Dustin Wolf is airborne.

It’s a tradition that has become routine but never failed to capture the attention of every fan in the arena. After warming up for every period, Calgary Flames goalie Dustin Wolf leaps into the air and lands with grace and ease before settling into a ready position.

It’s a small moment, but it encompasses everything Wolf represents as a goalie. He plays hockey’s most defensive position: He’s the last line of defense between the opposing team and his team’s goal.

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But instead of having a defensive mindset, the man they call “Wolfie” is always on the attack. He has great positioning instincts and quick reflexes. He has also been widely praised for his skill in lateral movement.

His almost animalistic tendency to act on pure, good instinct when he’s in the crease is befitting his last name. It has also enabled him to overcome the doubters and naysayers and become arguably the best goalie prospect in hockey.

Wolf was born in Gilroy, California, a town in Northern California known for garlic farming and processing (and decidedly not hockey).

Hockey was a huge part of his life from a very young age, however. Wolf’s parents were season ticket holders for the San Jose Sharks, and he began attending games when he was just a baby. He started skating as a toddler and decided to focus on goaltending when he was just five years old.

Then, when he was only 10 years old in 2011, Wolf and his family made an almost unprecedented decision. They moved to Hermosa Beach so Wolf could play for the Los Angeles Junior Kings.

If you’ve read every edition of the column, you know this is the opposite of how things usually go. Usually, young talent moves out of L.A. to pursue the advancement of their career, not into it.

But Wolf, ever the underdog, stayed in-state to further his hockey career. Junior Kings coaches even credited his superstar play as a huge reason for why they were able to upset traditionally better Canadian youth teams.

At 15, Wolf was drafted into the Western Hockey League, a major junior ice hockey league, by the Everett Silvertips.

Wolf had a hugely successful amateur career and was widely recognized as one of the best goalies in the WHL. He was an All-Star during the 2018-19 season and narrowly lost the league’s Goalie of the Year award despite leading the winner in every category except shutouts.

Despite his track record and skillset, Wolf was not drafted until the seventh round of the 2019 NHL entry draft by the Calgary Flames. He was the 22nd and last goaltender taken.

This was likely due to his height. Wolf is 6 feet tall, significantly shorter than the average NHL goaltender, and only 174 pounds, significantly skinnier than average.

Tall, large goalies are highly sought after for this simple reason: The bigger the goalie, the more space they take up in the goal cage.

What Wolf lacks in size or reach, he makes up for in speed and instinct. But scouts were blinded by the height back then.

During the 2021-22 season, his first full season playing professionally, Wolf claimed the starting goalie position on the Stockton Heat, the Flames’ AHL affiliate, allowing him to represent his California heritage once again. He immediately showed why he belonged.

He led the league with 33 wins, posted an excellent .924 save percentage and won the Aldege “Baz” Bastien Memorial Award for the most outstanding goaltender. In the third round of the AHL playoffs, Wolf posted three shutouts, becoming only the third AHL goalie to do so in a single playoff series.

How do you improve on a season where you were the best goalie in the entire AHL? Post a season in which you’re one of the best goalies in league history, apparently.

Before the 2022-23 season, the Heat moved to Calgary and rebranded to the Wranglers. I wasn’t a fan of the move at the time, as I used to live near Stockton and would frequently attend Heat games growing up. (AHL, if you’re reading this, bring professional hockey back to the good people of the Central Valley, please and thank you.)

But, in addition to allowing the Flames more ease in calling up their players, especially during the complexities of a global pandemic (valid excuse to move your AHL franchise, I guess), the move allowed Flames fans to see their goalie of the future up close and personal.

They couldn’t believe their eyes. Wolf’s 42 wins on the season were the most for any AHL goalie since the 1960s. He led the league in every major statistical category for goalies, including goals-against average (2.09), save percentage (.932) and shutouts (7).

He understandably received every possible award the AHL could give him for regular season performance, highlighted by the Les Cunningham Award as the league’s MVP. He also won the Bastien Memorial Award again, becoming the first goaltender ever to win the award back-to-back seasons.

Late last season, Wolf made his NHL debut for the Flames. He played excellently as usual, stopping 23 of 24 shots en route to his first NHL win in a Flames’ 3-1 victory.

This season, it’s just a matter of time before Wolf breaks out as a full-time NHL goalie. He’s technically third on the depth chart behind Jacob Markstrom and Dan Vladar, two goalies with established NHL careers. But it’s a matter of if, not when, Wolf plays his way onto the roster, and one of the other two guys is the odd man out.

Wolf is only 22 years old and has plenty of time ahead of him to have a long and successful career. But he has also proven he has the skills to start impacting an NHL roster right now.

We may be talking about him as one of the greatest hockey players ever to come out of California in a few short years.

Start paying attention now, so you can witness his legendary pounce into the NHL when it happens.

Ethan Inman is a junior writing about Los Angeles’ unique hockey heroes in his column, “L.A. on Ice,” which runs every other Tuesday.