Dustin Wolf

Last Season

Fifty-seven appearances, 23-29-3, a 3.01 goals-against average and a .899 save percentage with two shutouts. The record is the team’s; the save percentage is roughly the league median of .896.

The Physical Game

Six foot even and 166 pounds, which makes him the smallest goaltender in the National Hockey League by a considerable margin, in an era when the position is played by men four inches taller and sixty pounds heavier.

He survives on technique and quickness. The depth management is excellent — he knows exactly how far out he can afford to be — and he tracks pucks through traffic better than anyone on this roster has a right to. The recovery is fast because there is not much of him to move.

What he cannot do is take away net by simply existing, which is how most of his contemporaries make their living. Every save has to be an actual save.

The Mental Game

The best thing about him. Fifty-seven appearances behind a club that finished 23rd in expected goals for and 25th against, losing twenty-nine of them, and he stopped .908 over his last ten. Nothing in the results suggests a man who let a bad season get into him.

The Intangibles

Two hundred and fourteenth overall in 2019 — the seventh round, where clubs pick players they have no plan for — and he is now a starting NHL goaltender with 128 games and a career .903.

Calgary’s goaltending came in only two goals worse than the chances it faced last season, on a team that gave up the eighth-most expected goals in the league. That is the one part of this club that is not broken.

He is 25. If the roster in front of him ever improves, the record will look nothing like this.