Article: The David Jiricek Trade Is Still the Right Call

[Citizen Strife]

Oh, and for people saying Spurgeon should go.  He has almost as many points on his own as Bogo, Chisholm, and Merrill in total.  He is not the problem.

The forwards AND defensive depth need the overhaul.  Much more than one shiny toy can fix.

Edited Friday at 07:01 PM by Citizen Strife

[OldDutchChip]

3 hours ago, MacGyver said:

I do agree with ODC that we never seem to be in the conversation on the difference makers. There are a number of reasons why and I do acknowledge the buy out penalties, it's just a fact. Also I don't think Billy is a very creative thinker. He gets locked in on a certain type of player and he can't think outside of that.  Add to that a few or more of them simply don't want to come here. The Wild have never been ones to trade long time vets on this team especially those wearing a letter they just don't do it. Spurgeon is here as long as he wants to be. Most likely the same with Faber. I was a big proponent of going after Chycrun a few years ago when he was with the Yotes and he could have been had while he was still on a $3+M contract. Instead we have Merril, Bogo, Chisholm and company. Chycrun already had NHL games under his belt and was still young. Plug and play. No waiting and hoping on a college kid or other prospect.  

Big defenseman with an offensive upside but we never even looked his way. They were kind of in but not on Eichel and I get that given the injury risk. Had the Wild given up what was needed for him and he didn't pan out here that could have set us back ten years and Kaprizov would certainly be gone. 

I don't mean to criticize you trade dreamers but some of it is so unrealistic knowing the Wild are not going to trade Spurgeon or Faber or even Zuccy Kaprizov's emotional support pet.  They only seem willing to peddle Rossi. This is not going to put you in the conversation. 

Exactly! Spurge and Foligno and Fleury with their retirement tour - NP says bill!

yes he will trade Rossi for some fair offer of something insignificant but for what? Just to look busy

And Yes I agree - Boldy, Faber, Spurge, Foligno and other favs are staying.

its same sh1t as before but presented like something masterfully crafted

[OldDutchChip]

10 minutes ago, Citizen Strife said:

Being hung up on winning now would be great, if we knew the Wild were a team that could do that.  A team with a 25th-27th ranked offense, shitty faceoffs, and a 30th ranked PK isn't a team I invest in to change everything.  Guerin isn't stupid.  He sees, "Eh...this team kinda sucks right now," and was probably forced to make some move so Leipold would not have a hair up his ass.  After all, tanking out of the playoff race only helps Columbus's 1st round pick anyway.

Maybe if they had stayed 2nd-3rd in the divsion, sure.  But there was no sign that was going to feasible once Colorado and now St. Louis figured out whatever shit went wrong early (goaltending).

I get "when is the 1st round win even gonna happen.  It's going to happen when the team isn't so fucking injured and they aren't playing 20-30 point players as forwards and their bottom defensemen average 10 points.  Quibble all you want, but the Boldys and Rossis of the world should be the baseline players going forward if you want offensive depth.  50s-60s makes for a much larger chance one of those guys is a sleeper in the playoffs.  

I don't really know what style of team "wins" rounds.  But I know what lost them: trying to play uptempo and try to outgun and outrun teams and play sloppy.  Give me the team that played NJ in NJ, not the team that played Dallas, Vegas, or the Rangers.  

Ah yes Bill is not stupid!

6 years of no PO success but we have a new shiny 5 year plan 

brilliant!

and the fans are just fine w it! Why not just repeat?  No need to try for better if status quo works and is much easier ….

[OldDutchChip]

12 minutes ago, Citizen Strife said:

Oh, and for people saying Spurgeon should go.  He has almost as many points on his own as Bogo, Chisholm, and Merrill in total.  He is not the problem.

The forwards AND defensive depth need the overhaul.  Much more than one shiny toy can fix.

He is unplayable in the PO but wait! his pts total in the reg season is better than our 5,6,7 d man! Oh wow!!🤩 

[Citizen Strife]

He also has more points and a +6 than Brock Faber who is at -1...but yes.  Let's rookies just take over our entire defensive corps and then tank our defensive scheme because OOH a player who probably wasn't leaving their team ever MIGHT be someone we could get.

