Wedgewood vs. Wallstedt goalie matchup in Western Conference Second Round

Goaltending is an integral part of the Stanley Cup Playoffs. To better understand the strengths and weaknesses of each goaltender, NHL.com charted 100 goals against each goaltender late in the regular season and through the first round of the postseason to see the patterns that emerge. Here is the comparison between Scott Wedgewood of the Colorado Avalanche and Jesper Wallstedt of the Minnesota Wild, who meet in the Western Conference Second Round.

The Western Conference Second Round between the Colorado Avalanche and Minnesota Wild features two first-time playoff starters with very different paths to the job.

Scott Wedgewood, 33, played for five NHL teams over eight seasons, including two stints with two teams, before earning his first playoff start for the Avalanche ahead of Mackenzie Blackwood, the presumed No.1 going into the season, and looked every bit the part during a four-game sweep of the Los Angeles Kings in the first round.

Jesper Wallstedt is 10 years younger and in his first full NHL season with the Wild but earned the Game 1 start by outplaying Filip Gustavsson down the stretch, and showed no signs of relinquishing the job during a six-game victory over the Dallas Stars.

Scott Wedgewood

Colorado Avalanche

Wedgewood is coming off an incredible season that included leading all NHL goalies (minimum of 25 games with a .921 save percentage and finished with an 11-2-1 record and remarkable .945 save percentage after the Olympics. He somehow improved on those numbers with a .950 save percentage while eliminating the Kings in four games. He only gave up 86 goals all season splitting time with Blackwood, and with just five in the first round against Los Angeles, there is still a relatively small sample size to break down, and with how well he's played all season, not many negative trends to pick apart.

Avoid the glove: Using a neutral "handshake" glove position with a slight "fingers up" twist as he settles into his save stance, Wedgewood has exceptional results both under and over the glove. Even though charted goal results don't represent a save percentage, they are both below the averages on the glove side. Wedgewood also didn't give up a clean look goal over the glove, and the only partial breakaway goal over the glove came after a cross-crease deke off the wing and elevated backhand in tight. There wasn't a single clean look goal low on the glove side, and none off breakaways of any type either, and those trends all continued against the Kings, who failed to covert on 18 mid- and high-glove shots, with the lone goal under the glove-side arm coming on a screen that caught him moving. 

Target positional aggression: Wedgewood is an exceptional skater, whether retreating on his edges, gliding into angle or powering across his crease in a butterfly slide, and he uses it to play a more aggressive positional game, often starting above the edge of his crease or wide of his posts even on in-zone plays. It's not surprising then to see more goals than most scored along the ice outside either skate, which often indicates a backdoor tap in, with the 30 total (34.8 percent) well above the 24.3 percent tracked average. It's also not surprising that Wedgewood's 22 goals (25.6 percent) off lateral plays and passes across the middle of the ice are one of the few categories that are also above the 22.1 percent average during a great regular season. That trend continued in the first round, with three of the five goals scored on passes across the middle of the ice, but even then, it took two great passes and a bounce off Trevor Moore going to the net after he originally intercepted the cross-ice pass attempt with a push back out towards the top of his crease. That aggressive path makes it important to try and make passes wide on Wedgewood, including the backdoor power-play tap in by Adrian Kempe, otherwise there's a chance he will intercept it. But if you get it past those pads, there should be room since he doesn't always default back to his posts.

Pop passes: This wasn't a regular season trend and it's a tiny sample in the playoffs so far, but with two of five goals originating from low-high passes from below the goal line, trying to generate more offense down low might be worth a try. Watch how often Wedgewood looks away from the puck carrier to scan the zone, off-puck awareness that fuels his great play-reading. That's a lot harder for goalies to do when the play is behind the net, and being forced into his post-play techniques can delay the ability to get back to his preferred positioning close to the top of the crease and catch him moving with quick shots. Like the lateral plays, one-timers are important to finishing these chances before he gets set.

Breakaway dekes: The more prevalent trend among the 14 1-in-1 goals, which at 16.3 percent is above the 10.2 average, in the regular season was the success of dekes rather than shots. While two were off in-tight plays, the remaining 12 included three blocker-side shot goals, while the other nine goals were scored on dekes, taking advantage of an early low, wide and glide retreat by stretching him out in either direction, and twice slipping it back against the grain between the five-hole as he opened up in tight while making his push. The Kings only got three such chances in the first round, with Wedgewood stopping one deke to the five-hole in Game 3, and a low shot in Game 4, but getting beat wide by Quinton Byfield on a penalty shot in Game 2 only to recover with a reach-back glove save.

