One thing is for certain for the Minnesota Wild when they hit the ice for the the 2024-25 season in the fall, and that is that Marc-Andre Fleury will be between the pipes for what will be his final NHL season.
However, who will be the other end of the goaltending tandem along with him? Because if these comments made by Filip Gustavsson are any indication, it may not be him.
During his end-of-season availability with Wild media members, Gustavsson suggested that he may not return to Minnesota next season, despite having one more season on his contract with an AAV of $3,750,000.
“We’ll see. There is always a business side to hockey,” Gustavsson said. “I like it here and would love to be back next year and try to redeem what happened this year. We’ll see.”
Someone who could be instrumental in potentially forcing Gustavsson as the odd-man out in the Twin Cities is young goaltending prospect Jesper Wallstedt, who got his feet wet at the NHL level and also won both of his appearances near the tail end of the season.
Understandably, it was a disappointing end to the season for Gustavsson and the Wild, who missed the playoffs despite entering the year with far loftier goals.
“We came into the season (thinking) that we wanted to get by the first round,” he said. “Now we didn’t even get the chance to try and do that.”
“Very frustrating because you can play so good sometimes and then you have bad performances,” he said. “It just tears on you instead of going on a steady pace the whole way.”
Gustavsson, who was acquired by the Wild from the Ottawa Senators in the deal that sent Cam Talbot to the Canadian capitol city, put together a record of 19-18-4 with a 3.06 goals against average and .899 save percentage along with a trio of shutouts.
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