You take Spurgeon's skillset and defense away, you have to find someone else to replace him.  Buium and Jiricek aren't there yet.  But hey.  Boston will trade McAvoy for Spurgeon full stop.  How about Spurgeon AND Boldy, and a couple picks for Makar?  That'll happen.  Teams don't trade their top players unless they either know that player doesn't want to stay or they think, "You know, we need Makar more than we need Rantanen." Turns out they were probably right.  Colorado still winning without him.  Probably cause they found fucking goaltending.

Trade speculation and real life are two different things.  We don't live in GM mode.  

Edited Friday at 07:20 PM by Citizen Strife

[Citizen Strife]

How many times do you have to forget that Parise retired and that $7.5m would have been something like $15m or $20m?  Guerin had to make that move to avoid that bomb.  Playing Parise would not have solved it, because whether on the team or not, Parise retiring early fucked the team over.  The buyout was and still is the only option.  Think about how the team has played without their injured players.  The recapture penalty would have made it so those players wouldn't have even been an option.

The only reason it wasn't even worse was because Suter decided he wasn't done fleecing Central teams for money.

"But Freddy and Trenin suck."  Those are the only players Guerin would have played if Parise stayed and the recapture penalty fucked the Wild over.  

I don't know if Kaprizov stays if we go the Buffalo or Chicago route.  The Wild didn't, so we'll never know.  My thought process is he wouldn't have.  2-3 years of the Koivu/Brunette/Miettinen" era Wild would have scared off anybody.

Edited Friday at 07:25 PM by Citizen Strife

[Citizen Strife]

But hey.  Three more months.

Three more months until we find out if Kap is leaving.  I wonder if the world will end if he does.

Not really sure it will.  I still have to go work at LEGO that week.  I'll let you know if the State of Hockey dies if one player doesn't get signed.

[Up North Guy]

16 hours ago, RedLake said:

This organization is a shitshow yet people believe lmfao! Cap penalties rah, rah, rah, blah, blah, blah. We'll get spent Nelson and another Rossi. Fuck the bandaids and rebuild, or go get a Tkachuck, Miller, Conner,etc etc. Nelson and Boser won't thread a needle. Go get Crosby and Tkachuck or something else than Nelson. One and done the next 25 years. Sell all assets now and rebuild!!!!

This is a Wild fan site and if you are a fan, you have to be one of the most disgruntled negative nancy's around. If the team is so darn awful a the leadership so incompetent why do you bother posting? You have already posted previously that you are done with this team and yet here you are pissing and moaning again.

[mnfaninnc]

5 hours ago, OldDutchChip said:

I thought Tkachuk’s player trajectory in terms of skill/value was already exceeding that of Hubby, so it favored Florida almost immediately but I could be misremembering 

The lesson here is - Skill and toughness wins in this league 

Who w Wild offers skill + toughness? Only Kap. The others offer only some skill and no toughness (Bolds, Rossi, Zuccy) There is NO toughness in the top 6 ….i guess Foligno but he should not be playing top 6 minutes and we’ve seen his impact before…..

We're on the same page here. I don't think that Matthew Tkachuk's trajectory was quite there yet, but, like you, I believed he was the best player in that deal. We are also on the same page when it comes to the Wild's top 6, only Ek and Kaprizov bring the skill and toughness. Boldy has potential. Zuccy and Rossi will not have that component in their game.

 

5 hours ago, OldDutchChip said:

So what’s the difference for you and I?

The main difference is that I have a longer runway than you do at this point. But, I also get a lot of pleasure out of watching the team improve, especially the kids. 

But, let's do this with history and see where we stood. When Fletcher traded for Pominville, what was your reaction? Mine was the guy was too soft for what we needed, but did offer an RHS and was a proven goal scorer. I thought we went after the wrong guy.

When Fletcher traded for Hanzal what was your reaction? Mine was akin to shredding of garments, I thought he was a terrible fit both in the locker room and with his play. That particular year, I simply thought we were better off riding with who got us there. Again, that was the wrong player to go after.

[mnfaninnc]

5 hours ago, OldDutchChip said:

The smart thing to do would have been to trade spurge and give C to Kap right after. Give him a chance to soak in that responsibility….and make it a bit tougher for him to let go and leave 🤔

I think the A accomplishes that too.

[Mateo3xm]

15 hours ago, OldDutchChip said:

Why are you stuck on one player? It’s an overall approach that is the core issue. Next time, it would be Tkachuk or Nylander or Elias - and we’ll be out of it too (likely because of biting early on someone like Nelson

get it?

