Article: The Wild May Have Built Their Roster On A Flawed Premise

[Tom Schreier]

View full article

[Up North Guy]

Damn i hate this article.......because I think it is true. I don't know where BG goes from here but he absolutely has to learn from this year's decisions. He has saddled himself with good not great players that are aging faster than the cheddar in my refrigerator. Hope he finds the right hat to pull the rabbit out of. I don't see any team in the league throwing him a lifeline.

[TheGoosesAreLooses]

The NHL has changed too since Billy was a player. More and more teams play an up tempo game that stresses skill and speed over grit. They will still have a Reaves on the team but they produce through skill lines not hard nosed hockey. 

We've seen more and more evidence that Billy and also Deano, who played a similar style, don't know what to do with prospects that do not play in their image. 

With respect to Rossi, the kid did the work this offseason and it shows. There was clearly things he needed to improve to be effective and the coaching and conditioning staff helped him make some great advances to get where he is. Guerin was right in this regard and the "F U" we have started to see in his game has been an improvement. 

However, are we maximizing his potential is a whole other question. Would we maybe see him break out his shell more offensively with some better line mates? Maybe. Would it be nice to see Dean shuffle the deck a little with how anemic our first line has been defensively? Yes, absolutely. Maybe bumping someone a little more responsible in that center spot would even out our two way play by that line.  

Dean likes to stick to his guns, but maybe a continued losing streak is what we need to put some pressure on him to adapt. 

[Greenbean]

That division championship banner is just as good to Leopold and Guerin as a Stanley cup championship is apparently. 

Edited October 23, 2023 by Greenbean
Forgot a word

[Lovehockey]

All of what said is true. The only question is why everyone seems somewhat surprised. BG came with this attitude, and none of his moves indicated that he is trying to build young exciting team. And Evason with his “playing wild way” and “grit thing” sounds so outdated and boring. And look what we have in Iowa. We need to bring forward now and there is no one who can provide anything meaningful. I guess all of our “best prospects “ in the league playing somewhere else

[MNCountryLife]

The IA Wild are 1-4.  There is no magic bean coming from IA that is going to substantially improve the MN Wild.  We have lost some fantastic players because of the dead cap and it hurts.  Fiala and Dumba the most notable and easily the most impactful.  Put those 2 back on our Roster and the Wild are notably better.  

This Wild team is not going to get better by looking at the GM and asking for magical dollars to appear or by looking at the minor league team and expecting players that are not ready to suddenly make the leap to relevancy. The only way this team this year gets better is a commitment to play as a team.  We must play Team Defense, Team offense, Team everything. This means our 1st line needs to play better D.  Our 4th line needs to score.  Nobody gets to take a night off and each player better learn how to best compliment the players next to him.  This will take time...

Really good teams that are on... will beat us.  Just a fact.  We are not currently contenders.  Remember the HW article on expectations?   We are also not a bad team.  We should beat the lower teams and compete well against the average teams.  If this team doesn't learn the definition of "team"... expect a very difficult year that lands outside the playoffs and misses even the lowest of expectations.  If we learn to play as a team... we should be able to meet expectations.

[Dean]

I was reading the nhl is having attendance problems in Calgary, San Jose , buffalo and Winnipeg. Winnipeg sun did story asking fans why.  They said mis  treatment of life long season ticket holders, cost of games and bad customer service. However What I found interesting is they also talked about how fans supported and showed up for team during rebuild . Now that they signed helly and Scheifele to big deals the fans were saying they’re not interested . They’ve seen what their team can do  and their bad playoff performances. Like minny they gave up. Last year. The fans see the big deals they got and the fact they can’t go get free agent or high draft pick to bring something exciting to team.  So they’re staying home . 
    Chicago , New Jersey, Detroit all look like great teams to be a fan of for the next decade . I’d rather watch bedard , Seider  or Hughes grow with a plethora of talent. Versus kappy wasting his prime years while we watch zucc, Hartman, freddy , flurry , spurg and moose age and ride off into sunset. . I keep thinking about what that kappy hart zucc line will look like in 2 years.  They won’t be dominant. They already aren’t . Hopefully one of those kids next year brings some excitement to team because they need it bad !!  I don’t have faith in bill or Dean to bring in the next generation 

 

[MacGyver]

You are either one of Billy's boys or you're not. Fluery, Foligno, Hartman and Zuccy are although the Zuccy signing was more about keeping 97 happy I believe.  For the last two years all I have been hearing is how the experts were ranking the wild's prospect pool as at the top or near the top of the league. But as pointed out above there does not seem to be a lot of excitement going on down in Iowa and Billy shows no inclination of going through the growing pains of developing some of these guys. 

He's trying to stay competitive with an older team when he should be focusing on developing the younger players. I'm not surprised if Rossi does not stick up here. He will be going down to Iowa before he moves up the lines here imo. 

