Joseph Woll

July 25th 2024

The goal of this new series is to give insight into a player on every team. The player will be randomly chosen by a panel of people close to me and this will hopefully give the general public better knowledge on a certain player in the show. Maybe you only really watch your hometown team, this will give you insight into a player that you may not have thought of in a deeper capacity. 

Joseph Woll - Goaltender

Age: 26 (July 12th, 1998)

Height: 6’3 Weight: 202 Lbs

Catches: Left

Born: Dardenne Prairie, Missouri, USA

National Team: USA

Draft: Round 3, 62nd overall, 2016 NHL Entry Draft

Junior Team: Boston College

NHL Year Status: Going into 4h year

Contract: 3 years x 3.67 (In year 1 of 3)

Team Role: Tandem Goalie

Career Stats

2023-2024

Strengths:

High Danger Saves

Throughout his career so far, Woll has shown the ability to make up for the leafs deficiencies on defense. According to Moneypuck.com Woll’s save percentage on unlocked high danger shot attempts this past season was .802% which put him 8th among goalies who played at least 20 games. What’s even more daunting is that his expected save percentage on those shots was .682%. Let’s start looking at some of these high danger saves starting with this one against the Bruins on Trent Frederic in this past playoffs. Frederic gets behind the leafs defense (unsurprising) and is wide open in tight. Woll’s ability in these high danger situations starts with his patience, he doesn’t get shaken by the fact that Frederic has all the time in the world, he doesn’t give up his feet early. As Frederic moves across he keeps himself big and seals off the entire bottom of the net and uses that profound athletic ability to get his right leg stretched and get his toe on Frederic’s shot. He was able to limit Frederic’s options and made this high danger save as easy as possible for himself. 

Persistence 

One quality that a goalie honestly needs to possess when playing for this leafs D-core is the ability to never give up on a play. Woll uses his athleticism to get to pretty much any puck that comes at him. 

On this scramble play, again against Boston, Woll showed off all of his best qualities. First, he scrambled to get his paddle on a shot amidst the chaos and then continued to fight in a fairly unorthodox position. But the quality of Woll’s that distinguishes him from other goalies that have played for the leafs the last couple of seasons is his ability to reset while pressure is still on, he does that here, he keeps his feet amongst multiple blocked shot attempts and then gets across his crease and flashes the leather. 

This is not a one off for Woll, he fights through chaos quite often when the Leafs get hemmed in their own zone and he uses his athleticism to compete on every play. 

Getting in to Position

The last major quality of his to touch on here is not unlike the first two but its his ability to get into position. In this minute long sequence against the Sharks Woll shows off this ability 10-fold. The first play in the sequence requires him to make the first save down low and then get across to make a desperation save. When the play comes back in his zone he gets in position for the first save in the high slot, then when the play transitions to the net-front he gets into his butterfly and turns a tough situation into an easy save. To top it all off he then makes back to back saves at the top of his crease on high quality shots.