![\"Minnesota](\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/STP-Z-JESPER-1015-03.jpg\")
Minnesota Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt celebrates his team’s shootout win against the Los Angeles Kings in an NHL hockey game Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo\/Matt Krohn)<\/p>\nIn his first full season as an NHL goalie, Jesper Wallstedt had a red-hot November that had him in the conversation for the league\u2019s rookie of the year, and he 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 1.<\/p>\n
The success comes after a 2024-25 season in which Wallstedt looked NHL-ready for a time, then struggled mightily after being sent down to the Wild\u2019s top minor league team in Iowa.<\/p>\n
Minnesota Wild goaltender Jesper Wallstedt celebrates his team’s shootout win against the Los Angeles Kings in an NHL hockey game Monday, Oct. 13, 2025, in St. Paul, Minn. (AP Photo\/Matt Krohn)<\/p>\n
Wallstedt\u2019s openness about dealing with both the mental and physical side of the game, especially in hockey\u2019s most notoriously high-pressure position, and his return to the form that made him a first-round draft pick in 2021 are what make Wallstedt, 23, Minnesota\u2019s nominee for the Bill Masterton Award.<\/p>\n
Named after former Minnesota North Stars center Bill Masterton, who is the only NHL player to die directly as a result of injuries suffered in a game, the award is given annually to \u201cthe player who best exemplifies the qualities of perseverance, sportsmanship and dedication to hockey.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Masterton winner is selected via a poll of Professional Hockey Writers\u2019 Association members in all 32 NHL markets.\u00a0Two previous Wild goalies \u2014 Josh Harding in 2013 and Devan Dubnyk two years later \u2014 have won the award, as did North Stars forward Al MacAdam in 1980.<\/p>\n
Wallstedt\u2019s wins this season come after a 2024-25 season in the AHL expected to show that he was NHL-ready. Instead, it became one of the toughest winters of the young Swede\u2019s life; 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.<\/p>\n
He acknowledged struggles with his mental health, as well as the challenges of playing one of the more pressure-packed positions in sports.\u00a0Consulting a sports psychologist has made a huge difference, in good times and during struggles.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you go through that, you kind of live and learn a lot by yourself or about yourself, as well,\u201d Wallstedt said. \u201cI\u2019ve been better at controlling that and being able to control my emotions, I think.\u201d<\/p>\n
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, Wallstedt won seven consecutive starts and posted shutouts in three of them. Along the way he made fans \u2014 and a few enemies \u2014 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 showing his joy.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that. It means a lot. I love shootouts,\u201d he said, brushing off criticism from a Colorado broadcaster for his post-victory celebrations. \u201cI guess that\u2019s kind of one of the times where a goalie can actually kind of show a little bit of emotion or celebrate. That\u2019s one of the times where it\u2019s kind of acceptable for goalies to not just be robots.\u201d<\/p>\n
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 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.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t take this for granted. I enjoy every day I get to spend here and play hockey for a living,\u201d he said. \u201cWhen you go through the tough times, it\u2019s hard to appreciate the lifestyle we\u2019re living and the life that we have \u2019cause you get so focused up in the results and what you\u2019re doing.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut then the other way around when you succeed, and it\u2019s such a joy, being around a team like we have here that every day\u00a0 \u2026 (there is) nothing you take for granted when you\u2019ve been through that stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In his first full season as an NHL goalie, Jesper Wallstedt had a red-hot November that had him…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547490,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5118],"tags":[5,161,38,5280,4,43,162],"class_list":{"0":"post-547489","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-minnesota-wild","8":"tag-hockey","9":"tag-minnesota","10":"tag-minnesota-wild","11":"tag-minnesotawild","12":"tag-nhl","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-wild"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nhl\/116369527869488251","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547489","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547489"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547489\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547490"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547489"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547489"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nhl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547489"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}