Where would the Flames be this season without Wolf?

[Hockey_Ninja]

Definitely worse than where the team is currently at I know that for certain

[Rhett44]

I also don't care about fancy stats. Wolf stops so many breakaways and odd man rushes per game it is insane.

I watch many NHL games, and the Flames by far give up the most high quality scoring chances.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Rhett44

I also don't care about fancy stats. Wolf stops so many breakaways and odd man rushes per game it is insane.

I watch many NHL games, and the Flames by far give up the most high quality scoring chances.

Lol, people might have a serious dbate with you if you didnt make ridiculous points. You obvioualy dont watch Chicago, SJ, Philly, Pittsburg, ect. enough.

[Enoch Root]

Originally Posted by Rhett44

I also don't care about fancy stats. Wolf stops so many breakaways and odd man rushes per game it is insane.

I watch many NHL games, and the Flames by far give up the most high quality scoring chances.

If only there was a way to confirm or refute this...

[#-3]

Well the Hockey reference attributes 9.2 points to Wolf this season, but you also have to consider his value over replacement,

Without Wolf do we still have Markstrom? 6.8 points with the same number of games played.

Would Vladar have played 45 games? His 4 point shares pro-rated come up to 6.4.

So just looking at the two counter factuals that are likely, the Flames would probably be about 2 - 2.5 points further behind without wolf. Where the real narrative could change is if the Team hadn't spent the majority of the playoffs in a wildcard spot, do they play as hard? Do they go out and get Frost? do they let players who are bumped up take more time off? Do they trade away someone important. I think these are real counter factuals, but Wolf is a proximate cause, not a direct cause. It's a team game and the goal matters, but not only the goalie, there have been many games this year where this team has been damn impressive.

[chummer]

They'd be in Denver.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Rhett44

Bottom 5 in the league for sure. Probably bottom 3.

Assuming we replace him with an average goalie.

Nope

Originally Posted by Rhett44

I also don't care about fancy stats. Wolf stops so many breakaways and odd man rushes per game it is insane.

I watch many NHL games, and the Flames by far give up the most high quality scoring chances.

Also no.

Watching games doesn’t seem to be helping you.

[Rhett44]

Originally Posted by #-3

Well the Hockey reference attributes 9.2 points to Wolf this season, but you also have to consider his value over replacement,

Without Wolf do we still have Markstrom? 6.8 points with the same number of games played.

Would Vladar have played 45 games? His 4 point shares pro-rated come up to 6.4.

So just looking at the two counter factuals that are likely, the Flames would probably be about 2 - 2.5 points further behind without wolf. Where the real narrative could change is if the Team hadn't spent the majority of the playoffs in a wildcard spot, do they play as hard? Do they go out and get Frost? do they let players who are bumped up take more time off? Do they trade away someone important. I think these are real counter factuals, but Wolf is a proximate cause, not a direct cause. It's a team game and the goal matters, but not only the goalie, there have been many games this year where this team has been damn impressive.

The Flames have played very well the last handful of games. The best they have all season.

For the remainder of the year, we have probably "deserved" to lose 75% of them. If you go by the deserve to win meter or whatever metrics.

It's a team game though and Wolf has stolen like 20 points minimum.

[dino7c]

Originally Posted by Rhett44

The Flames have played very well the last handful of games. The best they have all season.

For the remainder of the year, we have probably "deserved" to lose 75% of them. If you go by the deserve to win meter or whatever metrics.

It's a team game though and Wolf has stolen like 20 points minimum.

20 points! Lol dude

[GreenLantern2814]

They would still be a bottom-3 team offensively.

If GAA is a team stat, then Wolf’s 2.67 GAA shows the team plays 0.23 goals better per game with 32 in net.

Over a full season, that’s worth 18.86 goals - which would drop them from 15th in goals against down to 23rd.

Bottom-10 team offensively and defensively drafts bottom-10.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Inferno

There isn't very many good teams in the list you've provided. I would have liked their chances even with Vladar most of those games.

On that list, only SJ, Chicago, Nashville, Anaheim are offensively challenged teams. The rest aren't. So if we assume Vladar makes all the same saves in those 5 games that Wolf made, ok, those 5 points are salvaged. But it's still an assumption.

And the end of the day, they needed Wolf to be great in those games to win them, and he was. Does Vladar deliver the same results? I'm not convinced.

Originally Posted by FlamesAddiction

There are so many unknowns. Would Vladar thrive if given a more conistent schedule, or would he fold?

