Article: Guerin's Strength As Team USA GM Might A Shortcoming In Minnesota

[Tom Schreier]

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[Citizen Strife]

"However, Guerin built the Wild in his image, valuing veteran experience while slowly bringing along rookies. Many of his veteran signings have flopped, largely because few players get better as they get older, as Guerin did"

Yawn...

Foligno and Treni are two of the best defensive forwards, and Zuccarello is still Top 5 in points.  Middleton has had a good offensive year for the most part.  Can we just let it go now?

Edited 7 hours ago by Citizen Strife

[Thatoneguy]

37 minutes ago, Citizen Strife said:

"However, Guerin built the Wild in his image, valuing veteran experience while slowly bringing along rookies. Many of his veteran signings have flopped, largely because few players get better as they get older, as Guerin did"

Yawn...

Foligno and Treni are two of the best defensive forwards, and Zuccarello is still Top 5 in points.  Middleton has had a good offensive year for the most part.  Can we just let it go now?

We can let it go when the wild get past the first round. Billy doesn't deserve a pass just because we are wild fans. He makes a lot of head scratching decisions, and they usually don't move the needle on the team. 

I'm hopeful that he truly does have a plan over the next couple seasons. Anything less than a deep playoff run within the next 2 should be considered an epic failure on BG. After this year he gets no more excuses. 

[Citizen Strife]

The plan has been to phase out those veterans piecemeal when prospects or free agents prove viable enough to actually take those spots.  You can't predict injuries, setbacks, or even drastic improvements like Rossi did.

Outside of Hartman's boneheaded decisions and lackluster fall (and maybe Johansson because Nyquist was out of the price range), I fail to see how going from an afterthought team chasing ghosts one season to pretty much always in playoff contention can't be seen as improvement.  They doing this in spite of Kaprizov only being around for 1/3 of the season, Ohgren and Khusnutdinov not exactly lighting up the score sheet, and Ek and Faber kinda faltering offensively.  Spurgeon, Gaudreau, and Middleton bounced back like the hope was.  They didn't trade Gus away when all signs pointed to that being a smart play...and look who's laughing now.

You also can't do anything midseason if you wanted to.  All the injuries made any miracle trade on ice.  We saw Jiricek (the swing for the future) already play better than Bogo, Merrill, and Dermott, and guess what: nearly all of those underachievers are going to be gone or tradeable after this season.  I'm not saying the team is a world beater.  But the team is far better than it has any right to be, given all the holes that are present.  Holes that get fixed by subtracting with ease.  Zuccarello is only around one more season anyway, provided he doesn't take anymore pucks to the nuts.

Anyone wanting Faber, Boldy, or Rossi traded for greener pasture players or SIZE is just asking for a Nashville fall.  Forgive me for living through the Fletcher flops and seeing the positive side of a rebuild on the fly.

Edited 6 hours ago by Citizen Strife

[Citizen Strife]

Also, outside of Rantanen and Miller, has anyone actually SEEN these reports that teams are just letting players with current and future stardom walk?  Are any of those players 20-25, and not in their early to mid-30s?  God forbid I go to Ottawa or Buffalo and ask, "Gee, any chance your best young or prime players are gonna be traded anytime soon?"  I'd be laughed out of the room.  It's like you forget that you need 23 players on a team or something.  Tell me how San Jose and Chicago are doing with their generational players.  Sure as shit is gonna take a bit longer to field a competitive team than the Wild if Kap stays.

I wouldn't be surprised if you said, "Let's trade Justin Jefferson cause the Vikings always lose in the first round!  We can rebuild with a better player someday!  That'll get us out the first round!"

Instead of thinking, "Hey, this team that had no right to be a playoff team is 5-10th best all season!  That's kinda cool," It's just a bunch of "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, we aren't good enough" in games that haven't even happened yet.

Edited 6 hours ago by Citizen Strife

[Burnt Toast]

Wow Tom waasss uuup? Yikes there are sooo many assumptions and out of the room opinions in your article I don’t know where to begin… Well I’m not going to.I’ve changed my opinion on role players based on what Tampa dished out to get a grinder for the playoffs a couple of years back. I mean Dallas just dropped a first for MG? He’s not a grinder but not having to constantly trade picks away is a big advantage. Going off topic KK+LTIR till playoffs= That One Guy? I’m beginning to think it could be a thing. I still appreciate the article Tom, and I mean that sincerely!! 

[Burnt Toast]

17 minutes ago, Citizen Strife said:

miracle trade on ice

If you had 10 trades…..well not THIS … 

[Citizen Strife]

I would also like to caution people.  You can have 1, 2, or even 5 of the best players on the planet and still not sniff a championship.  Ovechkin got his what, year 15?  Think of how many great players barely even get that chance.  Acting woe is me all the time because the Wild "only made it to the first or second round" is kinda silly, considering you aren't handed anything.

