The perfectly aimed goalkeeper goal from Filip Gustavsson from Contained in the Wild

Posted by enzo2go October 17, 2024

ST. LOUIS – Wearing his black Wild baseball cap backwards, Marc-Andre Fleury had a front row seat to history Tuesday night, but he was the one who planted the seed in Filip Gustavsson's head in the primary place.

Then, as if Fleury had planned the play himself for his goaltending partner, Pavel Buchnevich of the St. Louis Blues cooperated with a superbly placed 79-foot shot directly on the Wild logo in the middle of Gustavsson's chest.

Gustavsson caught the puck along with his trapper in his twenty seventh save, dropped it in his blue crease, took aim and sailed a beauty the length of the ice into the bullseye – the ultimate goal in a 4-1 Wild win.

It was the primary goalie goal in team history and Gustavsson is the fifteenth goaltender in NHL regular season history to attain a goalie goal.

“That was unexpected,” said goalkeeping coach Freddy Chabot within the press elevator after the sport.

“That was great,” said general manager Bill Guerin. “It’s not every day you see a goalkeeper’s goal.”

“A power play goal,” emphasized assistant GM Michael Murray.

With 34 seconds left within the Blues' home opener and St. Louis attempting to kill a double minor, coach Drew Bannister called a timeout and hoped for a miracle along with his team trailing by two.

Fleury had other plans.

“I called a quick goalie meeting,” Fleury said with fun.

Gustavsson ran to the bench and got some advice from the clever future Hall of Famer.

“Flower looked at the board and said, 'We're two goals ahead.' You should probably try it if you get the chance. You shoot, right?'” Gustavsson recalled. “I believed, 'Yeah, perhaps I should try this.'”

Gustavsson had never scored a goal at any level of hockey. With a one-goal lead he would never consider it because if he missed it might be icing on the cake and an offensive zone faceoff for the Blues.

“With 2-nothing, I believed, 'Yeah, if I get the possibility, I'll try,'” Gustavsson said.

And then he got his chance.

Gustavsson figures Buchnevich shot the puck right at him so he caught it, froze it and gave the Blues a late faceoff. But instead, Buchnevich “just stuck right in the glove and I tried to put it away as quickly as possible,” Gustavsson said. “It was just perfect on the ice and I just try to shoot it as hard as I can.”

As Fleury said, “Textbook.”

Chabot, the Wild's goaltending coach for five seasons, likes to do funny things along with his goalies during practice.

One of the good sights is when he has one goalie stand right in front of the opposite to create an enormous screen. Chabot then pipes absolutely precise shots left, then right, then back left… time and again to either side of the shielding goalie, leaving whoever within the crease struggling to seek out the puck.

What he enjoys most, nonetheless, is the goalkeeper goal drill.

Former Wild goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen was a goaltending machine in his native Finland. Current Wild prospect Jesper Wallstedt, a fellow Swede like Gustavsson, has also scored goals, including with Iowa within the AHL.

“That’s what I expected from Wally,” Chabot said. “Not Gus.”

What shocked Chabot probably the most was that he had never seen Gustavsson shoot the puck as high as he did at one in all their practices.

“I usually complain that my turn isn’t at the right angle to get that high,” Gustavsson said. “But I don't know, extra powers or something.”

What's coolest, in response to ESPN, is that this was the third power play goal by a goalie in NHL history (Evgeni Nabokov in 2002 and Martin Brodeur in 2013). According to NHL Stats, he’s the second Swede to ever rating a goalie goal (Linus Ullmark in 2023).

Funnily enough, Guerin went into the dressing room to congratulate Gustavsson after which asked Fleury if he had ever scored a goal. Fleury knew full well that his former Penguins teammate knew he hadn't done it, then he went crazy and threw a towel on the Wild boss.

After he scored, Gustavsson was mobbed on the ice by his teammates – Brock Faber, Jonas Brodin, Marcus Foligno, Yakov Trenin and Marat Khusnutdinov.

Jakub Lauko, who scored the game-winning shorthanded goal for his first goal for the Wild within the second half, wanted to hitch the team from the bench. There were only nine seconds left in the sport, but he decided it was against the foundations and decided to persist with it.

Luckily for him, Gustavsson ran to the bench and did a fist-bump fly past along with his blocker. The first person he greeted was a smiling, proud Fleury.

“Props to him,” Lauko said. “It’s pretty impressive and he deserves it. It would have been nicer at home with a full barn, but you know it's an incredible moment. I’m just happy for him.”

Gustavsson's goal was the Wild's fourth power play goal of the season. He joked that he desired to help increase the ability play to over 20 percent, but he actually increased it to 30.8 percent.

“Should probably be in the power play meetings now,” Gustavsson said.

Wild coach John Hynes has seen a goalie goal before. While coaching Nashville, Pekka Rinne scored in Chicago.

“It was one of my first few games in Nashville,” he recalled. “But it was almost very similar to Gus. It was kind of a six-on-five situation where you kind of got on the goalie and he had the time to make it and you could tell both guys were…trying. Nice to see.”

Because the Wild played with seven defensemen and didn't return to motion until Saturday in Columbus, Kirill Kaprizov logged 27:59 of ice time – the second most in his NHL profession. According to ESPN, it was the sixth-most goals scored by a forward who had not taken a shot in a game since 2000-01.

But Kaprizov was great and had two beautiful assists from Ryan Hartman and Marco Rossi. He leads 2-0-2 against Minnesota, which has not trailed in a game, by six points.

Kaprizov has a goal, nonetheless, and stated that he’s tied with the Wild's No. 1 goaltender in goals: “Same (number of) goals as a lot of others.”

“It probably won’t be long,” Gustavsson said.

The irony of Tuesday is that before the season began, the Wild had scheduled the Blues game for Wallstedt's season debut. But the Wild are saddled with injuries to Joel Eriksson Ek, Jared Spurgeon and Marcus Johansson, forcing Wallstedt to be sent to Iowa to make room for draftee Daemon Hunt. Plus, Gustavsson is playing so well that they need Wallstedt to get some practice and game motion in somewhere, and without delay it may well't be Minnesota.

The Wild want to provide Wallstedt more games within the NHL this season than last 12 months, but the secret is winning, and if Gustavsson continues to rack up wins, he should get the majority of the playing time.

If the Wild need to return to the playoffs this season, they need the “Gus Bus” who looks and plays just like the goalie from two years ago who finished with the second-best save percentage and second-best goals-against average within the NHL, not the one who fell to a save percentage below .900 last season.

So far in three starts, he has a 2-0-1 record with a 1.66 goals-against average and a .948 save percentage. He worked hard this offseason, returned to Minnesota in great shape and improved his training habits.

“I don’t think I’m doing anything special out there,” he said. “(I’m not) flashy. Of course I make some bigger saves, but that usually happens when you're not in the right position. I just try to be in the right position most of the time and make boring saves. And I think that has worked very well so far.”

Well, like within the second half after Lauko's shorthanded goal, wherein he preserved the 2-0 lead by stretching across his goal area to rob Jordan Kyrou.

“Of course we all know that (Gustavsson) was not happy at the end of last year and no one was happy with what had happened,” Hynes said. “He worked hard this summer and I think he came back with the right attitude and learned his lessons from last year. Now he’s arrived and is playing really solidly, and that’s what you need.”

“At the beginning of the year it's sometimes hard to win if you don't have strong goaltenders because the games are a bit scattered because everyone is trying to get used to the NHL pace. That's how it has to be because if you get good goaltending early on “You have the best chance of winning.”

Goalkeeper goals also help.



image credit : www.nytimes.com

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