He's an NHL vet with over 100 starts under his belt, so his ceiling has probably already been reached. But if he were to be the team's #1 and play more often, teams across the league would likely spend more time studying him to try and find weaknesses to exploit. That and the increased workload might work against him from a fatigue standpoint. So I'm thinking he either maintains his current level or does slightly worse.

Would whoever the back-up is, likely Cooley, steal a few games?

Possibly. But in any game he's in, he's more likely to give up a bunch of goals than steal the game. Seattle didn't keep him, and he's in the AHL now where his numbers don't jump off the page.

Would the strategy change if goaltending wasn't the center of gravity?

Maybe, but I don't see how a changed strategy would result in more success.

If the team found themselves out of playoff contention really early in the season, would their playstyle and tenacity be different (likely a downward spiral)? Would Conroy have been a seller at the deadline causing the team to get fewer wins down the stretch?

Not likely to have been in the playoff race at any point.

Maybe Andersson would have been dealt. Then again maybe not. Who knows if Conny would have got a suitable offer for him.

Originally Posted by Goriders

A little bit of cherry picking. You could ask the same thing about Kadri.

I’d look at it more as we have Wolf. How do we build around him?

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

Wolf has been awesome but so has the team defence. Where would they be without Weegar, who is somehow a +13 with 41 points while attached to AHL calibre partners all season

True, several players have been instrumental to the Flames winning games this season. Props to Weegar, Kadri, Huby, Vladar, etc. But Wolf is the top guy on that list.

And take nothing away from Huska this season. He's been doing a fabulous job.

Originally Posted by PepsiFree

Vladar has put above a sv% .920 or higher in 39% of his games.

Wolf has done it in 44% of his.

So you can reasonably expect that Vladar would have met the “very good or excellent” threshold for about 2-3 less periods than Wolf over the bizarre stretch you cherry picked.

If you just look at those two numbers, it may seem that these are two similar goalies who have had similar seasons. But as fans of this team we have watched the games, and the consensus on here is that Wolf has been the far better of the two this season.

Instead of looking at save% stats and drawing conclusions based on that alone, I would rather have a look at each game one by one and see what happened. Quite often, Wolf has stood on his head and secured the win. Other times he's gotten the team to OT where most goalies wouldn't have.

So no, I'm not basing my "very good or excellent" standard on save% alone. It's a combination of save%, the amount of ten bell saves he made, and the crucial times he was making them.

(For what it's worth, Wolf has hit .950 or better in 24% (11/45) of his games this season, compared to 14% (4/28) for Vladar)

Originally Posted by Jason14h

No player is worth 17 points by themselves

This is a few years old (maybe there’s a newer one ) and 7 player in the nhl contributed a WAR above 5 (so 10 pts)

https://hockey-graphs.com/category/war/

So we’re probably realistically talking 6-10 points depending who the replacement goalie is

Originally Posted by FireGilbert

According to Money Puck Wolf has a WAR of 2.05 so that’s 4 extra points.

The WAR stat has its purposes. But it's not a substitute for actually looking at what happened in each game.

Originally Posted by dino7c

Lol, is OP assuming they would have no goalie playing?

Its 4-6 points above an average NHLer...who would also "steal" points from time to time.

I'll try to explain this again. There were many games this season where Wolf was either very good or excellent, and the team only ended up winning by a goal. So fair to say Wolf's play was the difference between winning and losing. So if they got a little bit worse goaltending in each of those games, a game where they're ahead by 1 instead becomes a tied game, which is why I assigned 1 point to each of those games instead of the 2 they got.

Other times, he helped get the team to extra time and salvage a point. A little bit worse goaltending means they would have lost those games in regulation instead, hence getting 0 points instead of 1.

Looking at the Flames OT/SO record, they have 8 wins in 20 games that have gone to extra time. So at a 40% win rate, perhaps I should have assigned 0.6 points per win lost instead of 1 per win lost. That would have brought the actual number of lost points to 11 total. Wouldn't guarantee us a top 5 pick but would put us in the mix.

Originally Posted by Groot

This is an absurdly-biased attempt at "analysis". Here you go. This doesn't even improve this weird attempt to discredit everyone on the team but Wolf

If you interpreted my post as some sort of attack on the team or the coach or anyone else - rest assured, it isn't. My only goal here is to praise Wolf for the tremendous season he's had.

but at least it provides a bit more perspective. Listed next to each game is Flames Deserve to Win, all stats from Moneypuck.com.

