South St. Paul's Alex Stalock is the Minnesota Wild's 2020 MVP

When the Wild season seemed on the verge of flying off the rails at several points this season, Alex Stalock was there to answer the call.

The 32-year-old South St. Paul native began the season as the backup to Devan Dubnyk, but was eventually called upon to take the workload of the number one goaltender job.

In mid-November, Dubnyk left the team to be with his wife who was dealing with severe medical issues. At the time, Minnesota was 7-11-2 and looked like they would be slipping down the standings in an incredibly lost season. The Wild were needing decent goaltending in the worst way, as Dubnyk had gotten off to a shaky start. That's when Stalock stepped up.

Stalock started 10 out of the team's 15 games while Dubnyk was away -- Kaapo Kahkonen started the other five -- and in that time he posted a .910 save percentage overall and .930 save percentage during 5-on-5. More importantly for the Wild, Stalock went 6-2-2 in that time, helping the team pick up crucial points when they needed them to stay afloat in the Central Division.

Dubnyk returned to the team on Dec.19, but as Tony Abbott outlined on Tuesday, he was far from the Dubnyk everyone remembered. The Wild again needed to call upon Stalock to step in and take over the number one goaltender position pretty much full time.

This time, he brought the Wild back to the cusp of a playoff spot before the season paused. Minnesota was a far cry from the team that started 7-11-2 in November when it looked like it would be playing for draft lottery position.

From Feb. 2 through the end of the season (or until the season paused in early March), Stalock started 13 out of Minnesota's 18 games. In that time, he went 9-3-1 and carried a save percentage of .924 while stopping nearly 92.8 percent of pucks at 5-on-5. Stalock also posted two shutouts in February, including one over the playoff-bound Vegas Golden Knights. He has four shutouts on the season in total, which nearly doubled his career total of five prior to the year.

In just about every season of the Wild's history, especially in the last decade, they have lived and died by their goaltending. This season was no different, and had Stalock not stepped up in Dubnyk's absence, the team might have faded down the standings into draft lottery position.

Dubnyk told The Athletic in early March, “We’re here to win games and make (the) playoffs and Al is playing great right now. And we’re winning games. So you don’t look at it as a negative thing. You don’t look at it as, ‘I’m not playing this game.’ You look at the fact that Al’s been playing great and he’s been rolling and we’re winning games. And that’s what we’re here to do right now."

But now, the Wild are just barely on the outside looking in, hoping the regular season can resume at one point to give themselves and Stalock a chance to get back on the ice before the postseason begins.

“Alex is real committed, really sound, and isn’t trying to do too much,” said interim coach Dean Evason in an Athletic story. “He has a very calming effect for our group … for a guy that can get very excitable. He’s obviously done a great job.”

For the Wild, that calming effect on the group should put Stalock into a team MVP discussion. Without him, the season would have been lost in mid-November.

The question now is, should the season resume, can Stalock pick up right where he left off?

Stats in this post courtesy of Hockey-Reference, Evolving-Hockey, & Natural Stat Trick.

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