Wallstedt coming into his own this season with Wild

The Minnesota Wild are amid a hot streak, riding five straight wins after their 3-0 victory over the Winnipeg Jets on Sunday, and a big part of their success has come in the crease with Jesper Wallstedt enjoying a standout run. 

Wallstedt has helped the Wild find victories despite being outplayed on several nights and has elevated his stat line through eight games to a .935 save percentage and 1.94 goals against average, even as he has split starts this season. 

On Monday’s episode of Daily Faceoff Live, hosts Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton dove into Wallstedt’s success and the season so far for the Wild, who sit third in the Central Division with a 12-7-4 record through 23 games.

Yaremchuk: The Minnesota Wild won their fifth straight over the weekend, and you want to talk about goaltending powering a winning streak in those games… This is not a Minnesota Wild team playing a dominant style of hockey, but they are getting absolutely dominant goaltending from Jesper Wallstedt, who records his third shutout in just four games. 

Hutton: It’s impressive to do that at the NHL level, and at his age, it’s something else…Wallstedt just feels like he has that confidence right now. He’s in a rhythm, watching some of his clips and some of the games, and he really manages his depth well.

When I watched him in the preseason, he was chasing the game a bit too much, and we’ve been over this before, where then all of a sudden, it’s not that initial save, the second save, it’s where you are after with his depth and where he’s at. 

Minnesota is turning pucks over and giving up chances, but he looks very confident and is letting the game come to him right now. It’s been fun to watch this little run that he’s on. 

You look at that big win yesterday against the Winnipeg Jets. They’re a team that just lost a couple on the road. They’re going to be without Connor Hellebuyck for a bit, so this is a really good time for the Minnesota Wild to start stacking some wins together and give themselves a little bit of breathing room in the Central Division, because there’s no lack of slowing down when you look at the Colorado Avalanche.

You can catch the full Minnesota Wild breakdown and the rest of Monday’s show here…