I don't really think you can use the Deserve to Win O meter for this kind of thing.

https://moneypuck.com/about.htm#meter
The "Deserve To Win O'Meter" is a feature on our live game pages which shows the each team's chance of winning the game had the game been re-enacted, except with average goaltending for both teams.

In other words, it imagines the game replayed where both teams have average goaltending. This means replacing Wolf with an average goalie, but also means replacing the opposing goalie with an average goalie. In doing so it disregards the actual performance of the opposing goalie on that night. This is a problem because if the opposing goalie has a great night and kept the Flames in check (or the Flames couldn't finish on their chances due to talent deficiency), the Deserve-meter papers over that and imagines the Flames scoring a lot more goals than they actually did.

That's the problem with the Deserve-meter... it makes teams that generate a lot of chances but have trouble burying them, seem like globetrotters.

And the other thing to consider is if both goalies are standing on their heads, it makes it seem like only one or neither goalie was standing on his head. So if the other goalie was facing a lot of shots and having a great night, it doesn't mean Wolf wasn't making huge saves when called upon.

Oct 15 vs Chicago - 53.8%
Oct 22 vs Pittsburgh - 46.% (L)
Nov 5 vs Montreal - 45.5% (L)
Nov 11 vs LA - 56.2%
Nov 15 vs Nashville - 49.1% (L?)
Nov 19 vs NYI - 72.4%
Nov 21 vs NYR - 71.9%
Dec 28 vs SJ - 75.1%
Dec 31 vs Van - 56.4%
Jan 7 vs Anaheim - 64.9%
Jan 11 vs LA - 64.4%
Jan 18 vs Winnipeg - 11.9% (L)
Jan 23 vs Buffalo - 43.1% (L)
Feb 23 vs SJ - 63.2%
Mar 2 vs Carolina - Flames lost
Mar 8 vs Montreal - 37.2% (L)
Mar 12 vs Van - Flames lost

So from your list you have 2 games where Wolf clearly carried the team to a Win. 4 gained points, 2 gained points if it was one more goal scored and went to OT.

Then another 3-4 games where the other team outplayed the Flames yet Flames still won, happens all the time. Hard to attribute it specifically to Wolf. How many games did the Flames outplay an opponent and lose? Both of the last two games.

How many lost points offset the other "unearned" points? Likely a wash. Then apparently 2 games that Flames lost but never should have gone to OT I guess so that's 2 more points.

2-6 points gained is probably realistic. 17 is absurd.

17 was the wrong number. Should have been 11. Sorry about that.

But you're basing your analysis on the Deserve meter which to me is a flawed way of looking at things.

[Inferno]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

On that list, only SJ, Chicago, Nashville, Anaheim are offensively challenged teams. The rest aren't. So if we assume Vladar makes all the same saves in those 5 games that Wolf made, ok, those 5 points are salvaged. But it's still an assumption.

And the end of the day, they needed Wolf to be great in those games to win them, and he was. Does Vladar deliver the same results? I'm not convinced.

Winnipeg, LA, and Carolina are the only good teams on your list. The rest are either mediocre or bad. You're acting as if Vladar can't handle teams who have scorers and only makes routine saves and never makes big saves himself.

Maybe Vladar doesn't make the same saves Wolf made those games but maybe Wolf doesn't make the same saves Vladar does either. Maybe because of his size Vladar gets a piece of Pissy's shot and the Flames win last night.

Nobody is saying that Wolf hasn't stolen the team points. But not 17. There can be games where he both plays well and the team plays well too. Unless his team completely dominates the game there's going to be times throughout the game where a goalie needs to make a big save. But it doesn't necessarily mean he stole the game for them.

[Mathgod]

Originally Posted by Inferno

Winnipeg, LA, and Carolina are the only good teams on your list. The rest are either mediocre or bad.

And yet, the Flames beat those mediocre or bad teams by only one goal (ENs aside). And that was with Wolf playing very well. What does that tell you? The margins have been very tight, even against less-than-stellar teams. Having great goaltending has been extremely important in these games.

Saying only 3 teams on the list are good teams is not as relevant as you think it is. If the rest of the teams can't keep the puck out of their own nets, what relevance does that have to Flames goalies? Zero. What matters is whether opposing teams can score, and only 4 teams have some trouble scoring (among the listed opponets).

You're acting as if Vladar can't handle teams who have scorers and only makes routine saves and never makes big saves himself.

Maybe Vladar doesn't make the same saves Wolf made those games but maybe Wolf doesn't make the same saves Vladar does either. Maybe because of his size Vladar gets a piece of Pissy's shot and the Flames win last night.

