Wild’s Filip Gustavsson re-establishes himself as one of NHL’s best goalies

The first three minutes of intermission is when Wild goaltender Filip Gustavsson will rehash the game if he’s curious to know more about the action.

He’ll watch on a computer, study in slow-mo, and notice what he could have done differently.

Then Gustavsson will start talking about “random stuff,” like going through the alphabet and assigning an animal, car or country to each letter — a tally he, fellow goalie Marc-Andre Fleury and assistant equipment manager Matt Benz will keep all night.

“It’s more physically tiring to practice,” Gustavsson said, “but more mentally tiring to play games because you’re just focused from 7 o’clock until 9:30, and you just have those maybe 10 minutes in between periods you can think about something completely different.”

Gustavsson is scheduled to make a career-high sixth consecutive start Saturday afternoon when the Wild wrap up their season-long, seven-game homestand against Buffalo.

As technically sharp as Gustavsson has been lately — and he has been one of the best in the NHL since the calendar flipped to March — he has been just as dialed in between the ears, a taxing side of the job that Gustavsson balances in-game and between periods.

“His engagement in the game is good regardless of what’s going on,” Wild coach John Hynes said.

While the puck is in play, Gustavsson is keeping track of who’s on the ice for the opposition.

If there’s a faceoff in the Wild’s zone, he will anticipate what he thinks the other team will do. All the while, it feels like his eyes are constantly open.

“You obviously blink sometimes,” he said. “You have to.”

But because he’s blinking less and his eyes become dry, Gustavsson started using eyedrops at intermission.

He also glances away from the rink when there’s a stoppage.

“As soon as the whistle goes, I just try to not focus on anything,” added Gustavsson, who says he has a headache after games. “I look in the crowd, see if something funny is happening in the crowd, if someone has a funny jersey.

“And then the ref is about to drop the puck, just start staring again.”

This attentiveness is working.

After the Wild gave him an early three-goal cushion Wednesday vs. Seattle, Gustavsson never wavered and ended up being the busier netminder in the 4-0 victory by denying all 34 shots he faced for his fifth shutout. That’s tied for the second most in a single Wild season (Nicklas Backstrom holds the record with eight), and only Winnipeg’s Connor Hellebuyck has more (six) in the NHL this season.

During a 5-2-1 run in March, Gustavsson is tied for second in the league in wins. Among goalies who’ve appeared in at least five games, he ranks third in save percentage (.940) and fifth in goals-against average (1.73).

Overall, Gustavsson is tied for sixth in victories (27-15-4) and tied for fifth in save percentage (.917) while his 2.51 goals-against average is 13th, the 26-year-old rejoining the top of the NHL after a midseason dip.

He was statistically right behind Hellebuyck, the frontrunner for the Vezina Trophy as the league’s best goalie, through the first two months of the season. But as the Wild dealt with mounting injuries in January, Gustavsson lost four games in a row. He rebounded before the 4 Nations Face-Off, where he represented Sweden, and has been mostly steady ever since — especially during the offense’s recent dry spell.

Before their outburst vs. the Kraken, the Wild scored one or two goals in five of their previous six games. Gustavsson, meanwhile, allowed more than two goals only twice in that span. The 31 games in which he’s had better than a .900 save percentage trails only Hellebuyck (38), Tampa Bay’s Andrei Vasilevskiy (34) and the New York Islanders' Ilya Sorokin (32).

“We haven’t been the flashiest team throughout the whole year,” Gustavsson said. “We’ve had a lot of these tight games, and we just have to stick together and trust each other.”

The Wild are getting healthier.

Jonas Brodin is a “strong possibility,” Hynes said, to return Saturday after sitting out hurt the past nine games; the Wild returned their extra defenseman in David Jiricek to the minors. Marcus Johansson practiced Friday after missing the Seattle win because of illness. Marco Rossi left that game after getting hit with a Matt Boldy shot but was also on the ice for Friday’s session.

Marcus Foligno (upper-body injury) remains sidelined.

But even with all the lineup juggling, the Wild’s goaltending has been solid.

Their .906 save percentage is fourth in the league, and they are second at 5-on-5 (.927) behind only Hellebuyck’s Jets — a consistency Gustavsson is continuing with how locked-in he has been the past few weeks.

“Coming down the stretch, that’s what you need,” Hynes said. “It’s a grind of a schedule. For him to be I think just as focused as he was [Wednesday], it bleeds into the team.”