In his first full season as a NHL goalie, Jesper Wallstedt had a red-hot November that had him in the conversation for the league’s rookie of the year, and heads into the last week of the 2025-26 regular season with 17 wins in 33 appearances for a playoff-bound Wild team that is still in the mix for home ice in round one.
The success came after a 2024-25 season where Wallstedt looked NHL-ready for a time, then struggled mightily after being sent down to the Wild’s top minor league team in Iowa.
Minnesota Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt (30) is photographed during the team’s media day in St. Paul on Wednesday, Sept. 18, 2024. (John Autey / Pioneer Press).
Wallstedr’s candor about dealing with both the mental and physical sides of the game, especially in hockey’s notoriously high-pressure position, and his return to the form that made him a first round draft pick in 2021, are what make him Minnesota’s nominee for the Bill Masterton Award.
Named to honor late Minnesota North Stars center Bill Masterton, the only NHL player to die directly as a result of injuries suffered in a game, the award is given annually to “the player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.” The Masterton winner is selected via a poll of Professional Hockey Writers’ Association members in all 32 NHL markets.
Two previous Wild goalies — Josh Harding in 2013 and Devan Dubnyk two years later — have won the award, as did North Stars forward Al MacAdam in 1980.
Wallstedt’s wins this season come after a 2024-25 season in the AHL which was intended to show that he was NHL-ready, but instead became one of the toughest winters of his life, in which he posted a 9-14-5 record in the minors. On the ice for the Iowa Wild, things were going poorly, especially for the goalie. And he admits to struggles with his mental health as well as the challenges of playing one of the more pressure-packed positions in sports.
Consulting a sports psychologist to care for his mental health has made a huge difference, in good times and during struggles.
“I think more so when you go through that, you kind of live and learn a lot by yourself or about yourself as well,” he said. “I’ve been better at controlling that and being able to control my emotions, I think.”
Exactly one year after the down times in Des Moines, Wallstedt burst onto the NHL scene. In November and early December, as the Wild rebounded from a lousy first month of the season, Wallstedt won seven consecutive starts and posted shutouts in three of them. And along the way he made fans – and a few enemies – with a signature kind of victory celebration after shootout wins. As a goalie who watches every skater who scores a goal against him celebrate, Wallstedt makes no apologies for savoring victory, and showing it.
“I love that. It means a lot. I love shootouts,” he said, brushing off criticism from a Colorado broadcaster for his post-victory celebrations. “I guess that’s kind of one of the times where a goalie can actually kind of show a little bit of emotion or celebrate. That’s one of the times where it’s kind of acceptable for goalies to not just be robots.”
Although he did not get any ice time in Milan, Wallstedt was a member of Team Sweden at the Winter Olympics. Combined with countryman and mentor Filip Gustavsson, Wallstedt has given the Wild a very solid goaltending duo as they head to late April looking to escape the first round of the NHL playoffs for the first time in more than a decade.
And having been through the on-ice lows of last season and learning to better appreciate it all, if he smiles and celebrates a bit more with every big save, Wallstedt makes no apologies.
“You don’t take this for granted. I enjoy every day I get to spend here and play hockey for a living,” he said. “When you go through the tough times, it’s hard to appreciate the lifestyle we’re living and the life that we have ’cause you get so focused up in the results and what you’re doing.
“But then the other way around when you succeed, and it’s such a joy, being around a team like we have here that every day and everything is…nothing you take for granted when you’ve been through that stuff.”