You could make a case they are the two most important players on the Calgary Flames’ roster, pillars both. Read More
What do rugged defenceman MacKenzie Weegar and rising-star goalie Dustin Wolf have in common? Both were drafted as seventh-round long-shots
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What do rugged defenceman MacKenzie Weegar and rising-star goalie Dustin Wolf have in common? Both were drafted as seventh-round long-shots
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You could make a case they are the two most important players on the Calgary Flames’ roster, pillars both.
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And when you stop to think about it, Dustin Wolf and MacKenzie Weegar are also perfect poster-boys for a team that wasn’t supposed to have a sniff of this playoff race.
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The Flames are facing long odds, no doubt, many ready to once again write ’em off in their wild-card quest, but these dudes have been there, done that and proved already to be the pluckiest of underdogs.
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Wolf and Weegar, remember, were seventh-round draft picks.
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One is now a Calder Trophy frontrunner, a bonafide rising star between the pipes. The other logs huge minutes on the blue line, always wears his heart on the sleeve of his jersey and seems to be the most obvious candidate to be Calgary’s next captain.
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“(Wolf) wants to be in the moment. He loves it,” Weegar said. “And same with me, I want the moment. I want to be in the light too.
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“Especially when you were a seventh-rounder, you never got the light before. So when you get it … ”
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When their names were called on draft day, the janitors were just about to switch out the lights.
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Weegar was the sixth-from-last pick in 2013, selected by the Florida Panthers at No. 206 overall. Sixty-six other defencemen were off the board by then.
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Wolf was the fourth-from-last pick in 2019. The undersized netminder had been squirming in his seat at Rogers Arena in Vancouver, his loved ones and friends erupting in applause when the Flames figured he was worth the gamble at No. 214 overall. (Good call.)
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“It’s certainly become a story and probably will be for quite a while,” said Wolf, 22nd of the 22 puck-stopping prospects to be drafted in 2019, of his status as a seventh-round steal. “But I never thought of myself as that, right? I always thought of myself as a really good goaltender who can help a team win a lot of hockey games. Obviously, I’m very fortunate that the Flames took a chance on me. I’m trying to do my best to make them look good.
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“The more and more you continue to prove others wrong, the more people are going to show out and talk about you. You’re not expected to do well when you’re a low pick. So when you do well, they start talking. So I guess it’s a good thing.”
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This should, whatever happens over the next two-and-a-half weeks, go down as a did-well campaign for the Flames, although Wolf and Weegar and their pals are far from satisfied yet, still determined to get their paws on what would be an unlikely invite to the Stanley Cup spring formal.
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After getting Draisaitled in Saturday’s Battle of Alberta, they are facing a steep climb. According to the number-crunchers at MoneyPuck, that 3-2 overtime loss in Edmonton sliced their odds of a post-season berth down to only 17.2 per cent.
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Heading into Monday’s matchup with the Avalanche, the Calgary-based crew is now seven points back of both the Minnesota Wild and St. Louis Blues, with those Central Division clubs idling in the wild-card parking spots for the Western Conference playoff party.
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With 10 dates remaining on their regular-season slate, the Flames still have three games in hand on the Blues and two on the Wild. Those bonus battles provide some optimism, but the gap is wide enough that some help will be required.
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If they’re ultimately going to pull it off, this underdog duo will undoubtedly be a big part of it.
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The pundits don’t talk so much about Wolf’s height anymore. They focus more on his five-on-five save percentage. The 23-year-old rookie ranks among the league leaders in that illuminating stat, which helps to explain why a starved-for-scoring squad is still in the mix.
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Weegar, meanwhile, is the ringleader for the relentless, leave-it-all-out-there style that these Flames have embraced.
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Since the action resumed after the 4 Nations Face-Off, he is one of only eight NHLers averaging north of 25 minutes per night. The 31-year-old belongs to an even more exclusive club — among the seven rearguards who currently lead their outfit in assists. In both cases, he’s the only guy on the list who was drafted in the 200s.
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On a team with a minus-24 goal differential, Weegar is a plus-13. Whoa.
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As Wolf put it: “He’s a guy I know I can trust completely back there.”
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That feeling is mutual.
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“I know for myself, and I think for him too, it’s that F-U mentality,” Weegar replied when asked if there are any traits that he and Wolf share. “We’re pretty similar in a sense — maybe a bit of a late bloomer and some people doubted you along the way, so you use that as motivation and fuel. But there’s also a side that, even as seventh-rounders, you still always know in the back of your head, ‘I’m gonna make it at some point.’ You can sense that with him. And I think when you get guys like that who have come from the seventh round and now you’re making it, it just shows the character and the battle through adversity. Like, nothing fazes that guy. It’s weird. If a goal gets scored on him, or even if he plays the puck bad and I’m pissed at him … I’ll be like, ‘Hey, move the puck quicker!’ And it’s like he’s not even listening. Just nothing fazes him, and that’s the mentality you want to see from your goaltender.
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“I’m happy for him, man,” Weegar continued, transitioning to this next topic without any prompting. “I don’t like to talk to the media about the Calder, because I don’t like jinxing any of that. But for me, it’s an easy decision. We’re in this position because of him. Because of Vladdy (Dan Vladar), too. But it’s nice to see the young goalie getting some love.”
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Both Wolf and Weegar deserve a whole lot of love.
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Seventh-round success stories.
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Perfect poster-boys for a team that has been counted out time and time again.
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Two guys who might size up a seven-point deficit in the standings and think to themselves: ‘Go ahead and tell us we can’t do it.’
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“They both have swagger, or a belief in themself. I think that’s first and foremost,” said Flames bench boss Ryan Huska. “If you look at both of them and the roads that they’ve taken to get themselves here, I don’t think they get here unless they had that 100 per cent belief in their ability and that they could get here. I think that’s the biggest thing you see from both of them.
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“Probably along the way, there were different situations and times where people said, ‘Ah, maybe not. With this guy, it might not be there.’ But those two people, in particular, on the inside, would never have thought that. I think there was probably that unwavering belief that they could be NHL players. And not just NHL players — they could be elite.”
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