castle. LOUIS – Marc-André Fleury, wearing a black Wild baseball cap backwards, had a front row seat to history Tuesday night, but it was he who planted the seed in Philipp Gustafsson’s head in the first place.
St. Louis then scored just as Fleury schematized the play himself for his goalie partner. The St. Louis Blues’ Pavel Buchnevich coordinated perfectly with a perfectly placed 79-foot shot aimed at the Wild logo in the center of Gustavsson’s chest.
Gustavsson grabbed the puck as a trapper for his 27th save, dropped it in the blue crease, then took aim and sailed beautifully the length of the ice for the final goal of a 4-1 Wild win.
It was the first goalie goal in team history and Gustafsson is the 15th goaltender in NHL regular season history to score a goaltender goal.
“It was unexpected,” goalkeeper coach Freddie Chabot said at the postgame press conference.
“It was amazing,” said general manager Bill Guerin. “You don’t get to see a goalkeeper score every day.”
“It’s a power-play goal,” assistant GM Michael Murray pointed out.
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 about to kill a double minor, manager Drew Bannister called a timeout to pull off a miracle as his team was down on second down.
Fleury had other plans.
Fleury laughed and said, “I called a brief goalkeeper meeting.”
Gustavsson skated to the bench and got some advice from the wise future Hall of Famer.
“Flower looked at the board and said: ‘We scored two goals. If you get the chance, I think you should definitely try it. You’re shooting, right?’” Gustavsson recalled. “I thought, ‘Yeah, I guess I should do that.’”
Gustavsson has never scored a goal at any level of hockey. He would never consider a one-goal lead. Because if he misses it will be icing and an offensive zone showdown for the Blues.
“With 2-nothing, I was like, ‘Okay, if I get a chance, I’ll give it a try,’” Gustavsson said.
And then an opportunity came to him.
Gustavsson figured Buchnevich was shooting the puck directly at him so he could grab it, freeze it, and then give the Blues a late faceoff. But instead, Buchnevich “just put it straight into his glove and tried to get it down as quickly as possible,” Gustavsson said. “It was perfectly placed on the ice and I did my best to make the shot.”
As Fleury puts it, “a textbook.”
Congratulations on your first goalkeeper goal @mnwild history! 😋 pic.twitter.com/X5ciE7FTea
– NHL (@NHL) October 16, 2024
Chabot, the Wild’s goalie coach for five seasons, likes to do fun things with goalies during practice.
One of the coolest sights is when one goalie stands right in front of the other goalie and sets up a giant screen. Chabot then whistles a very accurate shot left, then right, then left. On either side of the screening goalie, the person in the crease has to constantly fight to find the puck.
But the most fun training he does is goalkeeper goal.
Former Wild goalkeeper Kaapo Kahkonen was a goalkeeping machine in his native Finland. Gustavsson’s fellow Swede, current Wild prospect Jesper Wallstedt, also scored goalie goals, including one for Iowa in the AHL.
“I expected something like that from Wally,” Chabot said. “It’s not Gus.”
What shocked Chabot most was that he had never seen Gustavsson shoot the puck that high in any practice.
“I usually complain that my curves don’t have the right angle to go that high,” Gustavsson said. “But I don’t know about extra powers or anything like that.”
The best part is that this was only the third power-play goal by a goalie in NHL history (Evgeni Nabokov in 2002 and Martin Brodeur in 2013), according to ESPN. According to NHL statistics, he is only the second Swedish player to score a goalkeeper goal (Linus Ullmark in 2023).
Hilariously, Guerin walked into the locker room to congratulate Gustavsson and then asked Fleury if he had ever scored a goal. Fleury knew full well that his former Penguins teammate wasn’t, and then threw in the towel on the Wild boss.