There has to be an incentive to come here. At the moment there really isn’t a whole lot. We have high taxes, it’s cold here, we are a middle sized market team, we have some good players but not enough, we have had cap issues for a long time, we have a lot of old players, a lot of young players and few in between, etc etc. Why would these big name players want to come to MN? Thats one of the biggest reason why I think its so important for specifically MN to do at least a rebuild at some point. It should have been done in the past a long time ago but they decided to “retool” instead. They are doing excellent in drafting but you only get so far with that. In order to win you need to get more than one elite player on a team and if you don’t have a desirable location you have to draft those elite players. The issue with this team is there wasn’t a whole lot of thought and preparation done in building it into a contender. From the sounds of it, they’ve been prevented from doing a rebuild by the imbecile owner. Almost every single cup team did a rebuild for at least 1-2 years. I can’t think of a cup team where they just traded their way into a cup. I could be wrong but if I am it doesn’t happen very often.

[mnfaninnc]

5 hours ago, OldDutchChip said:

You don’t sign Foligno, Harty, Freddy, MJ, Trenin, Zuccy and you don’t waste your picks and instead you lead with youth (play them over another bunch of has-beens) and wait to make a smart, (maybe) bold /aggressive move when a chance comes calling

On this point I'm mostly with you. I do think there has been some over marinating of youth, and I thought out of the 3 $4m players we only had room for 1. I don't think we can put Trenin in there, I think this was maybe a miss, and, I'm not upset with Freddy's deal, I think it ages well. 

You've got to have those guys around. Johansson has been a solid $2m player, but the cost of that is a roster spot, and I do think we could have waited on him. Foligno would have been the $4m guy I would have retained (but this is short of any handshake deals). I didn't think we should have kept Zuccy. And, we should have had space to bring Yurov over this season.

I think Shooter has got to do a better, more complete job this offseason. He should be overhauling several players and get us younger and faster. Maybe pounding the door down on another GM, showing up to his dinner date, blocking his driveway, something more aggressive than now to get the guy(s) we need to run with. 

It also seems to me that he's in a unique position to be able to talk to some guys and find out how happy they are with their organization. I don't know if this is happening, again, likely kept in the cone of silence, but if any GM knows if their are cracks in the relationship between B. Tkachuk and Ottawa, Shooter should know. You always put out the red carpet for guys you'd like to have come over, and you never have something as small as the medical team embarrass you.

[M_Nels]

10 minutes ago, Mateo3xm said:

Almost every single cup team did a rebuild for at least 1-2 years. I can’t think of a cup team where they just traded their way into a cup. I could be wrong but if I am it doesn’t happen very often.

Double edged sword here though, SJS, Buffalo, Anaheim, Chicago and Detroit have been in rebuilding mode for several years with no light at the end of the tunnel for any of them really. Could be argued that the Wild doing a "competitive rebuild" are closer to a cup than any of them. 

[SkolWild73]

1 hour ago, Citizen Strife said:

Teams don't trade their top players unless they either know that player doesn't want to stay or they think, "You know, we need Makar more than we need Rantanen."

Well said.  

[RedLake]

3 hours ago, Up North Guy said:

This is a Wild fan site and if you are a fan, you have to be one of the most disgruntled negative nancy's around. If the team is so darn awful a the leadership so incompetent why do you bother posting? You have already posted previously that you are done with this team and yet here you are pissing and moaning again.

I've been a disgruntled fan for 25 years yeah that is true. 25 years of history repeating itself. What's wrong piss moaning about a team that fails year after year. Why do no big names sign here in free agency? Why has Kaprizov not have a 1c yet? Why does the media make excuses year after year. A NHL team needs bottom 6 players to obtain the Cup! Our bottom 6 is terrible, our top 6 is always injured. I hope they upset the Jets in around 1, I hope Kap and Ek come back and make a difference, I'm excited to see Zeev and Jiricek. Super excited to see what Yurov brings. Sure I'm disgruntled but I'm passionate about hockey in Minnesota at any level. 

[OldDutchChip]

11 hours ago, Citizen Strife said:

He also has more points and a +6 than Brock Faber who is at -1...but yes.  Let's rookies just take over our entire defensive corps and then tank our defensive scheme because OOH a player who probably wasn't leaving their team ever MIGHT be someone we could get.

