Jesper Wallstedt stopped 23 shots on Tuesday, including a wave of them during a third period in which the Flyers outshot the Wild 11-4 and threw a 6-on-5 at him with the goalie pulled. Danila Yurov scored an empty-net goal with the building already empty of a goaltender to stop it. If you watched both of those things happen and walked away thinking Yurov was the story, you watched the wrong team.
This isn't close. Wallstedt held a one-goal lead against a Philadelphia team that had every reason to keep pushing, down 4-8-4 entering the night and desperate for anything. Denver Barkey's power-play goal cut it to one, and from there it was all Wallstedt. He described it himself afterward: Minnesota was in control early, Philadelphia started finding looks as the game went on, and "they came out flying in the third." That's a goaltender admitting, in real time, that his team needed saving. He provided it.
Yurov's goal came with Philadelphia's net empty. It was his second straight game with a goal, a good sign for a guy who'd been stuck in a slump for weeks, and Kirill Kaprizov set it up instead of scoring it himself, which says more about Kaprizov's week than it does about Yurov's. An empty-netter during the team's six-game point streak is a cherry on top of a win the man in the crease already decided.
RatingThe people arguing the performance wasn't clean have a point. Minnesota built a cushion with two goals 31 seconds apart early, then spent the final twenty minutes getting outshot nearly three to one. That's a team that built a lead and then needed its goaltender to protect it. Fine. Say that. But the conclusion that follows from "this wasn't clean" is that Wallstedt mattered more, not less. A sloppy third period with a goaltender who doesn't blink is exactly the scenario goaltenders exist for.
While Wild fans argue about who deserves the credit, the front office has reportedly been dangling Yurov in trade packages built around landing Dylan Larkin, with multiple first-round picks attached. Minnesota's front office is treating the player some fans want to build around as the price for landing someone else. You can't insist he's too good to trade and spend your energy crediting him for a mop-up goal in a game his goaltender actually won.
Give Wallstedt the win. He earned it with 23 saves and a performance that held up under real pressure. Yurov had a nice moment in a game that was never really his to save. If the Wild ship him out for Larkin, nobody's going to remember the empty-netter in Philadelphia. They're going to remember that their goaltender was the one thing in this organization they never had reason to doubt.
