I love Wolf and think he is already one of the NHL's better starters. I don't see him having that much of an effect on wins/losses, however. Has he stole some games? Absolutely he has. He has also been below average in some.
Wolf has been an excellent part of the puzzle to this team's wins this season. Huska's system, the players sticking to the system and playing as a team, the consistent effort level (huge!), and the much better than expected group of defencemen.
This team has been living on the margins all season, and Wolf is just a nice part of the season. It is extremely difficult to quantify vs filtering out all the rest of the 'noise' - even including puck luck and getting the right calls from the refs at the right moments in a game. Vladar has definitely stolen some games this season as well. I think it is a more difficult task to figure out exactly how many points Wolf is directly responsible for this season and where exactly the Flames would have finished in the standings.
17 seems like a really high number to me. I would have believed it if what I saw was a flat team night in and night out getting shelled but still winning games on the nightly heroics of a goalie. I didn't really see that. I did see Wolf being consistent and making some huge saves at times, but I also saw a really good 'team' out there all season long.
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