Wilderness Walk: Gustavsson stars, Spacek signs

Filip Gustavsson has been nothing short of spectacular and the best part is that this was not expected at all. We all knew there was some potential as a once-highly regarded goaltender prospect while he was in the Pittsburgh Penguins system and then traded to the Ottawa Senators; but nothing like this.

At 24 years old, Gustavsson has 29 appearances in NHL games (a career-high) and has earned a .933 save percentage and a 1.99 goals against average. Those are some elite Vezina Trophy-earning numbers if they were stretched to 25 to 30 more games. Per MoneyPuck, he ranks fifth in Goals Saved Above Expected (a metric used that includes the expected goal of each shot a goaltender faces) with a 21.0 GSAx. The only goalie that rank above him are Linus Ullmark, Ilya Sorokin, Juuse Saros, and Connor Hellebuyck — those are all netminders that either have Vezinas or will in their future.

Should we start thinking about that as Gustavsson’s future? Maybe we’ll wait until he hits 100 NHL games played, because we all know goalies are weird.

That’s Wild

Off the trail...