Marc-Andre Fleury appears certain to retire as a member of the Minnesota Wild. It just won’t be after this season, as many had expected. That became official on Wednesday as Fleury signed a one-year, $2.5 million contract to return for a 21st NHL season and a third full one in Minnesota.

Fleury assured reporters that will be it for him.

“I’m grateful,” he said. “I’m grateful to keep doing what I love for one more season. I thought about it a lot this year, but still loving to compete, the intensity, the pursuit to be in the best league in the world also, and compete with young guys. I feel very lucky to be able to do it.”

The decision by Wild general manager Bill Guerin to bring back Fleury is an interesting one. Fleury’s season has been a special one — he passed Patrick Roy for the second-most regular season victories in NHL history and became the fourth goalie in league history to play in 1,000 games — but there also has been plenty of frustration. 

He will enter his start in the Wild’s season finale on Thursday night against Seattle with an .895 saves percentage, his worst since he posted an .898 save percentage with Pittsburgh in his second season in 2005-06. His 2.98 goals-against average is his highest since he had a 3.02 goals against in his final season with the Penguins in 2016-17. The most disappointing thing for Fleury is that this will be the first time in 18 years his team won’t make the playoffs.

Marc-Andre Fleury will return next season for his third full campaign in a Minnesota Wild sweater. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

It has been a rough season for the Wild and especially for the goaltending duo of Fleury and Filip Gustavsson. Gustavsson had a fantastic first season with the Wild in 2022-23, finishing second in the NHL in goals-against average (2.10) and second in save percentage (.931). Gustavsson signed a three-year, $11.25 million contract last offseason, but his goals against has shot up to 3.06 and his save percentage has sunk to .899.

Wild should shop Gustavsson, make room for Wallstedt
With Fleury locked in to return, there is no guarantee Gustavsson will be back. The Wild have given two late-season starts to 2021 first-round pick Jesper Wallstedt. He responded with a 24-save shutout on April 7 in a 4-0 victory at Chicago and then made 27 saves on April 13 in a 6-2 victory at San Jose. Those two wins, granted against non-playoff teams, partially helped to erase the bad taste left from Wallstedt’s NHL debut in January at Dallas. Wallstedt stopped 27 of 34 shots in a 7-2 loss before being sent back to Iowa.

This marked the second season for Wallstedt with the Wild’s affiliate in the American Hockey League. He is still only 21 years old, but pairing him with Fleury next season makes a lot of sense.

That makes shopping Gustavsson this offseason the logical move. Unlike so many of his teammates, Gustavsson has zero trade protection and moving him would open $3.75 million in salary-cap space. The Wild also would have to sign a veteran who would play in Iowa but could replace Wallstedt or Fleury, if there was an injury or Wallstedt struggles, but that is the worst case scenario.

Filip Gustavsson’s numbers took a dip this season from where they were a year ago. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

Best case is that Wallstedt spends the season learning under Fleury, while carrying much of the workload. Although Guerin is always focused on winning, the reality is that next season is the last in which the Wild will be tight to the salary cap because of the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts, and the smartest thing the franchise could do is play as much of its young talent in order to set itself up for the 2025-26 season, when there should be actual expectations for playoff success.

This doesn’t mean making the playoffs, or celebrating a first-round win. This means the start of what should be a Stanley Cup window. If the youngsters give you more than is expected next season that’s a bonus, but, if this season has proven anything, it’s that patience is going to be a necessity and development is more important than playing veterans whose time is running out.

Fleury knows exactly what’s he has signed up for and that the last act of his Hall of Fame career should be doing everything in his power to make sure Wallstedt can have a career that also includes multiple Stanley Cup rings. Fleury is in the perfect position to be on board with this plan, but it’s not going to happen with Gustavsson on the roster.

This doesn’t mean Gustavsson can’t rebound from a poor season. It just means that rebound needs to come elsewhere.

The post Eye On The Future appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

The Wild must at least contain Nathan MacKinnon and company to get back in the series at home.

Ten months ago the Colorado Avalanche were faced with the most delicious dilemma a National Hockey League team could have thrust upon them. Seated at a table in Newark’s Prudential Center on June 30, the Avs brass had their choice of any draft-declared prospect on the planet as possessor’s of the No. 1 overall pick in the 2013 NHL Draft.

Conventional wisdom at the time said the choice was between flashy Halifax Mooseheads forward Nathan MacKinnon and Portland Winterhawks defensive phenom Seth Jones.

The Avalanche, at least in the short term, made the right decision.

