Anaheim Ducks 2021 Draft Profile: Jesper Wallstedt

There has been some hesitation to drafting goalies in the first round, at least early in the first round, over the past decade. Before the last two entry drafts (Yaroslav Askarov 11th in 2020 and Spencer Knight 13th in 2019), Andrei Vasilevskiy, taken at 19th, was the earliest drafted netminder and one of only four, to be selected in the first round dating back to 2011.

In many ways, this has a lot to do with the uncertain development pathways that netminders seem to take. Even the very best of them seemingly have wild variations in their performances season to season. Consider that since the 2007-2008 seasons, when goalie stats were tracked a little more regularly, only eight goalies have turned in five or more seasons above league average.

For those wondering, John Gibson is not among those eight. Given that track record, why then would the Anaheim Ducks, or any team, deem it worthwhile to draft a netminder so highly?

Jesper Wallstedt may have one of the more sparkling resumes of any player in this coming draft. When he turned 13-years-old, he joined the Swedish U-18 league. Within a year he was one of the best netminders in the league. So much so that he was elevated to the U-20’s league at 15-years-old. A season later, he was, once again, one of their best.

Now, at 18-years-old, Wallstedt has a season of SHL hockey under his belt and has displaced the designated starter, David Rautio, early in the season. Given how he tracks, is anyone betting that he can’t continue his meteoric rise?

Jesper Wallstedt Profile

"Born: November 14, 2002 (18 yo) Västerås, SWENation: SwedenDraft Year Team: Lulea HF (SHL)Position: GCatches: LHeight: 6’3/191 cmWeight: 214 lbs/97 kg"

The Anaheim Ducks Case For Drafting A Goalie

Concerning the Anaheim Ducks’ current netminding situation, John Gibson is settled into the starting role and with a $6.4 million dollar deal reaching out towards the 2024-2025 season. It’s hard to imagine him being displaced.

Within the development system, the 20-year-old Lukas Dostal has gone from strength to strength. He started dominating in the Finnish Liiga, before crossing over to the AHL this season and putting up a .918 SV% at the time of writing. Thus, the future in the Ducks net appears to be bright.

However, when considering the draft, it’s also worth considering the timeline that a netminder may take to develop. Dostal, for instance, was drafted in 2018, played two further seasons in Europe, then arrived in North America. With Gibson manning the starters role, and Anthony Stolarz taking the backup position, it would appear that Dostal is set once again for the AHL.

Should the Anaheim Ducks consider drafting Wallstedt, in four years’ time, when he may be considered ready for NHL duties (a similar timeline to Dostal), Gibson will have finished up his current contract. At 31-years-old it will be a risky proposition for another long term deal given the way that may netminders fall away after turning 30.

It’s also worth noting that, much like the Ducks overall, Gibson has trended downwards in both goals-allowed and save-percentage over the past four seasons. There’s no guarantee that he’ll consistently return to the all-world form that he has flashed over the past seasons, nor that he’ll remain injury-free, given his previous history of soft tissue injuries.

Another factor that may weigh into the Anaheim Ducks decision is the somewhat variant nature of the year’s draft. It was just a season ago that Aatu Raty was considered a #1 option. However, after two consecutive seasons of his play falling away, he now sits on the bubble of the top 10, depending on which mock draft you see. His upside is considered to be a middle-6 pivot.

Owen Powers is possibly the highest rated of the blueliners in the draft, yet very few would consider him a certain #1 option. For the forwards, there is a fair bit of debate about who may be the best of them, yet potential #1 selection, Matthew Beniers, will likely never be considered to be in the same light as recent top picks despite his strengths. He may develop into a first-line centreman, but is unlikely to be the franchise player that many team covert.

Jesper Wallstedt, however, appears very much on track to be considered one of the best netminders in the world, and a franchise player that teams could build around. As mentioned above, the topsy-turvy nature of elite netminders may mean that he’s only amongst the best in half of his years played. However, the company he keeps would all be considered household names, with a number of Vezina and Stanley Cup winners amongst them.

It’s not an easy call, but if any team is uncertain of what they might find with the skaters in the top end of the draft, securing a potential franchise netminder could certainly be considered a smart choice by any metric. Rest assured, should the Anaheim Ducks, or any team, consider taking the best player available regardless of position, then Jesper Wallstedt will be in the conversation.

