Article: Did the Wild Box Themselves Into the Last Remaining Playoff Spot?

[Justin Wiggins]

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[Luke Sims]

I love Professor Wiggins. 

[Will D. Ness]

BG preemptively removed any chance to tank... but not by design.  I'm sure it has more to do with player loyalty than anything else.  We all cringed at these extensions for various reasons but there may be returns that also fall into unintended consequences due to having a honor or loyalty that is not found in the dog eat dog realm of "it's a business" culture.

Time will tell.

Also, I really like what they did for Mason Shaw.  I'm looking forward to seeing  him back in the lineup.

 

[Paul Bunyan is Real]

Meanwhile Florida backed into the playoffs on the last day of the season last year. Then went on to play Boston, the team w the best regular season in the history of the NHL. Not only did they beat Boston in the 1st round. They went on to the Stanley Cup finals. Go figure. 

[Citizen Strife]

The team and players will always try to win, situations be damned.  "Tank" is not a word they will ever say or do, even if it COULD be a better option.  The word being could.  The thing is, they have a decent thing going with Kaprizov/Ek/Boldy on the top line, and Faber is busting his ass as a new defenseman.  If Khusnutdinov does come in and plays as well as a Rossi or Faber, then you add yet another weapon for this and upcoming years.  

Let the players play and see what happens.  The Wild making the playoffs would be more an indictment on the other teams failing to put their own business away when the Wild were down than the Wild winning at all.

Edited February 17 by Citizen Strife

[mnfaninnc]

When you look into Shooter's big eyes, does anyone see an option to tank? I just don't think Guerin has that option in him. I look at it from a little different perspective, if his team suddenly makes the playoffs, his owner is ultra happy and we will likely be stuck with late game playoff hockey. 

Shooter will have bought himself more time. Why is this important? Because for this plan to work (reloading on the fly because we can't use the term rebuild), Guerin needs to be patient with his prospects to develop over a 5 year time period. Drafting as late as we have is not the best recipe for reloading, but, it seems that our now enviable prospect pool gets to do this with little pressure to leap ahead of where they are. 

And, where are they? Well, Beckman was called up twice for a cup of coffee....and nachos. He responded to being sent down again with 2 goals last night. Yurov is strongly considering another year in the K. Dino has been there for about 4 years. Even Ohgren could delay a year since he's been heavily injured this season. 

And yet, some are ahead of schedule. The Wall seems to be ready to take on a backup role for next season. Carson Lambos may need another year, but Yurov is going to be here ahead of schedule and probably a beast. Daemon Hunt will arrive on time next season too, just as Goligoski is cut loose. 

Yes, Guerin will have put another year behind him where he's rebuilding...sshhhh..and making the playoffs. OCL will be smiling. Kaprizov will be once again having an opportunity to go after a championship, and, for us to draft in the 20s again this year, we'll have to win 2 series. 

Honestly, without having to endure painful seasons, we will be able to insert the kids in the lineup when they're developed and still have competitive winning hockey. Maybe it's not contender hockey yet, but those awful lows are not suffered like we see in AZ, Chicago, Buffalo, Ottawa, and CBJ. And this is a bad 5 years to be a Sharks fan. 

And, who knows, maybe we catch another falling Russian in this draft?

[Paul Bunyan is Real]

15 minutes ago, mnfaninnc said:

When you look into Shooter's big eyes, does anyone see an option to tank? I just don't think Guerin has that option in him. I look at it from a little different perspective, if his team suddenly makes the playoffs, his owner is ultra happy and we will likely be stuck with late game playoff hockey. 

Shooter will have bought himself more time. Why is this important? Because for this plan to work (reloading on the fly because we can't use the term rebuild), Guerin needs to be patient with his prospects to develop over a 5 year time period. Drafting as late as we have is not the best recipe for reloading, but, it seems that our now enviable prospect pool gets to do this with little pressure to leap ahead of where they are. 

And, where are they? Well, Beckman was called up twice for a cup of coffee....and nachos. He responded to being sent down again with 2 goals last night. Yurov is strongly considering another year in the K. Dino has been there for about 4 years. Even Ohgren could delay a year since he's been heavily injured this season. 

And yet, some are ahead of schedule. The Wall seems to be ready to take on a backup role for next season. Carson Lambos may need another year, but Yurov is going to be here ahead of schedule and probably a beast. Daemon Hunt will arrive on time next season too, just as Goligoski is cut loose. 