If anything, the Wild are going to win a championship or even a round or two like the Blues did: lucky goaltending.  Acting like every team on the planet HAS to have all bases covered every single year is fucking impossible.  It's also kinda sad if you're just expecting things to happen because some dream scenario popped into your head.  Any dumb trade proposal you make has the same chance to fail or succeed as standing pat does.

[Burnt Toast]

1 hour ago, Thatoneguy said:

Anything less than a deep playoff run within the next 2 should be considered an epic failure on BG.

I changed my opinion about the timing about the Wild’s Cup window a couple of years ago. I truly believe it begins in 2027 with a ramp up the next two. Why? Remember Florida’s struggles, just recently making the playoffs in their last game? Would that season have been enough to make the assessment, then, that the whole team was going nowhere, if they hadn’t won that game? Of course the answer would be no based on their recent success. I give Wild management more time because personally I think the team was way more broken than just the S/P contracts. Building through the draft? Yes Plz. But it takes a lot of patience. Chicago’s window? 3031 minimum starting year. The Wild have added a bunch of young, talented players with more on the way. I’m going to enjoy the ride!!

Edited 5 hours ago by Burnt Toast
Spelling

[SkolWild73]

22 minutes ago, Citizen Strife said:

I would also like to caution people.  You can have 1, 2, or even 5 of the best players on the planet and still not sniff a championship.  Ovechkin got his what, year 15?  Think of how many great players barely even get that chance.  Acting woe is me all the time because the Wild "only made it to the first or second round" is kinda silly, considering you aren't handed anything.

If anything, the Wild are going to win a championship or even a round or two like the Blues did: lucky goaltending.  Acting like every team on the planet HAS to have all bases covered every single year is fucking impossible.  It's also kinda sad if you're just expecting things to happen because some dream scenario popped into your head.  Any dumb trade proposal you make has the same chance to fail or succeed as standing pat does.

100 percent this!   Some of  the trade dreamers on here say we must get more top scoring depth and trading Faber is the way to do that.  Look at Toronto.  Their top 3 forwards are way above our top three and how far have they gotten?  

[hydguy75]

It's far easier to build a team for 4 Nations when there is no salary cap.  The extrapolated totals for 2025 goes USA ($177.8M), CAN ($174.0M), SWE ($150.8M), and FIN ($106.9M).  Next consider percentage of total NHL players by country- CAN(291), USA (204), SWE(66), and finally FIN(37).  With such a much larger talent pool to draw from.  Before getting to the final points, will share that the Wild seem to play inconsistent, and it's frustrating to watch, versus your USA cherry-picked roster that has more consistent, higher level game.  Lastly, I'll the obvious reasons...not having to respect rosters/contracts/lines and mostly he is out from under the thumb of OCL.  So many considerations to compare, it's really not a true comparison at all.  

[SkolWild73]

1 hour ago, Citizen Strife said:

Also, outside of Rantanen and Miller, has anyone actually SEEN these reports that teams are just letting players with current and future stardom walk?  Are any of those players 20-25, and not in their early to mid-30s?  God forbid I go to Ottawa or Buffalo and ask, "Gee, any chance your best young or prime players are gonna be traded anytime soon?"  I'd be laughed out of the room.  It's like you forget that you need 23 players on a team or something.  Tell me how San Jose and Chicago are doing with their generational players.  Sure as shit is gonna take a bit longer to field a competitive team than the Wild if Kap stays.

I wouldn't be surprised if you said, "Let's trade Justin Jefferson cause the Vikings always lose in the first round!  We can rebuild with a better player someday!  That'll get us out the first round!"

Instead of thinking, "Hey, this team that had no right to be a playoff team is 5-10th best all season!  That's kinda cool," It's just a bunch of "WAAAAAAAAAAAAAH, we aren't good enough" in games that haven't even happened yet.

You are preaching today.  Love it.  I wrote in a post yesterday on how well this team has done without Kap. Let’s root for the 23 guys we have now!

I am with you Strife.  This article and others complaining  about what happened 2-5 years ago and fantasizing about trades for the future.  Let’s enjoy this team and see what happens this year.
 

 

[SkolWild73]

Really Tom?  No matter what the article is about you have to throw a link into your previous article about the “bad aging contracts”.  What, is that 3 of last 4 or 4 of last 5.  Starting to think you are doing it just for me.

[Up North Guy]

1 hour ago, Citizen Strife said:

provided he doesn't take anymore pucks to the nuts.

Nut - singular

[Burnt Toast]

1 hour ago, SkolWild73 said:

bad aging contracts”

So I’m watching Liam O today against Detroit. He has a way to go before he’s at the level of the older guys. Will he get there? I think so but I think Wild Management is timing their roster turnover quite well. 

Edited 3 hours ago by Burnt Toast
Spelling

[SkolWild73]

1 hour ago, Burnt Toast said:

So I’m watching Liam O today against Detroit. He has a way to go before he’s at the level of the older guys. Will he get there? I think so but I think Wild Management is timing their roster turnover quite well. 

Agree with you 100 percent.