A pressing question for Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin this off season will undoubtedly be the status of goalie Filip Gustavsson. Gustavsson turned out to be a diamond in the rough when the team traded Cam Talbot 1 for 1 to the Ottawa Senators for the 26 year old Swede during the summer of 2022.
While the Wild had already drafted their intended goalie of the future, in heralded prospect Jesper Wallstedt, the plan was for Wallstedt to transition to the North American game by way of the AHL.
Headed into the 2022 NHL season, it seemed that Guerin was putting all eggs in the basket of the aging Marc-Andre Fleury, as Gustavsson had a limited sample size of just 27 NHL games. Gustavsson’s contract was $787,500 and the move freed up a little less than 3 million dollars annually. The move paid the Wild back in spades as during the 2022-23 NHL season Gustavsson would go on to play 39 regular season games for the Wild, with a stat line that put him near the top of the league in performance.
During the 2022-23 regular season, Gustavsson posted a 2.10 GAA and a .931 SVS%. Gustavsson was rewarded with a 3 year contract with an AAV of 3.75 million after the 2023 season. More recently, during the 2023-2024 NHL season, Gustavsson showed somewhat of a regression, with a 3.06 GAA and a .899 SVS%.
Which brings us to the current debate.
Should The Wild Be Looking to Trade Filip Gustavsson?
On paper, the current plan for the Wild is to head into the 2024-25 NHL season with Marc-Andre Fleury, who signed a 1 year deal worth $2,500,000 in April of 2024, and Gustavsson. It’s well known that the Wild would take any cap relief they can get and between Fleury and Gustavsson, Gustavsson is more likely to move. In terms of what return the Wild could get for Gustavsson, it would’ve been far better to move him after his impressive 2022-23 campaign.
While moving Gustavsson may appear like the Wild would be folding on next season, now may be a better time than ever to move the goaltender, using next season as an opportunity to get Jesper Wallstedt a meaningful set of NHL games. Of course, the downside of this is that if Wallstedt shows up like he did for his first three NHL games, Wild fans may be left wondering what could have been.
The bottom line is that if Wallstedt is what the Wild (and the rest of the league) thinks he is, Filip Gustavsson doesn’t have a path forward as a starter in Minnesota beyond next season.
This summers free agent goalie market isn’t exactly blistering with talent to begin with, much less talent that the Wild could expect to lean on for 40+ games next season, but there are a couple of intriguing names that make moving him prior to free agency a lot more palatable.
Let’s look at a number of scenarios for what the Wild would do if they moved Gustavsson prior to next season.
Trade Gustavsson, promoting Jesper Wallstedt to the NHL
While Wallstedt now has a couple of solid AHL seasons under his belt, he’s still just 21 years old. The two most recent comparable scenarios to moving Wallstedt to the NHL are in Carter Hart and Jake Oettinger. While Hart was a 2nd round goalie, he cracked the league young. The Wild don’t just hope Wallstedt turns out to be a Jake Oettinger scenario, they desperately need it to be.
After his draft year in 2017, Oettinger played 3 full seasons prior to moving into the NHL. If Wallstedt moves full time to the NHL next season, he will have played 3 full non-NHL seasons prior to cracking the league. If he plays the entire season in the AHL next year, he will have played 3 years longer in the AHL than Oettinger, who only spent the bulk of the 2019-20 season there.
Of the two obvious scenarios, this one seems the most likely. Minnesota’s hope is that they do not have to re-sign Gustavsson as a starter as he approaches the end of his current contract. If this is the case, it will mean that the Jesper Wallstedt experiment has failed.
As of today, should both Gustavsson and Fleury start the season healthy, there is no plan to have Wallstedt start the season in the NHL. Of course, things can change in a heartbeat, but relying on a rookie goaltender to carry a cash strapped team to the playoffs isn’t necessarily the main ingredient for success at the games highest level.
The fact that this one feels the most likely suggests that Gustavsson will be between the pipes for Minnesota next season. While trading Gustavsson now feels a little risky and low return given last seasons performance, the caveat is that the upcoming free agent goalie market is as thin as it’s been in quite some time.
Trade Gustavsson, sign a Free Agent Goalie
There are just 13 goalies who played 20 or more games last season that are un-restricted free agents headed into the 2024-25 NHL season.
| Goalie Name | Games Played Last Season | Age | GAA | Sv% |
| Cam Talbot | 54 | 36 | 2.5 | 0.913 |
| Ilya Samsonov | 40 | 27 | 3.13 | 0.89 |
| Alex Nedeljkovic | 38 | 28 | 2.97 | 0.902 |
| Kaapo Kahkonen | 37 | 27 | 3.64 | 0.898 |
| Scott Wedgewood | 32 | 31 | 2.85 | 0.899 |
| Casey DeSmith | 29 | 32 | 2.89 | 0.895 |
| Anthony Stolarz | 27 | 30 | 2.03 | 0.925 |
| James Reimer | 25 | 36 | 3.11 | 0.904 |
| Antti Raanta | 24 | 35 | 2.99 | 0.872 |
| Kevin Lankinen | 24 | 29 | 2.82 | 0.908 |
| Laurent Brossoit | 23 | 31 | 2 | 0.927 |
| Calvin Pickard | 23 | 32 | 2.45 | 0.909 |
| Martin Jones | 22 | 34 | 2.87 | 0.902 |
For the Wild, it’s unlikely that the team brings back Cam Talbot or Kaapo Kahkonen. Though, given the circumstances, I would say that Kahkonen did play well for the San Jose Sharks last season with one of the worst NHL teams the league has saw in quite some time.
