Wild carrying 3 goalies will be a fluid situation, but they're 'confident it'll work'

ST. PAUL, Minn. — The Minnesota Wild have plans and then they have contingency plans.

But truth be told, there’s no simple way to gameplan how exactly they’ll handle having three goaltenders on the roster this season. “I’m confident it’ll work,” said Wild president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin. “Sometimes there’ll be three.

Sometimes there’ll be two,” Advertisement Winning will be the priority, so if Filip Gustavsson looks like the Filip Gustavsson of two years ago, he’ll naturally get the bulk of the workload. The same goes for soon-to-be 40-year-old Marc-Andre Fleury in what he says will be his 21st and final NHL season. But the Wild also feel the necessity to make certain 2021 first-round pick Jesper Wallstedt gets significantly more than the three NHL games he got last season, an initial taste at the varsity level that concluded with a shutout in Chicago and a 27-save victory in San Jose.

“I think the most important thing is he gets some more NHL action but that he also plays an amount of games that he needs to play to keep developing,” Guerin said. In other words, it’s going to be fluid. “Maybe it’s a situation where all three look great, (but) we can’t carry all three for the time being, so maybe we carry two and send Wally down,” coach John Hynes said.

“He plays, plays, plays and bang, he gets called up.” A lot will depend on the salary cap. Wallstedt carries a $925,000 salary cap.

Assuming Marat Khusnut.