Four days after the Flames put him on waivers, Connor Zary scored in his first Wranglers game in two seasons and was named first star, and we were in the press box for it. The first Overtime below is the finish the dispatch gave two sentences: a 6-on-5, a timeout Brett Sutter isn't sure was by the book, and Zary's skate to the glass. Then 13 seconds of a scrum at the Calgary net, frame by frame from our own camera, what Philadelphia actually got for Morgan Frost, and where Dustin Wolf's bad season really happened. Four Overtimes this week, none of them on the site.

This week

The Farm Team Is 2-0. The Flames Are 0-2. (Rinkside Dispatch, Taylor Brooks)
Our first night on a media credential. While the Flames lost in Vancouver, the Wranglers finished a weekend sweep of Abbotsford, and Axel Hurtig took a roughing minor and then scored the winner.

Morgan Frost Was the Other Guy in the Trade. He Led Calgary in Goals. (Roster Report, Taylor Brooks)
Philadelphia moved a centre it had stopped waiting on. Calgary played him down the middle, watched him win faceoffs, and then signed him.

Year One of the Money: Dustin Wolf, After the Season That Went Wrong (Roster Report, Taylor Brooks)
His seven-year, $52.5 million deal starts this season. Last season is why the first month matters, and why it isn't all on him.

Connor Zary's First Night Back on the Farm Ended With a Goal (Rinkside Dispatch, Taylor Brooks)
Waived Monday, cleared Tuesday, "pissed off" Wednesday, first star Friday. Calgary 2, Bakersfield 1.

Overtime: Connor Zary

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The longest two and a half minutes

The dispatch gives the finish two sentences. Brett Sutter gave it more than that, and so did his goaltender.

Quinn Hutson's goal at 5:11 of the third made it 2-1, and the Wranglers did not like it. On the club's broadcast, the call was that it might be offside, and the Calgary players went to the officials straight away. Calgary challenged. The goal stood.

Bakersfield pulled Matt Tomkins with about two and three-quarter minutes left, and the Condors kept the puck in the Calgary end for most of it. Sutter said his players got tired, stayed tight and kept everything to the outside, "which is exactly what you want." He was less happy about the clears. "That's a couple of times in a row on 5-on-6," he said, "something we're gonna have to work on and talk about."

Somewhere in there the two benches traded timeouts. The club's interviewer asked whether the chirping had reached the coaches.

"I'm going to hold my breath on that one here a little bit," he said. "Let's just say, I don't know if we bent the rules a little bit on that one or not, but we're happy to get the timeout and give those guys a quick rest."

Arsenii Sergeev made the save Sutter needed. "I didn't feel nervous at all," he said. He came off the ice singing "Freed from Desire," which he said is the team's win song.

Zary said the best part of the night was not the goal. "When you can enjoy moments like that and the boys are up on the bench because someone blocked a shot in a 2-1 game, that's the best part about it," he said.

He was the last of the three stars out. He skated to the glass, where a row of kids had their hands up.

Connor Zary, first star, on his way to the glass. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

"The fans have always been awesome to me here," he said. "There's never been a bad day with them."

Overtime: The farm team

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Thirteen seconds at the Calgary net

The dispatch runs one frame of the scrum at 12:46 of the second period. From the press box, the editor's camera took 21 of them, over 13 seconds. This is what they show, and what they do not.

The first frames are already a crowd. Axel Hurtig, wearing 3, is tied up beside the Calgary post, and linesman Logan Parsons, 19, has wedged himself between Hurtig and an Abbotsford player. Tyson Gross and Luke Philp are in it on the Calgary side. Chase Wouters circles the edge for Abbotsford. Kirill Zarubin is out at the faceoff circle, a long way from his crease.

Linesman Logan Parsons (19) between Axel Hurtig (3) and an Abbotsford player. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

Six seconds later the knot has drifted toward the boards. Vilmer Alriksson, 46, has hold of a Wrangler who has lost his helmet, with an official's arm between them. Philp and Wouters are tied up with each other. Kent Anderson stands beside Matthew Stienburg. Gross is bent over at the waist.

Vilmer Alriksson (46) with a helmetless Wrangler, an official between them. Photo: Mark Johnson / Flames Scout Wire

Thirteen seconds after the first frame, Hurtig, helmet off, is facing an Abbotsford player with two officials holding him. That is the picture in the dispatch.

