Flames goaltender Dustin Wolf finishes second in Calder Trophy voting behind Montreal’s Lane Hutson

(Disclosure: I am a PHWA voter, and I had Wolf second on my ballot behind Hutson.)

Of the 191 ballots cast, Hutson was in first place on 165 of them (and second-place on the remaining 26). Wolf appeared on 188 ballots, missing the cut on just three of them. Wolf received 15 first-place votes, 96 second-place votes, 59 third-place votes, 17 fourth-place votes and 1 fifth-place vote. The combination of points received by Wolf kept him a step ahead of San Jose Sharks forward Macklin Celebrini, who finished third.

A product of scenic California that played his junior hockey with the Western League’s Everett Silvertips, Wolf was the 214th player selected in the 2019 NHL Draft – taken fourth-from-last in that year’s draft. You see, he’s listed at 6’0″, which is considered small for a goaltender.

“Despite” being a smaller goaltender, or the perception of such, Wolf has been consistently very good at stopping pucks. He was the WHL’s top goaltender twice, the AHL’s top goaltender twice and the AHL’s most valuable player once. After a bit of an odd 2023-24 season where he split the campaign between the NHL and AHL, serving as an injury replacement for a third of the season with the Flames, he was a full-time NHLer in 2024-25 after the off-season departure of Jacob Markstrom.

To nobody’s great shock, Wolf ended up being quite good with a consistent role. After splitting starts evenly with Dan Vladar in the first half of the season, Wolf took over the next as the de facto top goaltender for the remainder of the year and performed very well. Overall, Wolf played in 53 games and posted a 29-16-8 record with a 2.64 goals against average, .910 save percentage and three shutouts. He was among the league leaders in most goaltending categories, and was one of the top netminders at even strength.

Wolf is the first Flames player to finish as runner-up in the Calder Trophy balloting since Jarome Iginla. We don’t know if Wolf will quite live up to Iginla’s Hall of Fame pedigree, but Wolf’s strong season is potentially a sign of campaigns yet to come.