Article: The Wild Set A First-Round Standard A Year Ago

[Tom Schreier]

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[Willy the poor boy]

Still, Peter DeBoer had outcoached Dean Evason with the Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars in 2020-21 and 2022-23. In between, St. Louis Blues coach Craig Berube beat him with the clipboard in 2021-22. 

Ya, because it's not like those teams didn't have more and better talent and depth.

Championship coaches don’t get out-coached three years in a row. 

And here we are with Hinesy who couldn't get us into the playoffs and has never won a 1'st round playoff series.

“Something had to change. 'We can't trade 23 players,' is the old saying.”

If you can't articulate why you fired your previous seasons 100 point + coach any better than this, maybe you shouldn't be a GM. Take your job seriously and take the time to put some thought into it. What an embarrassing answer.

[mnfaninnc]

Quote

Swagger isn’t the correct answer, either. It’s skill. Confidence usually comes from an understanding that a team is good enough to win.

I disagree with this statement. It wasn't swagger and it wasn't skill, it was heart! This team played way too many games without heart. Some of that may have been injuries, where we needed those guys for the heart, but for the most part there were far too many "mailed in" performances. 

Sometimes, you have to look like your trying (looking straight into Johansson's eyes when I say this). 

[mnfaninnc]

1 hour ago, Willy the poor boy said:

If you can't articulate why you fired your previous seasons 100 point + coach any better than this, maybe you shouldn't be a GM. Take your job seriously and take the time to put some thought into it. What an embarrassing answer.

I don't think that was exactly Guerin's answer. I think his answer was probably "you're 5-10-4 and you've lost the room." I think the other thing is simply a cliche that was used to explain it, not a quote from Guerin's mouth.

[Willy the poor boy]

30 minutes ago, mnfaninnc said:

I don't think that was exactly Guerin's answer. I think his answer was probably "you're 5-10-4 and you've lost the room." I think the other thing is simply a cliche that was used to explain it, not a quote from Guerin's mouth.

I don't know if that was Guerin's answer verbatim but if not it was damn near that. I heard him say it and I cringed and have been giving him hell about it ever since. And, to top it off he really didn't expound on it beyond that statement. 

I'll never buy that Evason lost the room. If that would happen to be true, it's just another indictment on BG.

[Dean]

Thinking of kappy situation, I think the solution is to sign him to a 2 or 3 yr deal. It gives Billy  time with money in his pocket to make moves . It also buys the kids time to develop. For kappy he gets multiple pay days .  Ive heard rumblings that the top players want to bet on themselves with shorter contracts for multiple paydays. Especially waiting for cap to go up . Versus guys like fiala who want security in length of contract. It’s a risk reward for guys who believe in themselves.  
     I find it hard to imagine after 2 years of playing shorthanded an outgunned by every other team. Kappy is going to feel good about signing an 8 yr deal. Those seasons will have worn on him an unless Billy puts something spectacular together next year , we have jack shit to sell kappy on  I highly doubt he cares what kids are doing in jr’s he cares about who is going to battle with him now. 
    My guess is if he does resign it’s 5 years an under . I hope he resigns but I can’t find any reasons why he would. I can find lots of reasons why he wouldn’t.  I’m a glass half empty guy until he signs then I’ll be half full guy. To me that will mean kappy believes in Billy’s work. Because I sure don’t . 

[TheGoosesAreLooses]

I think the resigning of Hartman, Zucc, Foligno, Gaudreau and Nojo showed a complacency that does not jive with Guerin's words. I think his refusal to send both Gaudreau and Nojo further down the lineup or up the river to Iowa showed his true colors. I don't think prospects will thrive in an environment that veterans gets 5 chances to the rookies 1. 

I look at the moves Guerin has signaled to be making this summer. Moving on from Rossi and Gus Bus and I'm really not sure I see improvement on the horizon. Had we got a goaltender to replace Gus instead of resigning Flower for another year I would get it, but we didn't. We resigned the bottom of the barrel statistical dud for past glories. 

My point being, to my eye test, neither of these guys were the issue. Gus didn't have a good year but our defense was piecemeal at the best of times. Rossi was an extremely productive player 5V5 while being defensively very responsible.  Nojo and Gaudreau getting cardio every night drove me up a wall and needs to be addressed. If Freddy is injured then sideline him. If Nojo wants cardio put him on a treadmill in the press box. 

What I really want to see is Guerin address some of the guys dragging ass out there. Especially this coming year with Dinov and Ohgren in the fold. Hell I would rather see Beckman on line 2 than another night of Marcus cardio. Send a message. For all his tough talk he sure seems to step lightly around the vets. Feeds Boldy last year for not being physical enough in the exit interview even though he was third on the team in points. Yet we hear nothing of Guerin leaning into Merrill or Freddy or Goli or Foligno for that matter, who's playoffs antics affected the entire team. 