I would expect that the largest contracts handed out for free agent goalies this summer are as follows.
- Laurent Brossoit, who posted a .927 save percentage in 23 games played for the Jets last season.
- Anthony Stolarz, 2.03 GAA is 2nd best on the list of 13 behind only Brossoit
- Cam Talbot, despite his age, Talbot turned in a solid season for the Kings with respectable numbers over 54 games
This isn’t a summer where we’re going to see free agent goalies laughing their way to the bank, when the most impressive stat line is held by a 36 year old netminder, it’s a fairly thin crop.
Sure, there is a bet to be made on Nedeljkovic or Kahkonen, possibly even Kevin Lankinen, but none of those have made a name for themselves for an extended period of time. Most of the contracts we’re going to see this summer are going to be in the 1-2 year range, with the meatier deals handed out to Talbot and Brossoit.
In the Wild’s case, Anthony Stolarz is one who stands out as the most attractive. In Anthony Stolarz’ case, the Wild stands out as one who is the least attractive.
Stolarz presents an intriguing situation as one of the few goalies on this list with the most unknown upside and if I’m his agent, this could be the year to make an argument for the stability of a 3 year deal.
If the Wild end up having a shot to sign Stolarz, it’ll be on a 1-2 year deal, not necessarily a guarantee that’s more proven than Filip Gustavsson.
Making this all the more complicated, the Wild would have to find a trade partner that is willing to buy a downward trending stock at it’s previous market rate. Perhaps the only team willing to do this would be the Toronto Maple Leafs, who are in desperate need of stability in the crease.
Trade Gustavsson, Sign Anthony Stolarz, Trade Stolarz Mid Season
While it’s to far out to be anything beyond a pipe dream, imagine the possibilities of this. The Wild convince a desperate team like the Leafs to over pay for Gustavsson today and in turn sign an intriguing name like Anthony Stolarz.
Stolarz goes on to prove himself as a reliable daily starter in the NHL and the Wild flip him for assets by the trade deadline. Of course, more would have to go right (or wrong, depending on whether or not you ask Wild fans who have no interest in missing playoffs this year) for this to happen making it highly unlikely.
It may be far out, but the best possible scenario for the Wild should they be on pace to miss playoffs during the upcoming season is that they have a sought after goaltender at the trade deadline. Trading Gustavsson for more value than he is currently worth today and flipping a second goalie such as Stolarz 8 months later would be doubling down on a pretty far fetched gamble.
Now, while it may seem unrealistic on paper, whoever the Wild would end up signing would likely end up with a solid block of starts as Fleury isn’t expected to carry the bulk of the load given his age.
Minnesota could be a prime landing spot for a goalie like Stolarz who certainly has something to prove. As great as it sounds, Minnesota simply doesn’t have to move Gustavsson to gamble on somewhat of an unknown.
If Wallstedt starts next season in the AHL, the Wild may well just opt to have him continue biding his time for the following year. If by the time the trade deadline rolls around and they’re looking like they’ll miss playoffs for the consecutive year, it could be a perfect time to get Wallstedt no pressure NHL games for the remainder of the season.
The Most Realistic Path forward for Filip Gustavsson and the Minnesota Wild
While for some fans, trading Gustavsson seems to be the quick button fix to a situation that isn’t totally broken, moving him now would be selling low on an asset that isn’t really the broken piece some think it is. Sure, last season was a regression from the breakout 2022-23 season that earned him his current deal, but the Wild also lost key defensemen Jared Spurgeon early on and battled injuries that forced the team to bring up much more of their AHL roster than they would’ve liked.
It’s impossible to tell how last season would’ve gone with a healthy roster, but losing starting defensemen is never a great recipe for success between the pipes.
Filip Gustavsson becomes a unrestricted free agent heading into the 2026-2027 NHL season, meaning the Wild have this upcoming season as well as the following to increase the return they could get on him.
Should Gustavsson return to the form he displayed two years ago, he becomes one of the more attractive mid-season bargaining chips on the entire team. If I’m Bill Guerin, selling now could be a disaster. While fans would love to see a team compete for a playoff position with Kirill Kaprisov entering the prime of his career, next season is not the breaking point.
The Wild are still on the hook for the disastrous Zach Parise and Ryan Suter contracts, which finally give the team a breath of fresh air when the league year resets in July of 2025. Guerin has one more year of plausible deniability for not constructing a playoff winning team, so the thought of trading Gustavsson when the team really isn’t forced to, for a return that would be far less than what it could be, is seeming less and less likely of an option.
For the Wild, the best case scenario is that Filip Gustavsson returns to the form he displayed two years ago. Guerin isn’t forced into making any sort of a trade when he doesn’t absolutely have to and a world of possibilities opens up when it does.
