Best NHL goalie from each franchise: Minnesota Wild – Niklas Backstrom
Unfortunately for the Minnesota Wild, they are also in that group of NHL teams that have never won a Stanley Cup championship. For almost a decade, however, goalie Niklas Backstrom put the team on his back to at least turn some of that frustration into some fun moments in his tenure.
Backstrom immediately went to work the moment he landed on the Wild back in 2006 as he had a tall task of getting them back into the postseason spotlight. If one can sum up his career with the Wild is that as long as he was on the ice, they at least won many more games than expected.
Even though the Wild only made it to two playoff appearances in the time Backstrom was holding it down, he did do very well in other key areas of success. To this day, he owns both the franchise record for most regular-season wins at 196 and most shutouts in a season at 8.
Yeah, it’s not much when compared to the scale of other goalies mentioned here but at the end of the day, he’s the best the Wild has had in franchise history. Hopefully, in the future, they continue developing future goalies to one day be on par or even surpass everything Backstrom accomplished.