The best teams ride the hot goalie, so what are the Wild doing?
Marc-Andre Fleury was the No. 1 goalie for the Minnesota Wild to begin the 2022-23 season only to have his top spot taken by Filip Gustavsson, who finished second in the NHL in goals-against average and save percentage. Still, the Wild went with Fleury in Game 2 after Gustavsson's 51-save performance in Game 1 and they got burned in a 7-3 loss Thursday night.
Afterward, Fleury said he was embarrassed while head coach Dean Evason deflected blame away from Fleury and onto the entire team, making zero indication that the keys to the net will be given to Gustavsson going forward.
"It's what we do, right?" Evason said. "We've done it all year. The game, nothing was on Flower tonight. It was all on us."
Is Gustavsson the guaranteed starter for Game 3 Friday night in St. Paul?
"We'll talk about it tomorrow. We'll make a decision," the coach said.
Fleury allowed seven goals (three on Dallas power plays) as the Wild were rocked 7-3. Since Feb. 1, Fleury has allowed 48 goals and owns a .905 save percentage, which is lightyears behind Gustavsson's .940 save percentage on 180 more shots faced.
Rotating goalies is common enough in the NHL playoffs. Just ask Seattle or Vegas or Los Angeles or Florida, all of whom have goalie dilemmas to figure out. But Gustavsson was legitimately the second best goalie in the NHL this season.
Only Linus Ullmark of the record-setting Boston Bruins had better numbers, and it wasn't by much. Ullmark's save percentage of .938 was just barely ahead of Gustavsson's .931.
How that doesn't guarantee Gustavsson the net in every game going forward is a mystery for which only Evason and the Wild coaching staff have the answer. It's one thing to respect Fleury and his Hall of Fame credentials, but putting him in net over one of the best goalies in the league in the playoffs is a risky move for a Wild team that hasn't been out of the first round of the playoffs since 2015.
The best teams in the playoffs stick with the hot hand. It's Ullmark in Boston. It's Jake Oettinger in Dallas, Connor Hellebuyck in Winnipeg, Igor Shesterkin for the Rangers, Antii Raanta in Carolina and Andre Vasilevskiy in Tampa Bay.
Boston lost Game 2 but remains a heavy favorite to advance past Florida. Winnipeg has a 1-0 series lead on Vegas, Carolina is up 2-0 on the Islanders and the Rangers lead the Devils 1-0. All of those series could go the other way, but there's zero discussion in those locker rooms about who the right man for the goalie job is.
Oettinger, who starred at Lakeville North High School and played in the prestigious Minnesota state hockey tournament, is the real deal and Minnesota's best chance to beat him is, arguably, to park Gustavsson between the pipes and go toe-to-toe with one of the best.
Title: Bring Me The Sports co-owner, editor Email: joe@bringmethenews.com Twitter: @JoeBMTN Education: Southwest Minnesota State University Location: Minneapolis, Minnesota Expertise: All things Minnesota sports Nelson has covered Minnesota sports for two decades, starting his media career in sports radio. He worked at small market Minnesota stations in Marshall and St. Cloud before joining one of the nation's highest-rated sports stations, KFAN-FM 100.3 in the Twin Cities. There, he was the producer of the top-rated mid-morning sports show with Minnesota Vikings announcer Paul Allen. His radio experience helped blossom a career as a sports writer, joining Minneapolis-based Bring Me The News in 2011. Nelson and Adam Uren became co-owners of Bring Me The News in 2018 and have since more than tripled the site's traffic and launched Bring Me The Sports in cooperation with the Sports Illustrated/FanNation umbrella. Nelson has covered the Super Bowl and numerous training camps, NFL combines, the MLB All-Star Game and Minnesota playoff games, in addition to the day-to-day happenings on and off the field of play. Nelson also has extensive knowledge of non-sports subjects, including news and weather. He works closely with Bring Me The News meteorologist Sven Sundgaard to produce a bevy of weather and climate information for Minnesota readers. Nelson helped launch and manage the Bring Me The News Radio Network, which provided more than 50 radio stations around Minnesota with daily news, sports and weather reports from 2011-17.