{"id":956556,"date":"2026-11-03T09:06:09","date_gmt":"2026-11-03T09:06:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956556\/"},"modified":"2026-11-03T09:06:09","modified_gmt":"2026-11-03T09:06:09","slug":"takeaways-wolf-continues-return-to-form-as-flames-beat-sharks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/956556\/","title":{"rendered":"Takeaways: Wolf continues return to form as Flames beat Sharks"},"content":{"rendered":"

Minutes after Dustin Wolf<\/a> came in in relief for his first appearance in two weeks, Ryan Huska was asked if his goaltender\u2019s chief goal was to build confidence.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cHe just needs to play,\u201d smiled the Flames coach.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s all it is \u2014 get his back up a little bit and just go play. He\u2019s a really good goaltender. He gives us a chance to win every time he\u2019s in the net.\u201d<\/p>\n

With Devin Cooley\u2019s five-game heater stopped by an injury that is expected to keep him out week-to-week, Wolf is already making good on his chance to return to form.<\/p>\n

Wolf won his second consecutive start Monday in San Jose, stopping 26 of 27 shots in a 2-1 win at a SAP Center rink he\u2019s intimately familiar with.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s now 11-2 against the Sharks, which includes going 5-1 in the rink in which his family had season tickets when he was a kid.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019ve got a lot of memories in this building as a fan, growing up watching the Sharks for a long time,\u201d said the native of nearby Gilroy, Calif., who had his grandmother, cousins and an aunt and uncle in attendance.<\/p>\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t have the start to the year, on a personal level, that I wanted. (Two weeks off) gave me a chance to kind of reset my mind and work on some parts of my game I wanted to get better at. I feel pretty confident in that now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wolf was particularly under siege in the final two minutes of the second period, when a Sharks power play had the Flames pinned in their zone for the entirety of Simon Nemec\u2019s too-many-men penalty.<\/p>\n

With the Flames up 2-0 in the third, Sam Dickinson beat Wolf through a crowd with eight minutes left, but Wolf held steady despite a late Sharks push.<\/p>\n

Wolf has now won two in a row for the first time this year.<\/p>\n

As the game\u2019s first star, it\u2019s safe to say he is rebuilding his confidence.<\/p>\n

Two games after setting the tone for the team\u2019s 6-2 win at home with his early first period fight with six-foot-nine, 242-pound Curtis Douglas, 26-year-old Adam Klapka managed to be front and centre once again.<\/p>\n

Seconds after returning to the ice following a first period tripping penalty, Klapka intercepted a pass at San Jose\u2019s blue line and used the defenceman as a screen to snap a low screamer past Yaroslav Askarov\u2019s outstretched glove.<\/p>\n

As the elder-statesman on a checking line that featured Wranglers call-ups Jonathan Castagna and William Stromgren, Klapka played another big role in neutralizing the Sharks when on the ice, using his body and eventually cashing in with a shot that has proven to be sneaky dangerous.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So impressive was his play, there he was playing the final minute of the game, alongside Martin Pospisil and Matvei Gridin, holding on to a one-goal lead.<\/p>\n

Castagna played a role in the first goal, as he got his stick on the clearing pass that wound up on the big man\u2019s stick.<\/p>\n

But Calgary\u2019s fourth line wasn\u2019t done there.<\/p>\n

Midway through the third period of a game the Flames were leading 1-0, Castagna made a great play to chip the puck out of Calgary\u2019s zone to Klapka, who carried it into San Jose\u2019s zone and made a pass to Stromgren out front where he batted in his first NHL goal.<\/p>\n

The 23-year-old Swede had his first shot stopped, but whacked the puck out of mid-air to beat Askarov for what would be the game-winner.<\/p>\n

Not a bad season debut.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst goal is kind of a dream \u2013 you don\u2019t think further than that,\u201d said Stromgren after the game when asked if he ever\u00a0fathomed his first NHL snipe would be a game winner.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI kind of blacked out there \u2013 just saw Klapper jumping. Nice to see both of us being up and playing together, and a goal for me.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe spent a lot of time together in the AHL as roommates on the road, so it\u2019s awesome to see a guy like him score, and I\u2019m really happy I could be a part of it,\u201d said Klapka, who grabbed the souvenir puck for his pal.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen Wolfie has his game he\u2019s one of the best goalies in the league and we were really happy he had it tonight, and I believe he\u2019s now going to put his foot on the gas.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Stromgren is a second-round pick of the Flames in 2021, who was called up to replace injured Brennan Othmann after picking up 11 points in 11 games with the Wranglers.<\/p>\n

All five points came from Flames fourth liners, and the team\u2019s defensive structure helped Wolf carry them the rest of the way.<\/p>\n

Farabee \u2013 Backlund \u2013 Coronato\u00a0
Suniev – Frost \u2013 Sharangovich
Gridin \u2013 Pospisil – Strome\u00a0\u00a0
Stromgren – Castagna \u2013 Klapka<\/p>\n

Bahl – Nemec
Middleton \u2013 Whitecloud\u00a0
Kuznetsov – Parekh\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

Up next: The Flames wrap up their three-game road trip with a 9 p.m. MT start in Seattle Wednesday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Minutes after Dustin Wolf came in in relief for his first appearance in two weeks, Ryan Huska was…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":956557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[433],"tags":[49,48,448,82],"class_list":["post-956556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956556","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=956556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/956556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/956557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=956556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=956556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=956556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}