DALLAS — The Minnesota Wild were at their team hotel on Thursday night after a team dinner when coach John Hynes and goalie coach Frédéric Chabot met with each of their goalies individually and gave rookie Jesper Wallstedt the best news of his career.
He’d be getting to make his first career playoff start in Game 1 against the Dallas Stars.
“I was a little surprised,” Wallstedt said. “I was hoping to play. I wanted to play. I was very excited as soon as I got the news.”
You’d think the 23-year-old Swede would be on cloud nine, ready to tell his family back home.
Not so much. They found out the same way the hockey world did on Friday afternoon.
“You know, he doesn’t tell me secrets,” said his father, Jonas, from his Västerås, Sweden home Saturday night. “I saw it on social media and texted him, ‘Congrats.’”
Truth is, Wallstedt was just locked in. He lives for big games and big moments. Case in point: his numbers against top teams this season. And he was coming in hot, having allowed two or fewer goals in eight of his last nine starts of the regular season. That’s why Wallstedt got the nod. “He earned it,” Hynes said.
And Wallstedt certainly rewarded the Wild’s faith, with a poised 27-save performance in a 6-1 win. He’s got the net now and is not ready to give it up.
“It’s a characteristic you can’t teach,” said Richard Bachman, Wallstedt’s goalie coach in AHL Iowa. “You’re pretty much born with it as a competitor. He’s a quiet and fun-loving guy and a great teammate, but when you get on the ice, the switch is flipped — you see the competitiveness.
“He wants to make the save. He wants to make a difference.”
Wallstedt wasn’t tested a ton in the first two periods, facing just 16 shots. But he made some timely saves, including stopping Miro Heiskanen and Mikko Rantanen off the rush in the first period, when it was still a 0-0 game.
“I was definitely nervous,” Wallstedt said. “It just shows that it means something to you. I like a little bit of nerves. I think it’s something good. There’s definitely some nerves throughout the day and then a little bit extra when we were rolling in for the game here, but as soon as the national anthem is over, the first couple of pucks starts coming, you start to get used to it.”
Wallstedt said when he’s playing his best, he only sees up to the top of the boards, not focusing on anything else. So it looks like the same ice and the same boards at every rink in every game.
“I just keep telling myself, this is the same game I played since I was 6,” he said. “There’s nothing different to it.”
And Wallstedt showed he was feeling that way on some game-shifting saves later in the second. The Stars had scored to pull within 4-1. The building started to come alive, and Dallas was pressing. Wallstedt made a pad stop on a Jamie Benn point-blank shot off a Kirill Kaprizov turnover. Then, a couple of minutes later, Wallstedt played a two-on-one perfectly, getting his glove on a Wyatt Johnston shot.
“I thought I challenged him pretty well,” Wallstedt said. “And then obviously, there’s two players coming in. I know in my read that he was looking to shoot, and I was just trying to take as much space away as possible, and I liked my poise and try to just wait him out to make sure he made the first move. And, yeah, he shot it on my glove there, and then went down in the corner.”
“He’s a very confident kid,” Hynes said. “He’s a very confident goaltender, and I think the way that he’s playing and the way that he was playing coming into tonight, he’s made those types of saves, and I think it was a big moment. There’s going to be times throughout this series where you’re going to need — there’s going to be a breakdown, there’s going to be a mistake or there’s going to be a great play made by a great player on their team — where you’re going to need a big time save at a key time, and we got that tonight.”
Bachman said it couldn’t be overstated how far Wallstedt has come from where he was just a year ago. Wallstedt has opened up about his struggles last season in Iowa, reaching a low point and seeking the help of sports psychologists. It was a crisis of confidence. He felt like he couldn’t stop a puck. He received a notebook from Chabot that he used as a journal, writing his thoughts and emptying his emotions after starts, good and bad. It’s on his bedside table.
Wallstedt looked over some of those notes during a summer “reset.” There was some self-inventory, going over what went wrong. But he then flushed it from his system, focusing on coming into camp in great shape and with a healthy mindset.
The Wild had given him notes on what to tweak in his game from last season. They weren’t wholesale changes, more so decision-making: smaller movements, playing inside the posts, more control of his body. His goalie coach in Sweden, Linda Blomquist, worked with him in Luleå in the summer on how to implement them.
“He plays a more simple game,” Blomquist said Saturday. “Lets the puck come to him instead of chasing it around. It’s not new to him. He used to play this way before but lost it a little bit the last few years. It was a deliberate choice for him (to change back), and he’s put in a lot of work.”
Bachman told Wallstedt last year that those struggles would help him in the NHL, and he looked back on them during a tough stretch after the holidays when he went 2-4-2. He didn’t stress.
“Because of what he went through last year, mentally, he was able to get himself into a better place quickly and get out of that and keep going and doing his thing,” Bachman said. “You see it in his comments he made on how much going through last year made him appreciate and enjoy the game. And that’s the best thing I could ever hear, is not only doing things the right way and doing it with details, but he’s loving what he’s doing.”
This was Wallstedt’s first start in Dallas since his NHL debut on Jan. 10, 2024, when he allowed seven goals on 34 shots in a humbling loss. The Wild were shorthanded that night, down several defensemen plus Kaprizov, and Wallstedt was called up in a pinch. He’s proud of how far he’s come.
“That feels like years ago now, which it is,” Wallstedt said. “I think it shows a lot of growth and the work I’ve put in has started to get rewarded from that. I’m very happy with where I am. But there’s still a lot of hockey left.”
Bachman remembers what Wallstedt was like coming back to Iowa after that difficult debut. And how he responded was telling. It made the goaltender more dialed in, focused on the details and consistency that’s required. He didn’t make excuses.
“He owned all of it,” Bachman said. “For him, it was, ‘OK, that’s the level. That’s where I want to be. That’s where I belong. I need to work on the details and my mindset.’ He was hard on himself, but he used that experience and emotion to push him to another level. If he doesn’t have that experience, maybe it takes him longer to get to that level. I don’t know. It put a little fire in him.”
Wallstedt’s bounce-back season showed the power of the mind and earned him a Masterton Trophy nomination by the Minnesota chapter of the Professional Hockey Writers Association. His red-hot run earlier in the season led the Wild to do a goalie rotation with Filip Gustavsson, the presumed No. 1 who signed a five-year extension in October. The two Swedes have a good relationship and have bonded over dinners and video games, so there was certainly a little bit of a bittersweet moment when the coaches broke the news to both goalies Thursday.
“It’s hard, because obviously we both know we are playing a role that there’s only one guy that can play,” Wallstedt said. “And I think that’s something everyone knows, and you accept that when you decide to be a goalie. But obviously, I want him to play, and I want myself to play. You want everyone to be able to play. But that’s just not the case. So obviously, I want to play as well.”
It’s hard to imagine the Wild changing course and not starting Wallstedt in Monday’s Game 2. As much as Wallstedt earned his Game 1 nod, he certainly impressed the staff and his teammates with his play throughout.
“He was calm, collected,” veteran forward Mats Zuccarello said. “And we fed off of him.”
Wallstedt’s father stayed up until around 3 a.m. his time to watch his son close out his first playoff victory. He was so happy that Hynes and the staff “gave (Wallstedt) their trust” to start the series. He felt his son had earned it, adding, “At the same time, he’s a rookie.” Jonas, a former goalie himself, was proud.
“But the biggest feeling is happiness,” Jonas said. “We are so glad for him and that he understands last year, that our heads have a huge impact on our lives and especially sports performance.”