadri fired it to him in front.
Coleman scored again into an empty net after Adin Hill was pulled with a few minutes remaining, but the game was already nearly out of reach after goals from Yegor Sharangovich and Matt Coronato helped turn a 1-0 deficit at the start of the third period into a three-goal win.
It snapped an ugly three-game losing streak, too.
It was a big one for Wolf’s confidence. He was near tears after his last outing — an awful 6-1 loss to the San Jose Sharks on Feb. 15.
What a difference a month makes.
“The team was excellent out there, from start to finish,” Wolf said post-game. “A much more complete game than what we’ve seen the last couple. They let me see pucks. And if I can see pucks, I’m going to stop most of ’em.”
That’s what we’re used to seeing in the American Hockey League, where Wolf has been both the goaltender of the year and league MVP. There’s not much (anything) left for him to prove at that level. In the NHL, though, there’s plenty. And people around these parts can be pretty impatient.
After a rough few outings in spot duty with the Flames this season, some were already counting the underdog 22-year-old out as a future starter. Not so fast, though. The 6-footer with great anticipation and athleticism has been proving people wrong for years.
Selected right near the bottom of the seventh round in the 2019 draft, Wolf deserves the time and patience to prove himself at this level.
With an injury to starter Jacob Markstrom, who may be on his way out this summer anyway, that time may be now. The Flames don’t have great odds of making the playoffs, but more performances like this one from Wolf would help.
So would more performances like what he saw in front of him in one of the team’s more complete games of the season.
“For whatever reason, I think the trade deadline, travel, whatever it was, loomed heavy on the group,” Coleman said of a team that has seen four key players get traded away this season as pending unrestricted free agents.
One of them, Noah Hanifin, was pit against them playing with the Knights on Thursday.
“We were all pretty disappointed with how the last few games went. We’ve had some good look-in-the-mirror meetings here in the last 24 hours and I thought everybody to a man responded really well and all around it was a good team game.”