Jones is sitting at home after a respectable 25-point season—to go with a minus-23 plus/minus rating—for the Nashville Predators, a non-playoff team. MacKinnon, on the other hand, is destroying Minnesota with seven points (1-6–7) and is a plus-5 in leading Colorado to a 2-0 lead in its first-round Stanley Cup Playoff series against the Wild.

MacKinnon notched a goal and three assists on Saturday night in the Avs 4-2 win over the Wild in game two after a three assist performance in the series opener. His combination of speed, skill, and rink awareness has given Minnesota fits in the Mile-High City this week.

Through two playoff games MacKinnon has already accumulated one ninth of his 82-game regular season numbers (24-39–63). But he is far from doing it alone.

The chemistry between MacKinnon and linemates Gabriel Landeskog and Paul Stastny was explosive throughout the night, repeatedly pinning the Wild deep in their zone with power-play efficiency at even strength. The trio combined for a pair of pretty Landeskog goals in the second period, each set up by spot on behind-the-back passes, first by MacKinnon then by Stastny and Colorado led 3-1 after 40 minutes.

“Whether you score or not, you can still create momentum down in their zone and making sure we’re not in our end,” Landeskog said. “My line certainly made some nice plays tonight.”

“That line was on fire tonight, they played really well,” Colorado coach Patrick Roy said. “Landy (Landeskog), Pauly (Stastny) and Nate, they had an outstanding game.”

Wild starting goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, although helpless on both plays, was mercifully lifted by coach Mike Yeo after Landeskog’s second goal at 11:59 after allowing three goals on 14 shots. He was replaced by Darcy Keumper who stepped onto game ice for the first time since March 27 and stopped all 14 shots he faced the rest of the way.

But if his teammates can’t find a way to limit the MacKinnon line’s speed on the rush and take away its space, Kuemper could channel his inner Patrick Roy and even that couldn’t earn the Wild a return trip to Denver. The three head to Minnesota for Monday’s third game having compiled an astounding 17 points (6-10–17) in just two games.

Is that sustainable? So far, the Wild have yet to demonstrate it isn’t but they said the right things after the game.

“For me, I think you see, we’re backing up a little bit too much as far as I’m concerned right now,” Minnesota coach Mike Yeo said. “We’re allowing them to build speed, so we’ve got to do a better job.”

“We are going to have to be harder on them and be a little more physical on them, take away time and space and you know, we didn’t do as great a job as we wanted to tonight,” Wild defenseman Marco Scandella said. “I feel like they are getting a lot of speed in the neutral zone and we got to find a way to slow it down.”

Minnesota was the beneficiary of an early power play just 1:07 in when Colorado’s Cody McLeod took a run at Jonas Brodin long after the Wild defenseman released the puck. Despite buzzing the Avalanche net for nearly the full two minutes, the Wild came up empty on four shots and had at least that many blocked.

But just 1:11 after McLeod was released, Wild captain Mikko Koivu busted up the left wing boards and into the Colorado zone before feeding the puck to the crease where it deflected off the net-crashing Charlie Coyle behind Avalanche goaltender Semyon Varlamov for a 1-0 Minnesota lead. Varlamov finished with 30 saves on the night.

Coyle’s goal gave the Wild a 7-2 lead in shots on goal through just 4:18 of play but Minnesota’s grip on the game began to loosen shortly thereafter.

The Avs bounced pack two minutes later on an eye-opening goal by MacKinnon.  The 18-year-old Halifax, Nova Scotia native flew into Wild zone and took Minnesota defenseman Jared Spurgeon out of his skates with a nifty lateral fake and ripped a wrist shot past Bryzgalov’s blocker to knot the game at 1-1.

“I wanted to kind of shake to the middle and I kind of jumped to the outside,” MacKinnon said. “I didn’t know I’d have that much room. Obviously, I’m pretty fortunate that he bit on it I guess and I just fired it at the net and it went in.”

“I thought, after they scored their first goal, that certainly gave them momentum and I thought that we got on our heels a little bit from that time,” Yeo said.

Eleven seconds after Ryan Suter was assessed a cross checking penalty with 1:30 to play, Minnesota drew within one when Scandella jumped into the rush and rerouted a Koivu pass between Varmalov’s legs. The shorthanded goal is the sixth such tally in Wild history.

But Colorado sealed its win with 15 seconds on the clock and, fittingly, it was Stastny depositing the puck into an empty net after receiving it from MacKinnon who could have put the puck away himself just as easily as he appears to be putting away the Wild’s season.

The post Unstoppable? appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.