ST. LOUIS – Marc-Andre Fleury, wearing his black Wild baseball cap backwards, had a front row seat to history Tuesday night, but he was the one who planted the seed in Filip Gustavsson’s head in the first place.
Then, as if Fleury himself was mapping out the play for his goalkeeper, Pavel Buchnevich of the St. Louis Blues fully cooperated with a perfectly placed shot from 23 yards straight toward the Wild logo in the middle of Gustavsson’s chest.
Gustavsson caught the puck with his kicker for his 27th save, dropped it in his blue crease, took aim and sailed with beauty the length of the ice for a bull’s-eye – the final goal in a 4-1 Wild – victory.
It was the first goaltender goal in team history and Gustavsson is the 15th goaltender in NHL regular season history to score a goal.
“That was unexpected,” goalkeeper coach Freddy Chabot said after the match at the press lift.
“That was great,” said general manager Bill Guerin. “You don’t see a goalkeeper goal every day.”
“A power-play goal,” assistant GM Michael Murray noted.
GOALKEEPER GOAL! GOALKEEPER GOAL! GOALKEEPER GOAL! 🚨 pic.twitter.com/NS3CsKb9ge
— NHL (@NHL) October 16, 2024
With 34 seconds left in the Blues’ home opener and St. Louis trying to kill a double minor, coach Drew Bannister called a timeout looking for a miracle with his team down two.
Fleury had other plans.
“I called a quick goalkeeper meeting,” Fleury said, laughing.
Gustavsson skated to the bench and got advice from the wise future Hall of Famer.
‘Flower looked at the board and said, ‘We’re up by two goals. You should probably try it if you get the chance. You’re shooting, right?’” Gustavsson recalled. “I thought, ‘Yeah, maybe I should do that.’”
Gustavsson had never scored a goal at any level of hockey. He would never consider it with a one-goal lead because if he missed it would be icing on the cake and a showdown in the attacking zone for the Blues.
“Up 2-nothing, I thought, ‘Yes, if I get the chance, I’ll try,’” Gustavsson said.
And then he got his chance.
Gustavsson thinks Buchnevich shot the puck directly at him so he would catch it, freeze it and give the Blues a late faceoff. But instead, Buchnevich “just put it right in the glove and I tried to put it down as quickly as possible,” Gustavsson said. “It was just perfect there on the ice, and I’m just trying to shoot it as hard as I can.”
As Fleury said: ‘Textbook.’
Celebration of the goalkeeper’s first goal @mnwild history! 🤩 pic.twitter.com/X5ciE7FTea
— NHL (@NHL) October 16, 2024
Chabot, the Wild’s goaltending coach for five seasons, likes to do fun things with his goaltenders in practice.
One of the coolest looks is when one goalkeeper stands directly in front of the other to create a giant screen. Chabot then whistles pinpoint shots to the left, then to the right, then back to the left… again and again on either side of the controlling goalie, leaving whoever in the crease to fight to find the puck.
But the most fun exercise he performs is scoring goals from goalkeepers.
Former Wild goalie Kaapo Kahkonen was a goal-scoring machine in his native Finland. Current Wild talent Jesper Wallstedt, a fellow Swede like Gustavsson, has also scored goals as a goalie, including with Iowa in the AHL.
“I expected that from Wally,” Chabot said. ‘Not Guus.’
What shocked Chabot most was that he had never seen Gustavsson shoot the puck as high as he did in any of their practices.
“I usually complain that my curve doesn’t have the right angle to get it that high,” Gustavsson said. “But I don’t know, extra powers or something.”
The coolest, according to ESPN, was the third power-play goal by a goaltender in NHL history (Evgeni Nabokov in 2002 and Martin Brodeur in 2013). According to NHL Stats (Linus Ullmark in 2023), he is the second Swede to ever score a goal.
Hilariously, Guerin walked into the dressing room to congratulate Gustavsson and asked Fleury if he had ever scored one. Fleury, knowing full well that his former Penguins teammate knew he hadn’t, then burst out laughing and threw a towel at the Wild boss.