Nobody is saying that Wolf hasn't stolen the team points. But not 17. There can be games where he both plays well and the team plays well too. Unless his team completely dominates the game there's going to be times throughout the game where a goalie needs to make a big save. But it doesn't necessarily mean he stole the game for them.

I'm not suggesting Vladar is an incapable goalie who can't make big saves. I'm just saying you can either bog things down with "what ifs" and "maybes" forever, or you can at some point start making some determinations.

Flames win a game by one goal, Wolf plays great. If it's a goalie other than Wolf, the game goes to extra time where 1 of the points is no longer guaranteed.

[gvitaly]

According to Dobber's frozen tools Wolf has stolen the Flames 7 games(NSH, WPG, LAK, MTL x 2, NYI, SJS), and has 6 really bad starts with sv% below .885(TOR x 2, DAL x2, UTA, MIN). You can also probably add the 2 OTL to CAR and VAN as 2 points he stole. All in all I think he got the Flames at least 4-6 extra points.

His quality starts %, where he has a sv% above league avg, has also fallen back down to earth and sits at 51.1%.

Vladar in comparison has 2 steals(WSH, SEA), has 6 really bad starts(TOR, WPG, UTA, TBL, STL, VAN), and a QS% of 53.6%. The RBS are misleading here, because they won the VAN season opener, lost to STL in OT, and Wolf was pulled in the TOR game where Vladar allowed 1 goal on 3 shots after.

[Scroopy Noopers]

Originally Posted by Rhett44

I also don't care about fancy stats. Wolf stops so many breakaways and odd man rushes per game it is insane.

I watch many NHL games, and the Flames by far give up the most high quality scoring chances.

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

If only there was a way to confirm or refute this...

https://moneypuck.com/teams.htm

- 25th from the bottom in high danger shots against
- 19th in medium danger shots against

…. Hmmm these stats seems to tell a very different tale than the boys crying wolf (myself included).

[Samonadreau]

I've got the dowsing rods out and they tells me 7 points. But you gotta drill deep to get them.

[Inferno]

Originally Posted by Mathgod

And yet, the Flames beat those mediocre or bad teams by only one goal (ENs aside). And that was with Wolf playing very well. What does that tell you? The margins have been very tight, even against less-than-stellar teams. Having great goaltending has been extremely important in these games.

That doesn't mean he stole the game. It just means the team had trouble scoring. There's been games where both him and the team defensively has been tight.

Games like the game in Winnipeg in January where he completely stoned the Jets. Yeah, he stole that one.

[Enoch Root]

Just because a goalie played well and had saves above expected, doesn't mean you can simply subtract that from the score and get a different result. Games flow BASED on the score. Hell, refs REF based on the score.

You can't simply say he saved 11 points in the standings. It just doesn't work that way.

Not to mention, these stats are FAR from infallible. Shot metrics in hockey do not consider time and space, so two (statistically) identical shots from the exact same place on the ice, are not identical because one shooter may have had more time than the other. Applying these stats with the assumption that they are perfectly accurate, is folly. Drawing the conclusions that you are trying to draw from them, is beyond folly. It is flat out garbage, as far as statistics go.

[PepsiFree]

Originally Posted by Enoch Root

Just because a goalie played well and had saves above expected, doesn't mean you can simply subtract that from the score and get a different result. Games flow BASED on the score. Hell, refs REF based on the score.

You can't simply say he saved 11 points in the standings. It just doesn't work that way.

Not to mention, these stats are FAR from infallible. Shot metrics in hockey do not consider time and space, so two (statistically) identical shots from the exact same place on the ice, are not identical because one shooter may have had more time than the other. Applying these stats with the assumption that they are perfectly accurate, is folly. Drawing the conclusions that you are trying to draw from them, is beyond folly. It is flat out garbage, as far as statistics go.

I’m not even sure the accuracy of the stats is a concern for the 2-3 people making this argument. The position seems to be somewhere between “stats exist” and “don’t tell me about stats” and either way there doesn’t seem to be any concern over whether stats are even relevant, let alone accurate.

It’s a funny position. I love Wolf, I think he’s had an amazing season for a rookie goaltender, easy calder consideration. But you’d have an easier time arguing the Flames would be cup contenders if they just added one 20 goal scorer than this whole 17 point drop/bottom five business without Wolf. And I don’t know a single person who would even entertain that argument, so the fact that a small handful of people are trying to actually make this one is wild.

[Calgary4LIfe]

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.