Since this is a topic of ongoing discussion, I thought I'd comb through the season and figure out how many games Dustin Wolf played a crucial role for this team picking up wins (or at least points) over the course of the season.
For this list, I've included all games that meet the following criteria:
- Wolf played, and was at least very good (in most cases excellent), and
- The Flames either won the game by one goal (not counting empty netters), or lost in OT/SO.
The idea being, if the Flames let in one additional goal in each of these games, they would likely lose at least one point in each case. For sake of simplicity, I'm ignoring certain considerations such as what if they made up for that extra goal by scoring an extra one of theirs, or what if they let in more than one extra goal.
Without further ado, here's the list.
Oct 15 vs Chicago
Oct 22 vs Pittsburgh
Nov 5 vs Montreal
Nov 11 vs LA
Nov 15 vs Nashville
Nov 19 vs NYI
Nov 21 vs NYR
Dec 28 vs SJ
Dec 31 vs Van
Jan 7 vs Anaheim
Jan 11 vs LA
Jan 18 vs Winnipeg
Jan 23 vs Buffalo
Feb 23 vs SJ
Mar 2 vs Carolina
Mar 8 vs Montreal
Mar 12 vs Van
We'd have 17 fewer points. So those of us saying that this team would be in the mix for a top 5 pick (or at least a guaranteed top 10 pick) if they had average goaltending all season long, do have a pretty strong case.
You could argue that hey, the Flames would have battled back in some of those games. I'd argue that this is an offensively challenged team, and wouldn't have got the extra goal back in most cases. And then you consider that sometimes they'd give up more than one extra goal, turning 2 points into 0 points. In the end, maybe the real number isn't 17, but it would be close to it.
Edit: real number should have been 11. Sorry for the confusion.