Yes, Guerin will have put another year behind him where he's rebuilding...sshhhh..and making the playoffs. OCL will be smiling. Kaprizov will be once again having an opportunity to go after a championship, and, for us to draft in the 20s again this year, we'll have to win 2 series. 

Honestly, without having to endure painful seasons, we will be able to insert the kids in the lineup when they're developed and still have competitive winning hockey. Maybe it's not contender hockey yet, but those awful lows are not suffered like we see in AZ, Chicago, Buffalo, Ottawa, and CBJ. And this is a bad 5 years to be a Sharks fan. 

And, who knows, maybe we catch another falling Russian in this draft?

Yurov has already signed w his KHL team for next year. 

[Citizen Strife]

"Yurov has already signed w his KHL team for next year."
 

Which is fine, because other people (namely Mojo) will be gone. 

[Up North Guy]

4 hours ago, Paul Bunyan is Real said:

Yurov has already signed w his KHL team for next year. 

I have not seen that anywhere. Source?

[Paul Bunyan is Real]

5 hours ago, Up North Guy said:

I have not seen that anywhere. Source?

The hockey news Feb 12th. 

[FredJohnson]

Mid. Ugh!

[MacGyver]

20 hours ago, Citizen Strife said:

"Yurov has already signed w his KHL team for next year."
 

Which is fine, because other people (namely Mojo) will be gone. 

You want to get Russian players here as soon as possible. Russia and Russian players are different. Nothing is saying we will ever see Yurov in a Wild sweater or any of the other Russians for that matter. I mentioned this in another thread that Russia just built the world's largest state of the art hockey arena with more in the planning. Putin has made it clear he does not like Russia's best athletes coming to the west to get rich. If the oligarchs who own these KHL teams ever start paying the best Russian athletes anywhere close to NHL money those players will be happy to stay in mother Russia and the spigot to the NHL will be shut off. 

We never got a full account of the Kaprizov issues when leaving Russia the last time. Has he gone back since? Can he? Betting your future on Russian athletes can be risky. 

[mnfaninnc]

1 hour ago, MacGyver said:

You want to get Russian players here as soon as possible. Russia and Russian players are different. Nothing is saying we will ever see Yurov in a Wild sweater or any of the other Russians for that matter. I mentioned this in another thread that Russia just built the world's largest state of the art hockey arena with more in the planning. Putin has made it clear he does not like Russia's best athletes coming to the west to get rich. If the oligarchs who own these KHL teams ever start paying the best Russian athletes anywhere close to NHL money those players will be happy to stay in mother Russia and the spigot to the NHL will be shut off. 

We never got a full account of the Kaprizov issues when leaving Russia the last time. Has he gone back since? Can he? Betting your future on Russian athletes can be risky. 

I'd heard that he was considering staying in Russia another season. But, I hadn't heard that it was confirmed. I see this as quite a blow to the Wild, but, was Yurov ready? For me, ready has a lot to do with the physical attributes and strength/weight to be able to compete. Dino, may be a unicorn in this aspect, much like Spurgeon is. If Yurov is to compete and try to claim a spot on the top line, I'd have to say he's got to be approaching 200 lbs. 

I worried about getting Kaprizov out, however, I don't worry so much about other players right now. Why? Kaprizov is a link and can help with recruitment. Is Kaprizov going to be happy with this move? I think he'd want to have Yurov in MN next year, to be honest, and I think Kaprizov thinks that Yurov could help the team win. 

My big red flag, though, is if Yurov signs another year, and it's only $330k, who's to say he doesn't get the Dino treatment from his club? They will pressure him for yet another year, and possibly take away some of his ice time. This is the greatest worry of them all. Can Yurov get fed up and void/quit his K contract if they start messing with his icetime? This is quite doubtful. Could the Wild have matched his $330k contract? Yes, they could have. They could have involved a signing bonus to help and they could have played him about 20 games in the N to more than make up the difference. But, if Guerin gives him a signing bonus, are the other prospects going to be expecting one, like, say Riley Heidt (who hit 90 points this weekend)?

We know the Wild will look pretty much the same next season, with the exception of Duhaime, Maroon, Dewar, and Shaw. That's 4 spots in the lineup. What exactly are their value? Duhaime has mustered 4-2-6  -7 on the year. I wouldn't call his next contract a break the bank deal. He's currently making $1.1m, and I'd say there wouldn't be much room for a raise if this continues. 

