Dustin Wolf Had a Bad Night. That Doesn't Make Him Bad

Something about goalies makes hockey fans lose patience awfully quickly. Dustin Wolf had a bad night Thursday. A really bad night. The Seattle Kraken scored six times on 32 shots, and Wolf finished with an .813 save percentage as the Calgary Flames opened their season with a 6-1 loss. That doesn't require much analysis. Six goals against is six goals against.

The game was almost over for the Flames before it even started.

But then you look a little closer. Seattle scored three times on its first six shots. That's the sort of start that can get inside a goalie's head pretty quickly. Wolf did manage to settle down in the second period, stopping all 12 shots he faced. One of those was an excellent recovery save on Jordan Eberle. Then came the third period, and Seattle scored three more.

Agreed, Wolf had a terrible season debut. But another story is hiding inside those numbers. Maybe the more interesting question isn't whether Wolf is a good goalie. We already know he can be one. The question is what happens when things go wrong early.

That's part of the job, particularly for a young goalie. A veteran goalie has years of experience telling himself that one bad period doesn't define a game, and one bad game doesn't define a season. A young goalie is still learning how to do that. And sometimes the hardest part of the position isn't stopping the puck. It's forgetting the last puck that got past you.

That's why Wolf’s second period caught my attention.

After giving up three goals on six shots, Wolf stopped everything Seattle threw at him for 20 minutes. That's not the response of a goalie who simply fell apart and stayed there. He found a way to reset. Then the Kraken got to him again in the third. That's where the real story might be.

The Flames need to find out whether Wolf can consistently recover from difficult stretches. Not whether he can have a bad night. Every goalie has those. The better question is whether a bad night becomes two bad nights, or whether the goalie learns how to put it behind him. That's probably a better measure of Wolf than the .813 sitting beside his name after one game.

First games often feel bigger than they are.

The temptation in hockey is always to make the first game mean something bigger than it does. A goalie gives up six, and suddenly we're wondering whether he's the answer. A young defenceman makes two mistakes, and suddenly he's not ready. A scorer doesn't score, and suddenly there's a slump.

For the Flames, a loss is a loss regardless of the score. It's one game. Wolf had a rough one. The interesting part is what he does with it.