After he scored, Gustavsson was swarmed 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 beauty of shorthand. 2-0 #mnwild pic.twitter.com/gLS19TpTcs
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) October 16, 2024
Jakub Lauko, who scored the game-winning goal in the second quarter for his first goal against the Wild, wanted to join from the bench. There were only nine seconds left in the match, but he decided to stay put because he thought it was against the rules.
Luckily, Gustavsson was seen skating to the bench, holding his blocker and sending his fist flying. The first person he greeted was a smiling and proud Fleury.
“Give him props.” Lauko said. “It’s very impressive and he deserves it. I wish I had a full barn at home, but you know what, that’s an amazing moment. “I’m happy for him.”
Gustavsson’s goal was the Wild’s fourth power play goal of the season. He joked that he wanted to get the power play above 20%, but actually pushed it to 30.8%.
“We should probably be in power play meetings now,” Gustavsson said.
Wild coach John Hynes has seen goalies score before. While coaching Nashville, Pekka Rinne scored one goal for Chicago.
“It was one of the first couple games in Nashville,” he recalled. “But it was almost identical to Gus’s. It was kind of a 6-on-5 situation and it kind of pounced on the goalie and he had time to do it and you could tell both guys were going to… do it. “It’s nice to see.”
With the Wild playing with seven defensemen and not playing again Saturday in Columbus, Kirill Kaprizov logged 27:59 of ice time. This is the second most of his NHL career. According to ESPN, this is the sixth-most among forwards without a shot in a game since 2000-2001.
However, Kaprizov was excellent, recording two beautiful assists on goals by Ryan Hartman and Marco Rossi. He leads Minnesota, which is never behind in any game, with 6 points and is 2-0-2.
But Kaprizov had one goal and volunteered to score the equalizer against the Wild’s No. 1 goalkeeper. “That’s the same number of goals as many players.”
“It probably won’t take that long,” Gustavsson said.
The irony of Tuesday is that it was before the season. It is believed the Wild had scheduled the Blues game for Wallstedt’s season debut. But the Wild were awash with injuries to Joel Eriksson Ek, Jared Spurgeon and Marcus Johansson, so Wallstedt had to be sent down to Iowa to make room for call-up Daemon Hunt. Plus, Gustavsson is playing very well, so they need Wallstedt to get some practice and game action somewhere, but it can’t be Minnesota right now.
The Wild would like to see Wallstedt play more games in the NHL this season than the three he got last year, but the name of the game is winning, and if Gustavsson keeps winning, he should get the majority of playing time.
If the Wild want to get back to the playoffs this season, they need a “Gus Bus” who can look and play like the goaltender who had the second-best save percentage and goals-against-average in the NHL two years ago. He struggled last season with a save percentage below .900.
In three starts thus far, he is 2-0-1 with a 1.66 goals-against average and .948 save percentage. He worked hard this offseason and returned to Minnesota in top shape, with improved practice habits.
“I don’t think I’m doing anything special out there,” he said. “(I’m) not flashy. Obviously, I make some bigger saves, but that’s usually when you’re out of position. I try to be in the right place most of the time and make boring saves. And I think it’s working very well so far.”
great. Just as Lauko stretched across the crease to rob Jordan Kyrou in the second period after scoring a short goal to maintain a 2-0 lead.
“Obviously we all know that (Gustavsson) wasn’t happy at the end of last year and no one was happy with what happened,” Hynes said. “He worked hard this summer and came back. I think it was the right mindset and we learned our lessons from last year and now he’s come in and played really solid and you need that.
“At the beginning of the year, with everyone trying to get used to the NHL pace, the games are a little scattered, sometimes there are breakdowns and the system isn’t fully coordinated, so sometimes it’s hard to win if you don’t get strong goaltending. When we can get some really high-quality goaltending early, that gives us the best chance to win.”
A goalkeeper’s goal also helps.
Gus is making wild history 👏 pic.twitter.com/lnjSeLQikN
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) October 16, 2024
(Photo: Dilip Vishwanat / Getty Images)
