CALDER CUP: Oscar Dansk, Chicago Wolves Ready to Resume Calder Cup Battle
The Vegas Golden Knights became exemplum perfectum of the need to stockpile goaltending depth six weeks into their inaugural NHL season in 2017.
By that point, the Golden Knights had drilled down to the fifth goaltender on their organizational depth chart. Injuries had put Marc-Andre Fleury, Malcolm Subban, and Oscar Dansk out of commission. That put the NHL club’s number-one job in Max Lagacé’s hands and necessitated Golden Knights management to reach into the depths of their system and recall Dylan Ferguson from the WHL’s Kamloops Blazers. At the time, Lagacé had yet to establish himself as an AHL number-one goaltender, and Ferguson had landed with the Golden Knights as a 2017 seventh-round pick.
Eventually, good health returned to the Golden Knights, Ferguson went back to the WHL, and the NHL club rode a Fleury-Subban duo all the way to the 2018 Stanley Cup Final against the Washington Capitals. Some 19 months later, that process of establishing deep organizational depth in net continues with the Golden Knights’ AHL affiliate, the Chicago Wolves. Just as Fleury and Subban played into June last year, the Dansk- Lagacé pairing continues as the weather grows hotter.
That late-spring heat certainly had taken hold this past weekend in Charlotte, where the Wolves played the AHL regular-season champion Charlotte Checkers to a draw in the opening two games of the Calder Cup Final. Inside of Bojangles’ Coliseum, Dansk had his hands full with the relentless Checkers, who lead the Calder Cup Playoffs with 3.94 goals per game.
Call it more of the same for the 25-year-old Dansk. He had led the Wolves through three hard-fought rounds, including a six-game Western Conference Final against the offensively potent San Diego Gulls before the Wolves even reached Charlotte.
Up against the Charlotte attack, Dansk pulled out a 35-save Game 1 performance for the Wolves, who emerged from a 3-1 second-period deficit to wrestle down a 4-3 overtime victory. In Game 2, Dansk managed to hold the Wolves in the game until deep in the third period before the Checkers pulled away with a 5-3 win. That evened the series and brought it to Allstate Arena, where the Wolves will host Game 3 on Wednesday night as well as the following two contests. A 6-foot-2, 194-pounder, he fills out the net well and plays much larger than his listed size.
“Oscar had to face a lot of rubber from high-danger scoring areas,” Wolves head coach Rocky Thompson said after Game 2. “He kept us in it and gave us a chance to potentially tie [the game].”
That workload only figures to increase for Dansk, who originally was a second-round pick by the Columbus Blue Jackets in the 2012 NHL Draft. He will go into Game 3 with a 10-6 | 2.31 (7th) | .918 (7th) having played an AHL-leading 16 playoff games so far. Early in the first round, Dansk and Lagacé had shared the workload, but Lagacé struggled. That was Dansk’s opening, and he has not loosened his grip on the number-one role since then.
Thompson said that Dansk’s in-game effort reflects his practice habits.
“He’s such a hard worker in practice,” Thompson said after Game 2. “It has really elevated his game I think [Wolves goaltending coach] Mike [Rosati] does a great job in helping Oscar, but I mean, you can only go so far, a teacher can only do so much. The student has to be willing. And I think Oscar is one of those guys that every day he’s trying to get better. He puts all his effort into it.”
But it has been a long path to put Dansk three wins away from a Calder Cup championship. After wrapping up his OHL career with the Erie Otters, Dansk juggled his rookie pro season in the Columbus organization between the AHL and ECHL levels in 2014-15. Crowded out by Joonas Korpisalo and Anton Forsberg with the Cleveland Monsters in 2015-16, Blue Jackets managed worked out a loan that sent Dansk to Rögle of the SHL
After those two seasons spent in Sweden, the Golden Knights signed Dansk as a free-agent in July 2017. He played 20 AHL games for the Wolves last season, going 13-3-4 | 2.44 | .918. That earned him a new two-year extension, and he has blossomed in his second season in the organization.
However, this season hardly started smoothly for Dansk. A team that often could simply outscore opponents in the first two months of the season meant that Dansk’s numbers took a hit. He went 8-4-2 | 3.18 | .886 in his first 14 appearances. But as the Wolves lost the likes of Brandon Pirri and Erik Brännström, they began to clamp down on opponents and eventually became one of the AHL’s top defensive clubs. Dansk ended up finishing 27-9-4 | 2.46 | .913 in 40 regular-season games.
Dansk’s play this season may well leave Golden Knights management with some options – and difficult decisions – this summer. Management is also in a salary-cap bind and will need to shed money this summer.
Subban, who is also 25, is eligible to become a restricted free agent this summer, and the Golden Knights will need to determine his future in the organization. Subban played 21 regular-season games for the Golden Knights and was 8-10-0 | 2.93 | .902 behind Fleury. Lagacé, 26, can hit the open market as a Group 6 unrestricted free-agent, and Zach Fucale, who handled a portion of the organization’s ECHL goaltending this season, is eligible for restricted free agency.
But as the fall of 2017 showed, management can never have too many goaltending options.