By Tony Abbott -
The 2024-25 season was supposed to be the year Minnesota Wild fans "finally" saw Jesper Wallstedt. Although he'd turned 22 in November, the Wild's 2021 first-round goalie had spent three years building up hype as a prospect and four years playing professional hockey in Sweden and the AHL. While goalies at his age making an NHL impact are rare, there was a feeling in the Wild front office that it was time to get his feet wet in St. Paul.
But then, that didn't happen. Early injuries and a salary cap crunch meant that the Wild's three-goalie plan went haywire almost instantly. By October 19, he was starting for the Iowa Wild.
By October 20, he'd already allowed 12 goals against in two games.
It didn't get much better, either. By the time the Wild put Wallstedt on the shelf for a month, he'd surrendered 48 goals on 365 shots (.868 save percentage). In 6 of his 13 AHL starts, Wallstedt gave up four or more goals.
The early returns looked good as Iowa eased him back into the crease. He stopped 60 of 65 shots in his first two games. However, Wallstedt's last game was on February 1, when he gave up five goals on 18 shots, and they pulled him before the second intermission.
Back to Square One, apparently.
Make no mistake: It's been a rough season, and the hockey world has taken notice. Wallstedt entered the season as the No. 1 goalie prospect, according to The Athletic's Scott Wheeler. Seven months later, he's moved down a tier into the No. 4 spot, according to Wheeler's Wednesday ranking.
His Athletic colleague Corey Pronman left Wallstedt off his 139-player list of the best Under-23 NHLers/Prospects in January, making him (at best) the No. 5 goalie prospect in his eyes. That came just four months after ranking him 54th (of 155) and the top goalie by a nose over Yaroslav Askarov.
It's tough to spin this season as being a positive for Wallstedt. 222 goalies have played 15-plus games in their age-22 season at the AHL since the 2000-01 season, and Wallstedt's .871 save percentage ranks 220th. Yikes. To the shock of no one, the track record of sub-.900 AHL goalies at 22 is not very good. Ben Bishop (.897 in 33 games during 2008-09) is the best-case scenario of this group, followed by your pick of backup-quality goalies like Sam Montembeault, Joseph Woll, Karri Ramo, or Mikko Koskinen.
Still... this feels like a huge overreaction to 16 games, right? This may wind up being a lost season, but again, 16 games! What does this actually tell us?
It doesn't even feel like we're learning something particularly new about Wallstedt. He's been prone to extended slumps before. Last season, he compiled a 16-game slump (December 16 to March 1) where he sported a .871 save percentage identical to his 2024-25 mark. Admittedly, that's a weakness that needs to be cleaned up, but this isn't something that wasn't known to the people calling him the NHL's top goalie prospect 180 days ago.
The only reason that makes sense to knock his stock down so much is if 2024-25 completely deflates his reputation of being poised in the net. You must have that quality to climb the professional ranks at such a young age. Still, for the first time in his career, Wallstedt might be genuinely rattled.
Wallstedt was open about that, speaking with The Athletic's Michael Russo in December. "It was like I hadn't played hockey before," Wallstedt said of his early struggles. "It didn’t feel like my game was wrong, but it felt like my head wasn’t there and then I’m the one that gives myself the hardest criticism.... I think overthinking got to me."
Being a goalie always involves dealing with adversity, whether it's trying to push for playing time, staving off a backup, or rebounding from a bad goal, game, or even stretch of games. But it makes sense that this season would be much more trying for Wallstedt than ever before. After two seasons in the AHL, he was ready to take the next step, only to find that the opportunity wasn't there, through no fault of his own.
It's not just that, either. Playing in the NHL meant that Wallstedt would be put in a great position to succeed behind a top NHL defense. Having him behind Iowa's defense is... well, not exactly putting him in a position to succeed. Iowa is 30th of 32 AHL teams in goals allowed. Even if you remove the goals Wallstedt has surrendered and their empty-net goals against, their per-game pace would still put them at 26th in the league.
Sure, at some point, you'd like to see Wallstedt put that all past him, but these two things can feed into each other.
The stretch undoubtedly prompts concerns we didn't have about Wallstedt before. However, the combination of the sample size, circumstances, and his pedigree should be enough to prevent his stock from bottoming out completely. A solid finish to the season should put this behind him or, at worst, the sort of off-season reset that Filip Gustavsson needed after last year. Seeing the top goalie prospect bounce back wouldn't be even remotely surprising.
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