Dewar is at $800k. He is at 7-3-10  -8. He's a 4th line center, but these numbers do not look like more than $1m and he's an RFA. Mason Shaw probably gets a deal close to what he just signed. At this point, any NHL contract is a bonus for him after 4 ACL surgeries. And, Maroon is probably gone. 

I'd expect Adam Beckman and Dino to compete for a spot. Only Johansson drops off the following offseason. Will the 4 above + Johansson be enough for the youth movement to come forward? We've got similar issues/opportunities on defense and in the net too. 

Johansson is probably keeping the seat warm for Yurov, I'd assume that's a fairly easy trade of spots. But where do Dino, Beckman and Bankier fit in, not to mention the guys who aren't even in the A yet? Stramel has another blanked weekend, is college hockey the best spot for him....or should he consider transferring to Motzko's program? The other option is to sign him after this year at WI and stick him in the A. I'd probably wait a year on that and save the ELC, but whatever is happening in WI is not matching up with him.

 

[mnfaninnc]

Realistic Playoff Chances:  Are the teams ahead of us really that strong? The Wild are down 2 points to Nashville, 4 points to St. Louis and 6 points to the Kings. After another brutal home loss last night to the Sabres, can we crawl back into the playoff scene?

It seems like the other teams ahead of us are shrinking down to our level. 4 points is 2 regulation victories and we have 3 to still play with St. Louis. However, first the Wild must finish up February going through the gauntlet. 

Vancouver, Winnipeg, Edmonton, Seattle, Carolina are the next 5 before we end the month with Nashville on leap year day. These 5 games likely decide where Guerin is going for March 8th. March is an easy schedule for the Wild in terms of competition. We should be able to make up ground on Nashville and St. Louis, and possibly the Kings. Making up 4 points is doable, making up 8 points is a distinct possibility. 

What must we do in these next 5 games to give ourselves a chance? The Predators have Vegas, Kings, Sharks, Ducks, Sens before they face us. The Blues have Leafs, Islanders, Red Wings, Jets, Oilers before facing us on March 2nd. 

I'm seeing Nashville overtake the Blues for 8th by the time we face them. At the very least, I'd expect them to gain 6 points, possibly 8 by the time they face us. For the Blues, they have a good chance of losing all these games, but I could see 4 points from them by the time we meet them. Drawing even with the Blues by the time we meet March 2nd, I believe, gives us the advantage. The Preds are mostly on the road for these games too adding a different wrinkle to their schedule.  

So, for me, I've got to see 6 points in the next 5 games to think that playoff hockey is a reality.....unless, Nashville and St. Louis decide to just gift us a bunch of losses. Could this Wild team be like last year's Panthers? I wouldn't say anyone is having a career year for the team, except, maybe, Middleton (it's too early to call Faber's year a career year). Could this whole team get hot right around playoff time like the Panthers did last year, sneak into the playoffs and have nothing to lose? 

The next 5 games could determine that.

[Will D. Ness]

2 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

So, for me, I've got to see 6 points in the next 5 games to think that playoff hockey is a reality

So we got a number of good things going.  KK is playing tight as hell and looks like he is back 100%.  Top line is clicking and Boldy is starting to take the puck with scoring intent and confidence at the right times.  Ek is constant Ek but kind of playing prime Ek.

Rossi is also looking sharp but the 2nd line should be producing more.  It's a small speed line that just needs a little more fight.  Maybe switch Nojo with Hartman?

Other than that our 3rd and 4th lines are just not cutting it.  Shaw might shake things up.

Chisholm also looks like a keeper so all in all maybe... just maybe a little hope that playoffs are a reality but I'm also bracing for a potential skid.  

So far this year we have basically folded in all of the high pressure games.

 

[mnfaninnc]

2 hours ago, Will D. Ness said:

just maybe a little hope that playoffs are a reality but I'm also bracing for a potential skid.  

So far this year we have basically folded in all of the high pressure games

Where do you see the skid? In these next 5 games?

[Will D. Ness]

17 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

Where do you see the skid? In these next 5 games?

Sure.  We might drop the next 3 quite easily.  I haven't seen enough fight in this team yet.

Maybe this will be the week they find it?

[mnfaninnc]

47 minutes ago, Will D. Ness said:

I haven't seen enough fight in this team yet.

I wonder if the insertion of Mason Shaw into the lineup provides that fight?

[Protec]

We haven't seen the consistency this year but the Wild have beat plenty of tough teams. 

Hard to say what will happen. If they are sloppy against good teams they'll lose for sure.

[Will D. Ness]

Damn.  There was some fight today.  Top line is smoking.