I have never been a huge Guerin fan. He's a hot head and expects everyone to have the same game as him but I was hopeful that his moves were heading us to an end goal. I feel like he lost the plot in the midst of making this his team. I've completely lost any faith in him to make the moves necessary to get us to a cup. I hope he makes some movement in the right direction this year, for the sake of keeping Kap.

[mnfaninnc]

24 minutes ago, Willy the poor boy said:

I'll never buy that Evason lost the room. If that would happen to be true, it's just another indictment on BG.

Why would you blame Shooter for Evason losing the room (hypothetically)? All coaches have an expiration date. Evason showed what getting owned in the playoffs from a position was all about. Berube and DeBoer owned him plain and simple. It wasn't so much due to better talent as it was due to making adjustments and Evason not adjusting to those adjustments.

A series is a series, and when you are tied at 2 or have a 2-1 lead and the other coach makes adjustments and wins 3 straight because your guy can't make adjustments is an indictment against Evason. And, Evason's track record proves that in playoff series. 

You might say, then, that Heinzy isn't the answer. Maybe not, but there are very few coaches available mid season, and there were several that weren't coaching but still under contract with other teams (and likely more expensive than Heinzy). 

My gut still says that Sully is Shooter's Championship Coach, and if/when he's available, he'll be snapped up in a hurry. 

[mnfaninnc]

Guys, there's a little known way to post your own articles.

Up top, if you hit Forums and then go to Minnesota Wild talk, and then scroll through the articles, you'll find some that don't appear on the front page. Protec is the main author of these things and will often times beat Thomas to the punch in news.

I've written down a proposal to gain Brady Tkachuk which, if you can believe my normal posts, was too long to write in a comment. I do believe that Tkachuk is worth trading for and that he may be more obtainable than some might think. 

For those worried about Kaprizov, adding a guy of this calibre with the same desire to win would certainly help in convincing Kaprizov we are committed to winning. 

[Dean]

I’m 100% onboard with getting Brady T. That’s exactly the big move Billy needs to make this offseason to show kappy he’s serious. Brady would be exactly what this team needs. His alpha personality would do wonders for our top 6 . Totally change this team overnight . 

[Patrick]

The difference between the Wilds regular season roster salary and the Las Vegas playoff roster salary is approximately 2 Connor McDavids.  Just saying.

[Pewterschmidt]

14 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

but there are very few coaches available mid season, and there were several that weren't coaching but still under contract with other teams

Also important to mention that any coach you can hire is joining the Wild staring down the barrel of 2.75 seasons (at time of hire) handicapped with $15M of cap penalties

[Willy the poor boy]

16 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

Why would you blame Shooter for Evason losing the room (hypothetically)? All coaches have an expiration date. Evason showed what getting owned in the playoffs from a position was all about. Berube and DeBoer owned him plain and simple. It wasn't so much due to better talent as it was due to making adjustments and Evason not adjusting to those adjustments.

A series is a series, and when you are tied at 2 or have a 2-1 lead and the other coach makes adjustments and wins 3 straight because your guy can't make adjustments is an indictment against Evason. And, Evason's track record proves that in playoff series. 

You might say, then, that Heinzy isn't the answer. Maybe not, but there are very few coaches available mid season, and there were several that weren't coaching but still under contract with other teams (and likely more expensive than Heinzy). 

My gut still says that Sully is Shooter's Championship Coach, and if/when he's available, he'll be snapped up in a hurry. 

I blame Shooter because he brought these guys in to change the culture. Most of the guys he brought in don't really move the needle anyway so if you're changing the culture at least you should get that right and if you've brought guys in that that tune the coach out at the beginning of the season that's taken you to consecutive 100 point seasons you've failed.

I disagree vehemently that Evason didn't make adjustments. When you don't have the talent and are limited there's only so much you can do. The team got to the playoffs, even though very few if any outside the Org. thought they could. 

Here we go again. BG gets to use the cap excuse but Evason is suppose to work overcome that. Give Evason another 12 million in cap and tell me he won't win a series or have the maneuverability to make adjustments.

Evason failed at the under 10 second PK faceoff wins for a goal, but other than that the Wild outplayed Big D and Da Blues. Dallas' Goaltending came up big or they win that series even with the PK failures.

[mnfaninnc]

7 minutes ago, Willy the poor boy said:

Give Evason another 12 million in cap and tell me he won't win a series or have the maneuverability to make adjustments.

