Did the Wild jump the gun on a Filip Gustavsson extension?
One of the bigger stories over the weekend was the Minnesota Wild signing starting goaltender Filip Gustavsson to a five-year contract extension with a $6.8 million cap hit. Coming off of a season where he finished sixth in Vezina voting and 18th in Hart voting, the Wild lock up their start at a reasonable price for the long run.
But considering Gustavsson’s hot-and-cold nature, and Jesper Wallstedt is waiting in the wings, does the timing make sense for the Wild? Tyler Yaremchuk and Carter Hutton talked about Gustavsson’s extension and whether it was the right move to make now on Daily Faceoff Live.
Tyler Yaremchuk: I’ll be honest. I’m a little surprised at this one. For Gustavsson, $34 million guaranteed. Yes, sign that deal. Get your bag every day of the week. For the Wild, they have Jesper Wallstedt, a first-round pick, sitting as their backup goalie. Gustavsson has always, and you made this point, he flip-flops. Good year, bad year, good year, bad year. Signing him coming off of a good season when you have the heir to the throne sitting behind him already. I was a little surprised by this, but what do you make of the Gustavsson signing?
Carter Hutton: Again, just thinking of the forecasting of where the market’s going. If he does have that bounce-back year that everyone’s waiting for, that Jekyll and Hyde, where we haven’t seen that consistency across the board for him.
I think maybe the worry would be the fact that he’s going to be insulated this year. They are going to have a good team. They’re going to defend well. They’re going to give him the best chance to succeed. So locking him up, knowing he’s the guy, and maybe taking some of that pressure off him in the sense of “what are we really going to gain or lose if he has a bad or good year? He’s still our guy”.
I do like the signing. I agree where maybe they could have waited a little bit, and if he has a slow start, you get him for less. And the thing is, Wallstedt is 22 years old. He’s only played five games in the NHL. And last year in the American League, he didn’t play very well. 27 games. He was under a .900 save percentage. So he’s looking to make that jump.
It’s going to be tricky, too. I think he’s going to be in a tough position where they view Wallstedt as the successor like Joel Hofer has had in St. Louis, where he’s insulated through Jordan Binnington, he gets spot starts, and trying to get him ready to go for the NHL. And now if he does do it, maybe you give him a bridge deal, and you have both your goalies locked up maybe under almost $9 million is pretty good in nowadays dollars moving forward.
So there is a little bit of risk-reward in this sense. But I think Filip Gustavsson has earned this contract. He’s earned that. I’m with you too, I don’t know if I totally agree with the timing, but that being said, if he is your guy and you want to take care of him, let’s take this off the table and let him do what he does best and stop the puck.
You can watch the full episode here…