Minnesota Wild News

Home

Quizzes

Newsletter

Filip Gustavsson, Minnesota Wild (Amy Irvin / The Hockey Writers)

Wild 2024-25 Report Cards: Gustavsson & Fleury

Originally posted on The Hockey Writers
By Mariah E. Stark | Last updated Aug 25, 2025 8:35 AM ET

The start of September is barely a week away, which means NHL training camps are just weeks away. The start of the season is coming quickly, but there’s one more Minnesota Wild report card from this past season to hand out, and it belongs to the goaltenders. This report card will focus on just the Wild’s two starters because their third goaltender, Jesper Wallstedt, only played two NHL games all season, and that’s not enough to fairly grade.

The other two goaltenders, Marc-André Fleury and Filip Gustavsson, rotated the starting duties, with Gustavsson taking the majority. They both had strong seasons, and as everyone knows, it was Fleury’s final as he announced his retirement prior to the season. In this artic le, we’ll look at their performances for both the regular and postseason and come up with a grade for each, starting with Gustavsson.

Gustavsson Steps Up

Filip Gustavsson had some redeeming to do after an okay second season following a contract extension. However, he did just that as he played in 58 games this past season and won 31 of those with 19 losses. Those 31 wins set a new career high for Gustavsson, and he had a 2.56 goals against average (GAA). His .914 save percentage (SV%) was the best between himself and Fleury and just barely missed being a new career high, but he did have five shutouts, which was a career high.

As for the postseason, he played in all six games but left early in Game 5 due to an illness, but returned to play Game 6. Obviously, the Wild lost that series 4-2, but it wasn’t because of Gustavsson. He was one of the reasons they had a chance in the first place, and he played very s trongly. His .914 (SV%) was the same as his regular season, but his 2.71 (GAA) was slightly above what his regular season stats were.

When looking at his stats, he earned an A for his regular-season performance as he took a big step forward in improving from his past season and getting back to what he showed in his first year with the Wild. It wasn’t the highest possible grade because he still has a bit of room to improve and show he has another level to his game.

As for his postseason grade, he also earned an A for the same reasons as his regular season. He did a great job, but there’s always room to be better, especially in the postseason. Combining his two grades, he earned an A overall for the season and showed he can be the number one goaltender the Wild needs.

Fleury’s Final Season

Marc-André Fleury had a final season to remember not only for the record books but for the many outstanding ovations he received as well. Not many players will ever receive that kind of treatment, but Fleury deserved it. However, we’re not here to talk about his entire career, just his final season. At 40 years of age, he played in 26 games with 22 of those being starts. He had 14 wins and nine losses, not exactly great stats, but decent enough. He had a .899 (SV%) and a 2.93 (GAA), plus a lone shutout and a penalty.

As for the postseason, there’s not a lot to tell as he played in just one of the six games against the Vegas Golden Knights. He was called in to relieve Gustavsson, who had to leave Game 5 due to an illness. Fleury came in and did what he could, but fell in overtime 3-2. It wasn’t the way he wanted his final postseason game to go, but he threw every move he could out there in that overtime and gave the fans a real show.

Realistically, his regular-season grade should be an A, like his goaltending partner, because he did well in the games he played, plus there’s always room to be better. However, since this was his final season and he played at such a high level at 40 years old, he earned the lone A+ on the team.

And once again, his postseason grade should be something like an A- for the lone 25 minutes or so he played in Game 5, but his grade is also an A+ because it was Fleury’s final time on the ice in the playoffs. As for Fleury’s overall grade, he earned an A++ because it’s the final report card Fleu ry will earn as a player, and he deserves the best of the best.

Wild Have Number One

While Fleury is enjoying retirement, Gustavsson will continue showing what he can do in the number one slot for the Wild this coming season. He’ll have Wallstedt as his backup to begin with, and if he can step it up, they’ll eventually be competing for that number one slot. Gustavsson’s shown he has what it takes, and it’ll be interesting to see if he can keep it up and what Wallstedt will do in the full backup role.