Willy, Evason is 0 for his professional coaching career in playoff series wins. In fact, 2 games is the most he's won in a series. At least Heinzy won in the A, Evason did not. I seriously doubt that he can do it. Perhaps we'll find out with another organization.

[Willy the poor boy]

25 minutes ago, mnfaninnc said:

Willy, Evason is 0 for his professional coaching career in playoff series wins. In fact, 2 games is the most he's won in a series. At least Heinzy won in the A, Evason did not. I seriously doubt that he can do it. Perhaps we'll find out with another organization.

I know the '0 for' is important to you, but it doesn't mean anything to me. There are to many variables going on in the A that make that playoff record insignificant and in the pros DE was not on a level playing field with the other coaches with MN.'s cap situation. 

I've said it before and now I'll say it again, w/o a team as of right now DE will win a playoff series before Hines will. In 5 years Hines couldn't get NJD to the playoffs and in Natsville he couldn't get them past the 1'st round with great D and Goalie.

I just think the firing was just another Guerin mistake, especially when you look at the replacement and I am pretty positive that will prove itself out over time.

[Dis-allowed display name]

The Wild are not generating offense because they don’t have enough skill on the roster, mainly because Guerin prioritizes size and veteran experience over raw talent. 

 And so we will trade Rossi.  Hopefully we can find an aging veteran.

[Dis-allowed display name]

18 hours ago, TheGoosesAreLooses said:

I think the resigning of Hartman, Zucc, Foligno, Gaudreau and Nojo showed a complacency that does not jive with Guerin's words. I think his refusal to send both Gaudreau and Nojo further down the lineup or up the river to Iowa showed his true colors. I don't think prospects will thrive in an environment that veterans gets 5 chances to the rookies 1. 

I look at the moves Guerin has signaled to be making this summer. Moving on from Rossi and Gus Bus and I'm really not sure I see improvement on the horizon. Had we got a goaltender to replace Gus instead of resigning Flower for another year I would get it, but we didn't. We resigned the bottom of the barrel statistical dud for past glories. 

My point being, to my eye test, neither of these guys were the issue. Gus didn't have a good year but our defense was piecemeal at the best of times. Rossi was an extremely productive player 5V5 while being defensively very responsible.  Nojo and Gaudreau getting cardio every night drove me up a wall and needs to be addressed. If Freddy is injured then sideline him. If Nojo wants cardio put him on a treadmill in the press box. 

What I really want to see is Guerin address some of the guys dragging ass out there. Especially this coming year with Dinov and Ohgren in the fold. Hell I would rather see Beckman on line 2 than another night of Marcus cardio. Send a message. For all his tough talk he sure seems to step lightly around the vets. Feeds Boldy last year for not being physical enough in the exit interview even though he was third on the team in points. Yet we hear nothing of Guerin leaning into Merrill or Freddy or Goli or Foligno for that matter, who's playoffs antics affected the entire team. 

I have never been a huge Guerin fan. He's a hot head and expects everyone to have the same game as him but I was hopeful that his moves were heading us to an end goal. I feel like he lost the plot in the midst of making this his team. I've completely lost any faith in him to make the moves necessary to get us to a cup. I hope he makes some movement in the right direction this year, for the sake of keeping Kap.

Trying to figure out how I could agree with this more than I already do.

[Imyourhuckleberry]

4 hours ago, Patrick said:

The difference between the Wilds regular season roster salary and the Las Vegas playoff roster salary is approximately 2 Connor McDavids. 

I think 2 Connor McDavid's could help a roster.

[Citizen Strife]

Not sure how Beckman's name keeps coming up as a viable 2nd line scorer.  He's had 5-10 chances to impress on lines 2-4, and hasn't done squat.  He got 2 assists in 11 games played, which would at best equate to 15-20 pts at the best of times.  He is what he is: an AHL player who will plug into depth at best.

Say what we want about the veterans, but even Johansson got goals every once in a while.  That's why he can at least last another season before a new guy (Ohgren/Yurov/etc) gets more playing time.  The same Ohgren who scored as much as Beckman in a 3rd of the games.

There's a reason Guerin signed Zuccarello/Hartman/Foligno to extensions.  Injuries be damned, they provide more for now than the Beckmans/Walkers/Letteris/Lucchinis.  The goal should be to keep those kinds of players NHL time at a minimum by getting better players.

Edited May 1 by Citizen Strife

[TheGoosesAreLooses]

21 hours ago, TheGoosesAreLooses said:

Hell I would rather see Beckman on line 2 than another night of Marcus cardio

21 minutes ago, Citizen Strife said:

Not sure how Beckman's name keeps coming up as a viable 2nd line scorer.  He's had 5-10 chances to impress on lines 2-4, and hasn't done squat.

