Marc-Andre Fleury rotating with Filip Gustavsson in the starter’s net really isn’t wild. Actually, it’s perfectly on brand with the Wild.
After sharing the net all season, it could be pretty sensible to give Fleury the nod after Gustavsson’s coming off of a 92-minute outing where he faced 84 unblocked attempts and turned aside 51 shots — if this were the regular season.
When a team has a rotation like the Wild did all year, rotations aren’t surprising even if it means changing goaltenders after a win. But this isn’t the regular season. It’s the playoffs. No matter if a team divides playing time through 82 games, it usually doesn’t matter once the playoffs roll around.
Advertisement
While there are still cases of true, bonafide starters who take on the majority of the workload — look at Juuse Saros in Nashville and Connor Hellebuyck in Winnipeg who tend to push the bounds with their usage, or Andrei Vasilevskiy and Igor Shesterkin who get just a drop more rest — many teams have shifted toward a more balanced approach.
There’s a handful of reasons why a team may split the workload more evenly. The “1A” goalie may not be at the caliber of an elite difference-maker who needs to be in net as much as possible. Other times, it’s to ease in a goalie to that expanded role (look at Saros’ workload progression over the years until he became the true No. 1, for example). Or, a team may just have that balanced a tandem that it makes all the sense in the world to rotate. Injuries can also force a situation.
Sometimes when the plan is to have a more even goalie situation, it’s a legitimate rotation with the team going back and forth almost every other game. In some situations, a team rolls with a hot hand and it’s a streakier balance. Or it’s a forced situation when there are injuries. It’s a case-by-case basis depending on who the goalies are and how the coach wants to deploy them.
Marc-Andre Fleury is a future Hall of Famer, a three-time Stanley Cup winner, and one of the greatest people in the sport. But he shouldn’t have started Game 2 for the Wild.@JoeSmithNHL on a stubborn commitment to a rotation that could prove costly:https://t.co/jvi4zAremF — The Athletic NHL (@TheAthleticNHL) April 20, 2023
Whatever the reason, the results tend to be the same in the playoffs. One goaltender emerges as the starter.
For the most part over the last five years, the teams who entered the playoffs with a shared crease (somewhere between a 60 to 40 percent split of games started in the regular season) leaned on just one netminder in the postseason.
There are, of course, exceptions.
Look to the 2016-17 Penguins, when Fleury was the starter because of Matt Murray’s injury status. Pavel Francouz became the starter in Colorado during the 2020 postseason because Philipp Grubauer got hurt, and then the Avalanche had to turn to their third-stringer Michael Hutchinson when Francouz was injured. The Bruins’ situation in the bubble back in 2020 made them split the crease when Tuukka Rask left. Jaroslav Halak then took over as starter.
Last year, Ville Husso earned the Blues’ starting net in the regular season over Jordan Binnington. But he struggled in his start to the postseason which brought Binnington — a goalie the Blues won the Stanley Cup with in 2019 — back as the No. 1. This was until Binnington was sidelined with injury and Husso was sent back in.
After Ilya Samsonov and Vitek Vanecek finished the regular season with even workloads, the Capitals assigned the starter’s net to Samsonov in the playoffs. But a poor performance brought Vanecek back into the fold (and he also faltered).
Poor performances were what forced the Panthers in 2021 and the Devils back in 2018 to switch goalies, as well.
Even with those outliers, the majority of the time there is one starter once the postseason starts regardless of how the team proceeded in the regular season. That was the case in the six years prior as well when there weren’t as many shared creases around the league.
What the Wild did between Game 1 and Game 2 brings in a new scenario, because they changed goalies after a very strong performance and a win.
It’s not the first time Minnesota shifted in the playoffs in recent years after having a more balanced approach in the regular season.
In the weeks ahead of the playoffs last year, head coach Dean Evason said the team didn’t have a plan on who would be the starter and that it would be approached on a game-by-game basis.
Fleury, the Wild’s deadline addition, started the playoffs over Cam Talbot. In Game 6 of the postseason, when facing elimination, they shifted netminders.
This time around, the Wild had Fleury and Gustavsson on the roster the entire season. The idea, it seemed, was for Gustavsson to play as the “1B” behind the veteran to keep him rested for playoff time. But he pushed for more playing time, and even owned the starter’s net for parts of February and March. In the end, he started about 45 percent of the Wild’s games, making Minnesota one of 10 teams entering the playoffs with a shared net.
That put Minnesota in a similar situation to last year with options in net, as Evason explained ahead of their Round 1 series against Dallas.
“Well, I said it was an easy decision last year because we thought both goaltenders can play. It’s the same situation. Both goaltenders have been absolutely fantastic for us. Just fantastic. So the decision that we’re going to make it’s a difficult decision but it’s an easy decision because they’re both extremely great goaltenders that the team has tremendous confidence in both of them,” Evason said. “We’ve used both of them all season, there’s no reason why we won’t continue to do that. We’ll monitor game by game as we always have, but the decision that we make tomorrow, again same as our lineup, hopefully is the right one.”
Advertisement
The Wild stayed true to their word, continuing to balance the net to start the playoffs. Gustavsson started Game 1 and was fantastic. It was an extension of his regular season, where he finished seventh among all goalies with 24.5 goals saved above expected. That was particularly impressive considering the fact that he played only 39 games, while others took closer to 50-plus to reach those heights. Against Dallas, he faced 84 unblocked shots, turned aside 51 of 53 that went on goal, and saved 2.14 goals above expected. It was both a quality start and stolen win for the goalie in his NHL playoff debut.
But he wasn’t in goal to start Game 2 despite earning it. Fleury was. Whether it was because the coaches felt Gustavsson needed a break after playing over 92 minutes in his NHL playoff debut, that it was worth rotating to keep both goalies fresh, or that Fleury truly deserved to start, the risky decision clearly didn’t work out. The loss wasn’t all on goaltending, but the starter didn’t respond well to his workload either, allowing 3.41 goals above expected through 60 minutes of play.
Goaltending is a volatile position, which is why some teams stick to what they know works. Usually, that’s having one bonafide starter in the playoffs regardless of how the workload is split in the regular season. The Wild’s decision to give Fleury the start in Game 1 after Gustavsson opened the series was a departure from usual conventions, and it burned them.
The question now is what comes from it. Does this mean the net belongs to Gustavsson, and teams are going to be less willing to try and rotate in the playoffs? Or is there a chance that a new trend emerges, if coaches are willing to take the risk and try something different?
That’s what the rest of Minnesota’s playoffs might decide. Elsewhere, even where there’s a shared net, it doesn’t appear that there will be any changes barring injury or performances calling for a shake-up in net.
Data via NaturalStatTrick, Evolving-Hockey, and HockeyViz.
(Photo: Jerome Miron / USA Today)