[3rd liner]

Originally Posted by getbak

Yeah, it's a misunderstanding of the terminology. He's not the emergency backup, he's on a emergency recall.

Basically, after the deadline, teams can only make 4 "regular" recalls from the AHL, but they can make unlimited "emergency" recalls. To qualify as an emergency recall, the team must be in a situation where they don't have at least 12 forwards, 6 defencemen, or 2 goalies who are all healthy to play.

Because of Markstrom's injury, the Flames only had one healthy goalie, so Wolf qualified as an emergency recall. Now that Markstrom in healthy again, but Vladar isn't, Wolf can stay up still on an emergency recall.

Thanks for explaining!