To be accurate, he never had time on the second line. My comment was meant to convey that I would take Beckman over Mojo simply for the fact I actually see Beckman trying. It has got to piss off many of the other players to watch Mojo filling a second line spot with his pedestrian effort level. That is also why i highlighted it was critical this year with Dinov and Ohgren here, who are better equipped to take that spot.

Yeah, he scored a few goals, he was also -15 indicating he was dragging ass when it came to his 200ft game. To me, that was visible on the ice. If he's not going to buy in and put in effort he can watch the game from the Prosser box, IDGAF how skilled or quick he is. 

It comes down to playing like a team and not taking nights off. That is on the coach and GM to punish guys when they aren't in that game giving the effort they should be. By not punishing Mojo they made a statement that it was acceptable to take nights off. That attitude will become infectious among a losing team.

[Citizen Strife]

Mojo has gotten multi goal games once in a blue moon, which is more than Beckman ever got regardless of what linemates were where.  Rossi and Foligno handled things early on offensively and defensively in 3rd Line duty with Gaudreau sinking like a stone...so players should impress wherever they get placed.  Effort is great until actual results count.  Beckman has nothing.

All things being equal, if either on the Wild come 25-26, they have bigger issues.

Edited May 1 by Citizen Strife

[Mateo3xm]

On 4/30/2024 at 4:27 PM, mnfaninnc said:

I disagree with this statement. It wasn't swagger and it wasn't skill, it was heart! This team played way too many games without heart. Some of that may have been injuries, where we needed those guys for the heart, but for the most part there were far too many "mailed in" performances. 

Sometimes, you have to look like your trying (looking straight into Johansson's eyes when I say this). 

Perhaps they weren’t playing to their best ability but don’t you think this team obviously has a lack of high quality players to send them farther?  It would be demoralizing to me to if our team didn’t have the personnel to complete with these talented teams yet the GM’s standards are far higher than the team’s capabilities. Even if they were playing to their highest capacity, I don’t think our team is skilled or deep enough to compete with Vegas, Dallas, Col, Winn etc.

Heart only goes so far. That’s what I meant by BG trying to make lemonade but not having enough lemons and squeezing the lemons he has as hard as he can. There’s only so much you’re going to get out of them.

[Mateo3xm]

On 4/30/2024 at 5:04 PM, Willy the poor boy said:

I don't know if that was Guerin's answer verbatim but if not it was damn near that. I heard him say it and I cringed and have been giving him hell about it ever since. And, to top it off he really didn't expound on it beyond that statement. 

I'll never buy that Evason lost the room. If that would happen to be true, it's just another indictment on BG.

At this point it just seems like BG is trying to take the blame off of himself instead of realizing that this is the team he built and it obviously isn’t good enough. Somebody had to be blamed so it was the coach. Who knows what type of restrictions the owner has put on him though. It’s become evident that the owner refuses to let this team truly rebuild in order to get the players you need to win a Stanley Cup. Down the line, if BG is fired, I don’t see any reasonable GM’s wanting to sign here knowing that the result is going to be the same year after year. 
I could see first time GM’s using it as experience to get into and get experience at the position so they can get a job elsewhere. Even then it’s a gamble with the restrictions the owner seems to have put in place.

[Mateo3xm]

On 4/30/2024 at 5:34 PM, mnfaninnc said:

It wasn't so much due to better talent as it was due to making adjustments

Even though I think DE could have definitely done things better, I completely disagree that it wasn’t due to better talent. Those teams were far more talented than the MN Wild. I feel like that’s extremely obvious but that’s just me. 
This team just isn’t that good and I think they actually over performed in a few of the past seasons.

[Mateo3xm]

On 4/30/2024 at 8:19 PM, Dean said:

I’m 100% onboard with getting Brady T. That’s exactly the big move Billy needs to make this offseason to show kappy he’s serious. Brady would be exactly what this team needs. His alpha personality would do wonders for our top 6 . Totally change this team overnight . 

But what about all the other holes on this team?….. 

this team doesn’t have strong goaltending at the moment, the defense is smaller and also not very good (besides a few players) we have basically one elite line and it falls off rather drastically from there. BT himself isn’t going to turn this team around, I simply dont see it. Also what would we have to give to get him and how would that put us back in other areas? This is a hypothetical and it’s fun to dream about it but I don’t think there is any merit to it whatsoever. If there was, it would be all over the nhl and they’d have many many teams lined up to offer more for him than we probably could. Only guy from Ottawa I could see us potentially gettIng is Norris. I know they’re a little impatient with him but he’s been sidelined with a pretty serious injury for most of the year.