The frames cannot say how it started. The penalty sheet settles the rest: a roughing minor each to Hurtig and Alriksson at 12:46, and nothing to anyone else, so nobody got a power play out of it. There was no fight.

Hurtig served his two minutes. About 22 minutes of hockey later, he scored the winner.

Overtime: Morgan Frost

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The other column

Both halves of this story are about what Calgary got. This is what it gave up, and what became of it.

Calgary sent Philadelphia four things in the last week of January 2025: Andrei Kuzmenko, Jakob Pelletier, its 2025 second-round pick and a 2028 seventh.

Kuzmenko played seven games as a Flyer, with two goals and five points, and was gone five weeks later. On March 7, Philadelphia sent him and a 2025 seventh-round pick to Los Angeles for a 2027 third, and kept half of his $5.5 million cap hit to do it. He scored 13 goals for the Kings last season, eight of them on the power play, and signed with Pittsburgh this summer for one year at $5 million.

Pelletier played 25 games for the Flyers: three goals, eight points. That summer they did not make him a qualifying offer, which let him leave as a free agent, and Tampa Bay signed him to three years on July 2, 2025. That is the same day Calgary signed Frost to his extension. Pelletier spent most of last season in Syracuse, where he scored 77 points in 63 games.

The second-round pick became Shane Vansaghi, 48th overall in 2025. He is a junior at Michigan State now and an alternate captain, after 11 points in 35 games last season. On October 31 the Spartans play North Dakota in Texas, the game with four Flames first-rounders in it. The pick Calgary traded for Frost and Farabee wears an A on the other bench.

The 2028 seventh has not been used yet.

What became of Calgary's side of the deal. Graphic: Flames Scout Wire

So the ledger, twenty months on. Calgary has a 22-goal centre it chose to sign and a 20-goal penalty killer it inherited. Philadelphia has a college junior, a Los Angeles third-round pick in 2027 and a 2028 seventh, and it paid half of Kuzmenko's salary to move him on.

That was never quite the point for Philadelphia. Daniel Briere said at the time that the deal was about cap flexibility, and on that measure it did what he said it would. It just did not leave much else behind.

Overtime: Dustin Wolf

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The quiet nights

The article says the shots didn't explain Dustin Wolf's drop last season. Here is what did, or at least where it happened.

Split Wolf's games by how busy he was and the two seasons stop looking alike.

On the busy nights he got better. In games where he faced 35 shots or more, he stopped .918 as a rookie and .925 last season, in 11 such games. Between 25 and 34 shots he slipped a little, from .911 to .901.

The damage was on the quiet nights. As a rookie he had nine games under 25 shots and stopped .893 in them. Last season there were 16, and he stopped .854. Calgary won four of those 16. The nights the Flames kept the puck away from him were the nights it went in.

There is a road pattern too, and it was there before last season. He stopped .921 at home and .891 away as a rookie, then .914 and .881. What changed was the share: 27 of his 57 games last season were on the road, against 21 of 53 the year before, and he won six of them.

None of this says why. A quiet night can mean a goalie going cold between shots, or a team that gives up few chances but bad ones, and our numbers can't tell those apart. What it does say is where to look this month. His two starts so far came against 32 and 27 shots, both in the middle band, and both went badly anyway.

So the test for year one of the money isn't the 40-shot night. He has handled those. It's the 22-shot night in someone else's building.

What we cut, and why

Where Connor Zary might go. The reports the week he was waived put him in trade conversations alongside Zach Whitecloud and Morgan Frost. The dispatch printed the two lines about why nobody claimed him, Elliotte Friedman's and David Pagnotta's, and nothing about destinations or what it might cost. A conversation isn't a trade, and we don't run trade specifics as fact. As of this morning, he's still on the Wranglers roster.

Coming up

The Flames are home to Anaheim tonight at 8 p.m., still looking for their first win, and play the Ducks again in Anaheim on Tuesday. The Wranglers are 3-0 and see Bakersfield again Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Saddledome. North Dakota opened at Bemidji State last night and plays its home opener tonight. Anthony Dillett's piece on Cole Reschny as captain runs in the Dakota Student on Tuesday, Oct. 13.

From the archive

Who Answers the Bell? The Wranglers Lost 395 Penalty Minutes, and Alex Gallant Is 33.: Gallant played his first game of the season on Friday. He took 179 penalty minutes last season, fifth in the league, and this is what he's back for.