Ottawa goalie Mads Sà¸gaard gets his first start of the 2022-23 regular season today against the Calgary Flames. His third career appearance. The 6’8… Dane saved three of three Oilers shots on Saturday in relief of Anton Forsberg, who blew out MCLs in both knees in the third period.
The 22-year-old from Aalborg, Denmark was the second goalie taken in the 2019 NHL Entry Draft. One pick behind Pyotr Kochetkov, who has a .913 save percentage over 19 games with the Carolina Hurricanes this season. Kochetkov was the fifth pick of the second round(36th), Sà¸gaard the sixth.
Taken 214th overall in the seventh round of that draft? 5’10…, Dustin Wolf, who has outdone both netminders by most metrics in the AHL this season.
Sv% Pyotr Kochetkov: .915 (13th) Mads Sà¸gaard: .898% (37th) Dustin Wolf: .930% (2nd)
GAA Pyotr Kochetkov: 2.49 (10th) Mads Sà¸gaard: 3.30 (43rd) Dustin Wolf: 2.15 (2nd)
Kotchetkov and Sà¸gaard got their chance when their organization’s NHL platoon went down with injury. The Senators have both Cam Talbot and Anton Forsberg out with injuries tonight. Earlier in the season Fredrik Andersen and Antti Raanta both were stuck on IR and the Canes needed a goalie.
You have to wonder when Wolf gets his look.
Sutter has a reputation for letting veterans play if they can be taped together for game time, but the results aren’t positive for Jacob Markstrom. We saw it again on Saturday morning. Two goals against on the first three shots and a non-registered shot that went through Markstrom’s legs but didn’t find the net.
Nothing is confirmed, but given Jacob’s extensive injury history — I’m not buying that this year’s dip in stats is entirely confidence based. The organization may be better off putting him on LTIR to give him time to correct any mechanical issues.
A tandem of Vladar-Wolf sounds like a lot of fun to watch.
The Counterpunch There is something about this rebuilding Ottawa team that just gets the Calgary Flames. Despite lurking near the bottom of the standings most years, the Senators are 6-4-1 against the Flames since the start of the 20-21 season.
An aggressive attack on the Calgary breakout deserves a lot of credit. The Flames have been torched between their own hash marks and the red line so often against the Senators.
Ottawa head coach DJ Smith gets a lot of criticism for his record, but he seems to have the Flames figured out.
Speaking of DJ Smith’s record.
Bottom Ten Team With losses to Columbus, Chicago, Montreal, Detroit, and St. Louis this season — you kind of have to be worried about this game. January 26 featured the Flames getting goalied by Jaxton Stauber, who was playing his second-ever NHL game. Chicago won the affair 5-1.
Glass Houses While their 24-24-3 record isn’t great, the Senators have only one win less than the Flames. They’re eight places apart in the standings only due to the Flames locking down one more win and seven more loser points.
High Confidence Group You would hope that the Flames will be finishing better tonight after scoring seven unanswered goals against Buffalo. The Sabres are fun to watch, but they let off the gas and lost control of momentum in such a weird way on Saturday.
Calgary Flames Projected Lineup Morning skate was optional, so we’ll need warmups to confirm a lineup. Brett Ritchie took a pretty bad crosschecking penalty that led to a Buffalo power play goal, so that might result in someone else getting a start.
Dube-Lindholm-Toffoli Pelletier-Kadri-Huberdeau Mangiapane-Backlund-Coleman Lucic-Lewis-Ritchie
Hanifin-Tanev Zadorov-Weegar Gilbert-Stone
Markstrom Vladar
Ending On a High Note Calgary finishes out a four-game road trip tonight with the opportunity to get themselves above .500 in the sequence. A 2-1-1 road trip is a lot less miserable than a 1-2-1 road trip.
Ottawa will be a tough opposition. Their offence is humming. 19 goals in their last four games. Claude Giroux has six goals in his last five outings. The team has won four of their last five and have a behemoth, rookie goaltender to rally around.
Should make for a fun game.
Puck drop at around 5:30 pm MST. Catch it on Sportsnet or RDS.
Trevor Neufeld
@Trevor_Neufeld
Stats via eliteprospects.com, nhl.com, theahl.com and naturalstattrick.com.