Filip Gustavsson deserves so much credit for Wild’s strong start

The Minnesota Wild have been off to an incredible start to the season. After missing the playoffs last year, they’ve come storming out of the gate with an 8-1-2 record, which is the third-best record in the league.

While Kirill Kaprizov has been getting a lot of the credit for the Wild’s start, Filip Gustavsson has also been having a great start to the year. With a .924% save percentage, he’s been doing a great job behind an excellent Minnesota defense, and has actually been getting a large bulk of the starts over Marc-Andre Fleury thus far.

Michael Russo joined Daily Faceoff Live to talk about Gustavsson and how much of an impact he’s had on the Wild so far this season.

Michael Russo: Sometimes the best trades you make are the ones that you don’t. Filip Gustavsson was on his way out this offseason, and there are probably a lot of GMs out there that are kicking themselves from not biting. And Bill Guerin is probably thankful that he didn’t make one move that was potentially on the table with the Columbus Blue Jackets, and here we are. He is leading the league in goals against average, third in save percentage, and he’s just been absolutely unbelievable.

Now, the Wild are defending really, really well, and if you look at the analytics, it looks like this is something that’s extremely sustainable. Jack Capuano’s come in and done some revamps to their defensive zone structure and so far, so good. It’s really putting Filip in a position where he’s just got to make the two or three big, big saves a night, and so far he’s doing a tremendous job.

So for him to look even better than he did two years ago when he had the second-best save percentage and second-best goals against average to Linus Ullmark the year that he won the Vezina, it’s a large credit going to him for how they’re playing.

You can watch the full episode here…