The rumour mill is heating up around the backup goaltender in Calgary. The Flames are making inquires around the National Hockey League according to insider Elliotte Friedman "I think they're looking at something in goal." The goaltending market is notoriously tough on teams looking for options.
Flames general manager Craig Conroy has some options out there, with teams continuing on with three goalies on their NHL rosters, including the Seattle Kraken, Carolina Hurricanes, Colorado Avalanche, and Tampa Bay Lightning. With Dustin Wolf being a second year NHLer, a backup goaltender that provides some experience wouldn't be such a bad thing.
The options available are slim at best and would require one of the two goaltenders, Ivan Prosvetov and Devin Cooley, to be included in the deal. For this I'm only looking at who could be a good fit in Calgary.
Last chance for Devin Cooley
Devin Cooley is expected to get the start in the second half of this weeks back to back against the Utah Mammoth on Wednesday. If he has a good to great performance, all this could become irrelevant. However if he doesn't all the speculation and rumours will be in full force instantly.
Matt Murray
Matt Murray of the Seattle Kraken would be an excellent choice, a two-time Stanley Cup champion who hasn't been the same since. But the playoff experience provided would be a benefit to Dustin Wolf, even for just a season. Murray is a career 147-87-24 record with a 2.8 goals against average in 274 games. The 31-year-old signed a one year, $1 million deal with Seattle in the offseason.
James Reimer
James Reimer is unsigned to this point of the season, but if the Flames were to sign him a trade would still need to be made to send one of the goaltenders on one way contracts in the system out. Reimer is a career 225-187-65 record with a GAA of 2.89 in 525 games.
Jonas Johansson
The least amount of NHL experience for Johansson on this list with 80 NHL games, did well in the backup role in the last couple of seasons behind Andrei Vasilevskiy in Tampa Bay.
The Flames could make a move within the week to address concerns in net, Dustin Wolf continues to be the clear number one option and any move made will be with that in mind. The Flames are 1-2 to start the season so far after a tough schedule starting off with three games in four days, all of which were home openers.