DENVER — The Wall of St. Paul is coming down. At least for now.
Wallstedt earned the starting job ahead of Gustavsson and played Minnesota’s first seven National Hockey League playoff games, but was torched for eight goals, seven of them at five-on-five, on 42 shots in the Avalanche’s 9-6 win in Game 1 on Sunday.
There could be a fourth goalie in the series tonight, as Colorado coach Jared Bednar did not name his starter. But he is expected to stick with Scott Wedgewood, whose six goals against on Sunday were one more than he allowed during the Avalanche’s entire four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Kings in the first round.
Hynes said “a lot of things” went into choosing Gustavsson over Wallstedt.
“Every time you make a decision, I think in a lineup decision, you take a lot of things into account,” Hynes said. “We’ve had two very good goalies all year long. Gus has played a lot of good hockey for us. Wally’s taken the brunt of the playoffs; he’s played seven straight games.
“We have confidence in both of our goalies. They’re both excellent. They both played really good hockey (during the regular season). We believe… either one of them can win us a game. And we think it’s a good opportunity to get Gus in the net. He’s hungry to get in. I think he dealt with not playing for a while. Obviously, Wally played very well, our team won and continued to go through. But we’ve got another excellent goalie that’s hungry to get back in the net.”
In his fourth season with the Wild, Gustavsson started 49 of 82 regular-season games but was outperformed by Wallstedt. The rookie posted a save rate of .916 compared to Gustavsson’s .904.
Typically, changing goalies in a playoff run, other than to rest a game, is a break-glass-in-an-emergency kind of a decision.
But it’s not that way for the Wild, nor the Avalanche.
Colorado backup Mackenzie Blackwood, who like Gustavsson was his team’s starter when the season began, played nearly as many games as Wedgewood. The starts were 43-36, although Wedgewood was noticeably better at 31-6-6 with a .924 save percentage. Blackwood’s numbers were 23-10-2 and .904.
It seems likely that we’ll see all four goalies before this Western Conference semifinal ends.
“It’s a situation for us that, you know, we knew that Gus was going to be the starter to come into the year with Wally being a rookie,” Hynes explained.
“But then, Wally came in and showed he was really prepared and ready to play. And basically, for the year, we rotated them. And I think it was very beneficial to our team. It was very beneficial to the goalies. They can play fresh. Lots of times when goalies have to play and play and play and play, sometimes their fatigue starts to set in, whether it’s mental or physical. But also, I think sometimes… you don’t have time to work on your game, the little details that make you a good goalie. And for us, that’s been our recipe all year long.”
Asked if his goalkeepers could share the series, Bednar said: “I can’t just go off conventional thinking of, like, it’s just one goalie. For me, it’s not the way our team operated all year, and we had a lot of success. So I feel comfortable going with either guy. I’ll have reasons why I go to one guy and why I would go to the next guy based on my conversations with them and how we’re playing and how they’re playing and when rest is needed. But I do feel comfortable that we could go to Blackwood at any point and he’d be good for us.”
Bednar declined to answer when asked if injured defenceman Josh Manson could draw back into the Colorado lineup for Game 2.
Hynes said there could be “a tweak or two” elsewhere in the Minnesota lineup but did not elaborate. He said those game-time decisions would be based on health.
The Wild are missing top centre Joel Eriksson Ek and shutdown defenceman Jonas Brodin.
Game 3 of the series is not until Saturday in St. Paul, Minn., so there is some rest and recovery time to come.