Strengths

Awareness, Positioning, and Technical Skill

Standing at 6’3”, Wallstedt won’t be confused with some of the giants (e.g. Ben Bishop, Vasilevskiy) who play in net across the NHL, nor his draft rival Sebastian Cossa. However, he is a good size and does have a little more size on him than the Ducks Lukas Dostal, as a comparison.  Nonetheless, with sound posture, he uses every bit of his frame and manages to fill the net, appearing to be larger than he is.

When faced straight on by the shooter, Wallstedt tends to drop slightly lower than it may appear at first glance. This slightly lower posture gives the appearance that there is less space between the legs and more on the glove and blocker side.

This presumably has two effects. First, it gives the shooter a visual that there is more space on the glove and blocker sides (as opposed to five-hole), which is where Wallstedt is the strongest.

Second, it appears to have solved an issue he has had in the past with letting in low goals. It’s hard to determine whether this is truly solved in terms of his technique or if the illusion of space up high has merely tricked shooters into aiming high. The proof will become apparent in time as Wallstedt moves into the NHL with the elite shooters there.

Nonetheless, Wallstedt is a positional netminder who is able to see the play and move into position to make the stop. He moves well laterally, allowing him to get set and square to the play ahead of him. With his perception of the upcoming plays, this means he’s able to make stops from all angles with the same relative ease. In many ways, it contributes to what would normally be considered a spectacular stop, appearing simple and easy.

Additionally, his sound positioning allows him to deal with rebounds and secondary shots with the same ease as he does the initial shot. Though in fairness, of the draft-eligible netminders this season, Wallstedt gives up fewer dangerous rebounds than nearly all of his peers according to Smaht Scouting’s Josh Tessler. The rebounds he does give up tend to be angled away safely into the corners.

Like most modern-day goalies, Wallstedt uses the RVH (reverse vertical-horizontal) as his base when players get in close. In many cases, the style is often used with over prevalence and the #RVHFail hashtag tends to do the rounds on social media every time a highlight-reel goal is shown of some 6’6 giant getting beaten over the shoulder as they were leaning on the post in RVH.

Yet, Wallstedt performs it with soundness that even NHL veterans would blush at, and perhaps most notably, the netminder refrains from falling into RVH at times that many of his peers would opt to. For instance, there are some who would drop into RVH as a default position when the puck is in quiet areas or up along the half-wall, thus wasting energy and providing no noticeable gain.

Conversely, Wallstedt rarely finds the need to overuse any particular technique, switching between RVH and VH with relative ease, as his vision and anticipation of the game nearly always has him where he needs to be to make positional stops. As such, and combined with his large frame, he only really appears to expose the top corner on the most accurate of shots.

Taken together, it can be said that he does no more than he has to do at any particular time. It’s a particularly calm and soothing style of play to watch, and I can only imagine what it would be like to play in front of a player who feels like the swiss watch of netminders.

Puck Handling

It certainly wouldn’t be the first thing that many people consider when evaluating young netminders. However, Wallstedt is strong enough in this area of the game that it warrants mentioning. Typically speaking, the puck handling aspect of play is an area that is underdeveloped and takes a significant timeline for many players to truly get a handle on.

After all, if the goalie is training, it’s typically training to stop pucks. Wallstedt is a bit of an anomaly in that he grew up playing both as a skater and as a goalie before sticking with the mask. It appears that the stickhandling aspect of his skater youth has stuck with him.

Freely able to pass either forehand or backhand, Wallstedt is able to initiate the breakout from behind the net and is aggressive enough to leave his net claim loose pucks. On the smaller NHL ice, with quicker forecheckers, this may expose him in the early parts of his career. Yet, being able to act as a “third defenceman” of sorts, is a skill set that most netminders do not have in their arsenal. If nothing else, his aggressive play on the puck alludes to his confidence, which is in itself a positive trait for a young NHL prospect.

Given the Anaheim Ducks have drafted numerous skaters who excel at the defensive zone breakout, it would stand to reason that they would at least consider a netminder who is a strong enough puck handler to make the long pass and take advantage of teams making changes. It was but a few seasons ago that the Anaheim Ducks GM Bob Murray advocated for a long passing game to present the illusion of team speed, but moving the puck north to south quicker.