The relationship between Billy, Dean and Fiala was very telling. He was clearly NOT one of Billy's boys. 80 plus points or not he was never going to get Billy's respect or consideration. He was never going to be on this team regardless. It became a toxic situation mostly due to Billy and Dean. Billy was publicly bad mouthing him when the entire league knew he was going to get traded out of here. Nothing like driving an elite players value down. That's like smashing your cars windows just before you go to trade it in. 

It looks like he got lucky on the Talbot for Gus trade. All Billy knew is Talbot had to go and quickly. (Another toxic situation created by Billy) so Talbot for Gus was done because it was quick and easy. Gus is making Billy look like a genius so far. 

Kaprizov came here to do one thing and one thing only and that is to put winning a Stanley Cup on his resume.  When he looks around him in two years when it's time for a new contract is he going to look at this team as being on the cusp of winning one ?  Is he going to be happy on a team of prospects and or older players or will he think it's time to move on to find that Cup?

[mnfaninnc]

14 hours ago, MacGyver said:

The relationship between Billy, Dean and Fiala was very telling. He was clearly NOT one of Billy's boys. 80 plus points or not he was never going to get Billy's respect or consideration. He was never going to be on this team regardless. It became a toxic situation mostly due to Billy and Dean. Billy was publicly bad mouthing him when the entire league knew he was going to get traded out of here. Nothing like driving an elite players value down. That's like smashing your cars windows just before you go to trade it in. 

It looks like he got lucky on the Talbot for Gus trade. All Billy knew is Talbot had to go and quickly. (Another toxic situation created by Billy) so Talbot for Gus was done because it was quick and easy. Gus is making Billy look like a genius so far. 

Kaprizov came here to do one thing and one thing only and that is to put winning a Stanley Cup on his resume.  When he looks around him in two years when it's time for a new contract is he going to look at this team as being on the cusp of winning one ?  Is he going to be happy on a team of prospects and or older players or will he think it's time to move on to find that Cup?

I don't believe this information is accurate, though it seems like what was reported happening.

1. Fiala-I believe Guerin already knew he wasn't signing here longterm and wanted to go to a coastal warm weather team. Regardless of if the rest of the league knew he was going to be traded, it didn't matter, the window for where he would go was very small. Neither of the FL teams had the cap space and only the Kings and Ducks were viable options, the Kings being the most attractive team for Fiala. Fiala held most of the cards in this scenario.
2. Guerin did not have any problem with Talbot. It appears that Talbot didn't have much of a problem with Guerin. Guerin had a tremendous problem with Talbot's agent, and he has a code. The agent broke that code by talking publicly when he shouldn't have. This trade was more than about Talbot, it was about an agent spouting off. It was also a shot across the bow to every agent in the business that said "shut up publicly when dealing with me." More evidence of this were the reports out of Chicago when Guerin was trying to trade for Fleury. When word got out from the Chicago side about this, Guerin was very hot. He expects all this stuff to stay in his office, and does not like leaks. This may be one reason why Russo is muted many times until stuff unfolds. 
3. I do believe Kaprizov will like where this team is going. I think he's going to like Dino and Dani coming over and being ready to go. Ohgren hopefully gets healthy, but it's looking like he's on pace like Rossi, delayed due to injury. Sadly, I don't like losing Dewar and Duhaime, but that seems like where this is going. I would have thought they had a future here. 
4. A clear message has been sent to the guys in Iowa. 

• get stronger
• be more powerful
• you will be developing in a lower league, embrace it

Generally speaking, most prospects do not make there big club rosters until 23. They have to put in the work, and our gym work is below average. I'm hoping this becomes an emphasis, because guys like O'Rourke have no business still being 180. Beckman should be far stronger too. The D cavalry ought to all be lifting hard together. It's not hard, it's the 3 S': strength, skill, skating. All of that needs to improve with every single guy in Des Moines.

[mnfaninnc]

So, I was thinking a little about the Moose contract. It seems like that contract is the least team friendly of the bunch. Shooter put an emphasis on what Moose means to this club and how many Moose type players are out there (not many). 

Within this article, does Shooter see a lot of himself in Moose? 

If so, this could explain the extra year and the $4m.

[jabuyer]

" Guerin traded Cam Talbot in a fit of pique," is so true.  Maybe it all worked out.  But that was luck. Wondering what Cam was thinking at the X the other night.

[TCMooch]

I do not believe in Guerin and I think he’s not a good GM. He will make this team into his image of a bunch of low ceiling grinders with 60 grit sandpaper in their game

[JakeOClubs]

Comments are easy.  Armchair GMs and coaches are always perfect, because they only have to have to propose a different scanario, it doesn't actually have to be tested.  

Case in point, the Fiala trade.  The statement is , he could have gotten more.  How can that be validated?  Is there any evidence of that?  The statement here is, well it's not too bad because he got lucky with Faber.  So it's a good trade, but only luck?  So many talk of being a GMBG "guy," it's no worse than simply being negative and that is a perfect example.  Faber is part of that trade and he was included on purpose.  If you are going to evaluate, do it fairly.