Traffic and chaos: Wedgewood had exceptional traffic results in the regular season but two of the five goals allowed in the playoffs involved a screen, with a tendency to prioritize middle-lane sight lines instead of defaulting to the short side, something screening forwards need to be mindful of. While he battles as hard as any goalie in the League on second chances and scrambles, broken plays did account for 18 goals (20.9 percent) in the regular season, well above the 14 percent tracked average.

Jesper Wallstedt

Minnesota Wild

The decision to start Wallstedt should not have been a total shock given he was second in the NHL (among goalies with at least 25 starts) with a .916 save percentage. After a sizzling 8-0-2 start, including a .944 save percentage, his play dipped a little mid-season, but after representing (but not playing for) Sweden at the 2026 Winter Olympics, the confident rookie closed the regular season with a .919 save percentage in 12 games before putting up a .924 save percentage in his six games against the Stars.

Make him work off his posts: Like most of today's Swedish goalies, Wallstedt's post play is exemplary, so this isn't a critique of any technical element or tactical application, but 19 goals (21.8 percent) in the regular season came off plays that forced him to move into -- and then come off -- his posts, above the 17.1 percent average for the over 10,000 goals tracked for this project since 2017. That number was much higher in the first round, with half of the 14 goals involving those types of play, worth noting even if two of those were from bounces off the end boards behind him. Most came from a Dallas power play that seemed eager to work down low, and like the regular season totals featured a mixture of sharp-angle attacks, pop passes from below the goal line, and plays across the middle of the ice from below the bottom of the face-off circles. One-touch passes near the goal line can catch Wallstedt dropping into his post as the puck is being moved again, and one-timers on the other end of those passes can prevent him from gaining ice back up towards the top of his crease, catch him moving, and limit his coverage on the far side of the net.

Low glove? There aren't many numbers that jumped out from Wallstedt's goal location or attribute charting in the regular season, which isn't surprising given the controlled nature of his style and effective way he uses his body that often looks bigger than 6-foot-3. Six low-glove goals in the first round do stand out, even if that doesn't represent a save percentage, but it would be dangerous to read too much into that given a variety of factors that led to them, with only one coming on a clean-look shot by Jason Robertson holding onto the puck and shooting on a 2-on-1. The reality is Wallstedt, who uses a neutral "handshake" glove position, typically does well with low shots to the glove side. The highest goal total in the regular season was over his glove (19.5 percent) but that's still under the 21.1 percent average, and several of those went in off the cross bar or post. Wallstedt isn't passive and regularly gets out to the edge of his crease, but rarely chases past that point, holding his edges patiently and forcing shooters to beat him with good shots just inside the bars.

5- and 7-holes: Sixteen regular season goals (18.3 percent) through the five-hole was well above the 10.5 percent average, as were the five goals under the blocker side arm. The five-hole goals mostly came off a variety of chance types, including two screens, two rebounds and a couple bounces off teammates, but five came on low lateral plays across the middle of the ice, suggesting low shots back into his coverage can take advantage of a hole that is inevitably bigger when bigger goalies back to move side-to-side and a tendency to reach with the lead pad rather before shifting his weight onto that knee can delay that seal on bang-bang plays in tight. That includes the one five-hole goal in the first round, scored by Matt Duchene with a quick shot back into him after a pass off the right wing into the middle of the ice. As good as his numbers are high and low blocker, shots off his right hip may not be a bad idea, with four goals off clean looks, including two in 1-on-1 situations.

Bodies to the net: Wallstedt showed in Game 1 against Dallas how effectively he manages traffic, whether it's using his size to look over a screen when the puck is higher in the zone, or picking the right lane to look around bodies when a shooting threat gets closer. He only gave up 13 regular-season screen goals too, just under the tracked average, and two in the first round, making it important for forwards move around and force him to work harder for those sightlines. Of course, traffic can also create more rebounds and scrambles off bounces, which led to 23 combined goals in the regular season and four against the Stars.

Against the grain: Shots and passes back against the direction of play were a contributing factor on 23 goals (26.4 percent), above the 18.4 percent average, in the regular season and four of 14 in the first round. They included a tendency to shade to the short side both off rushes down the wing and on lateral carries higher in the zone.