After scoring, Gustavsson was mobbed by his teammates on the ice: Brock Faber, Jonas Brodin, Marcus Foligno, Yakov Trenin and Marat Khusnutdinov.
Jakub Lauko’s first Wild goal is a short-lived beauty. 2-0 #mnwild pic.twitter.com/gLS19TpTcs
— Spoke Z (@SpokedZ) October 16, 2024
Jakub Lauko, who scored the winning short-handed goal in the second period for his first goal with the Wild, wanted to join the pile from the bench. There were only nine seconds left in the match, but he felt this was against the rules and decided to stay standing.
Luckily for him, Gustavsson skated to the bench and hit a fist bump flyby with his blocker. The first person he greeted was a smiling, proud Fleury.
“Kudos to him,” Lauko said. “It’s pretty impressive, and he deserves it. It would have been more fun at home, with a full barn, but you know it is an incredible moment. I’m just happy for him.”
Gustavsson’s goal was the Wild’s fourth power play goal of the season. He joked that he wanted to help push the power play above 20 percent, but he actually pushed it to 30.8 percent.
“Maybe we should be at the power play meetings now,” Gustavsson said.
Wild coach John Hynes has seen a goalie goal before. While coaching Nashville, Pekka Rinne scored one in Chicago.
“It was one of my first few games in Nashville,” he recalls. “But it was almost like Gus’s. It was kind of a six-on-five situation and kind of dumped on the goalkeeper and he had the time to be able to do it and you could see both guys… going for it. Great to see.”
With the Wild playing seven defensemen and not playing again until Saturday in Columbus, Kirill Kaprizov logged 27:59 of ice time – the second-most of his NHL career. According to ESPN, this was the sixth-highest score by a forward without shots in a game since 2000-2001.
But Kaprizov was fantastic, with two wonderful assists on goals from Ryan Hartman and Marco Rossi. He leads 2-0-2 Minnesota, which has not trailed in any game, by six points.
However, Kaprizov has one goal and volunteers that he is tied with the Wild’s No. 1 goalie: “The same (number of) goals as a lot of guys.”
“That probably won’t last long,” Gustavsson said.
The irony of Tuesday is that it is for the season; it is believed the Wild had the Blues match scheduled for Wallstedt’s season debut. But the Wild are swamped with injuries to Joel Eriksson Ek, Jared Spurgeon and Marcus Johansson, so Wallstedt had to be sent to Iowa to make room for draft pick Daemon Hunt. Plus, Gustavsson is playing so well that they need Wallstedt to get some practice and game action somewhere, and right now it can’t be Minnesota.
The Wild are looking to get Wallstedt more NHL games this season than the three he got last year, but the name of the game is winning and if Gustavsson continues to rack up wins, he should get the bulk of the playing time.
If the Wild want to get back into the playoffs this season, they need the ‘Gus Bus’ who looks and plays like the goalie from two years ago who finished with the second-best save percentage and goals-against average in the NHL and not the one who failed to a sub-.900 save percentage last season.
So far in three starts, he is 2-0-1 with a 1.66 goals-against average and a .948 save percentage. He worked hard in the offseason, returned to Minnesota in top form and has improved his practice habits.
“I don’t think I’m doing anything special there,” he said. “(I’m not) flashy. Obviously I make some bigger saves, but that’s usually when you’re out of position. I just try to be in the right position most of the time and make boring saves. And I think it’s working very well so far.”
Well, just like in the second period after Lauko’s shorthanded goal, where he kept a 2-0 lead by sprawling across his crease to rob Jordan Kyrou.
“Obviously we all know that Gustavsson was not happy at the end of last year and no one was happy with what had happened,” Hynes said. “He worked hard this summer and came back, I think he’s got the right mentality. He’s learned his lessons from last year and now he’s come in and he’s playing really solid and you need that.
“Early in the year it’s sometimes hard to win if you don’t have strong goaltending because the games are a little spread out because everyone is trying to get used to the NHL pace. It has to be that way, if you can get some real quality goal work early then you have the best chance of winning.”
Goalie goals also help.
Gus makes Wild history 👏 pic.twitter.com/lnjSeLQikN
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) October 16, 2024
(Photo: Dilip Vishwanat/Getty Images)