Wallstedt has on occasion created odd-man rushes with his long passing attempts, which would somewhat appeal to an Anaheim Ducks team who seemingly like to involve their defensive unit more than most, despite being the team with the least scoring from its defensive group.

Areas To Develop

Athleticism

Possibly the most glaring weakness that has been highlighted in Wallstedt’s game is that he doesn’t appear to be as athletic as some of his peers. Compared to Spencer Knight or Yaroslav Askarov, he almost appears sluggish. This has called into question his ability to recover.

However, Wallstedt somewhat makes up for his lack of athleticism with his lower body power. Thus far, his lack of perceived athletic ability hasn’t inhibited his ability to stop pucks at the SHL level. Perhaps more pertinent to the conversation is that when manually tracked and in comparison to his peers, Wallstedt’s ability to move laterally, or from one side of the net to the other, when facing a shot (0.539 s) was quicker than his peers.

Quicker than Knight (0.565 s) or Askarov (0.65 s). Similarly, the time it took him to go from standing to down on the ice (0.15 s) was also quicker than many of his peers, and once again quicker than Knight (0.196 s) and Askarov (0.166 s).

While this doesn’t necessarily present data that would alleviate concerns about his ability to recover from making a big save and get into position for another, it does highlight that Wallstedt can move into position if on the off chance he gets caught out or if the opposition makes a neat passing play across the ice. It certainly presents a clear picture that perception may not necessarily be the reality when making assessments with the eye test alone, though there is certainly a small sample size issue with the data sets in question.

Challenging The Shooter

One consideration that Kyle Pereira (Last Word On Sport) has brought to the table, is that Wallstedt may appear to stay too deep in his net on occasion, instead of coming out to challenge the shooter. While he does manage to fill the net and take away the angles, giving the top shooters in the NHL any time and space is asking to be exposed. This may be particularly true of players such as Alexander Ovechkin, who can simply overpower the netminder with their heavy, and accurate shooting.

It’s certainly a long-term concern and something that Wallstedt can work on over the years. As a comparison, it’s worth noting that the Anaheim Ducks’ own John Gibson has seemingly made a point of becoming more aggressive in this manner over the past two seasons. Given that a league elite and veteran, netminder of Gibsons standing is only really looking to improve this facet of his game on a noticeable level now, Wallstedt still has time to work on it as well should this truly be a wrinkle to his game.

Playing On A Good Team

This isn’t so much a critique of Wallstedt himself, but more an observation that he’s traditionally played on strong teams, and Lulea was a top 5 team again this season. That is to say that many of Wallstedt’s shots faced have been of relatively low danger and that he has typically had solid defensive support.

While there is something to be said for beating the teams in front of you, it should at least be considered that the teams in line to draft in the early part of the draft are not strong defensively. Thus, Wallstedt will not have the defensive support he may be used to.

More from Draft

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• Anaheim Ducks Draft Board Target: Brad Lambert
• Anaheim Ducks: Reaching for Mason MacTavish is a Good Thing
• Anaheim Ducks 2021 NHL Entry Draft Round One Primer

It may be proven to be a negligible concern moving forward, however, traditionalists who would choose not to draft a netminder early, could easily latch onto this and make a sound argument not to take him in the top-5.

Conclusion

Jakub Hromada of recruit scouting has suggested that Wallstedt is the safest goalie pick since Carey Price, which is heady praise for the young man. Further, some at Dobber Prospects similarly consider him in play for the first overall selection. The Puck Authority has him tabbed as a potential Vezina winner down the track.

"“Jesper Wallstedt has the potential to be one of the best goaltenders in the world.” – Danny Tiffany, Dobber Prospects."

With that kind of support behind, in what may be a somewhat weaker than typical draft for skaters, it wouldn’t be a surprise to see Wallstedt drafted early. Whether or not the Ducks are the team that pick him is certainly debatable at this stage, and I can’t personally see them going in that direction while Dostal is still trending towards excellence. Yet, I will say that whoever selects him looks like they’ll have their starter for the next decade locked into place.

Jesper Wallstedt could easily be the player that everyone looks back on in 10-years time and asks “why didn’t my team draft him?” In my humble opinion, Anaheim Ducks fans should not be part of that “everyone.” If Wallstedt is available when the Anaheim Ducks walk to the podium, be it the #1 selection or later, Bob Murray and Martin Madden should probably consider calling his name.

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