You take Spurgeon's skillset and defense away, you have to find someone else to replace him.  Buium and Jiricek aren't there yet.  But hey.  Boston will trade McAvoy for Spurgeon full stop.  How about Spurgeon AND Boldy, and a couple picks for Makar?  That'll happen.  Teams don't trade their top players unless they either know that player doesn't want to stay or they think, "You know, we need Makar more than we need Rantanen." Turns out they were probably right.  Colorado still winning without him.  Probably cause they found fucking goaltending.

Trade speculation and real life are two different things.  We don't live in GM mode.  

- stop obsessing over stats 

- brodin and Middleton are not rookies, neither is untouchable Faber and there is FA too

- trying to find a way to replace a tiny, old player on a huge contract over the next 2 years? Yeah that’s doable.

“Buium and Jiricek aren't there yet.  But hey.  Boston will trade McAvoy for Spurgeon full stop. How about Spurgeon AND Boldy, and a couple picks for Makar?”   

A little over the top here Citi 😎 never did I say spurge is going to get us a stud D back, it’s more of a salary dump trade or if anyone wants to give us a third pair D back, sure - say Seeler for Spurge = deal

- Colorado won WITH Ranty, not without him. 

[OldDutchChip]

11 hours ago, Citizen Strife said:

How many times do you have to forget that Parise retired and that $7.5m would have been something like $15m or $20m?  Guerin had to make that move to avoid that bomb.  Playing Parise would not have solved it, because whether on the team or not, Parise retiring early fucked the team over.  The buyout was and still is the only option.  Think about how the team has played without their injured players.  The recapture penalty would have made it so those players wouldn't have even been an option.

The only reason it wasn't even worse was because Suter decided he wasn't done fleecing Central teams for money.

"But Freddy and Trenin suck."  Those are the only players Guerin would have played if Parise stayed and the recapture penalty fucked the Wild over.  

I don't know if Kaprizov stays if we go the Buffalo or Chicago route.  The Wild didn't, so we'll never know.  My thought process is he wouldn't have.  2-3 years of the Koivu/Brunette/Miettinen" era Wild would have scared off anybody.

Huh? You think we couldn’t still play Suter on 3rd pair and use Parise LTI insurance money?

thats called planning and logical path - go see how Chicago and Detroit handled it.

[OldDutchChip]

10 hours ago, Citizen Strife said:

But hey.  Three more months.

Three more months until we find out if Kap is leaving.  I wonder if the world will end if he does.

Not really sure it will.  I still have to go work at LEGO that week.  I'll let you know if the State of Hockey dies if one player doesn't get signed.

World won’t end but I suppose to you - it’s the process and the loooong journey to nowhere that you cherish, even if it doesn’t yield a result. Thats the MN curse for you - happiness with medicracy. If you don’t expect a winner - you won’t be disappointed! 

 

[OldDutchChip]

10 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

We're on the same page here. I don't think that Matthew Tkachuk's trajectory was quite there yet, but, like you, I believed he was the best player in that deal. We are also on the same page when it comes to the Wild's top 6, only Ek and Kaprizov bring the skill and toughness. Boldy has potential. Zuccy and Rossi will not have that component in their game.

 

The main difference is that I have a longer runway than you do at this point. But, I also get a lot of pleasure out of watching the team improve, especially the kids. 

But, let's do this with history and see where we stood. When Fletcher traded for Pominville, what was your reaction? Mine was the guy was too soft for what we needed, but did offer an RHS and was a proven goal scorer. I thought we went after the wrong guy.

When Fletcher traded for Hanzal what was your reaction? Mine was akin to shredding of garments, I thought he was a terrible fit both in the locker room and with his play. That particular year, I simply thought we were better off riding with who got us there. Again, that was the wrong player to go after.

Pomminville was a let down on day 1 - we went in on the wrong player - I don’t think you can create the least impossible line consisting of ALL captains but that we did - Koivu Parise and Pom were really underwhelming for what the concept should have delivered.

Hanzal - even worse. I never saw skill there, just a a bit of size w some FO skill (if i recall correctly)

both trades were a headscrather but expected (we had some link to buffalo so it was faith…where do we see it play out now 🤔)

and yeap exactly - you enjoy that development and have more patience, whereas I think we reached the point of “not again”, we reached the point where we need to act, we got the wild card in Kaprizov but will likely loose him shortly so the long game has to be changed, but the players that run the team are too stubborn to make that change for whatever reason and keep feeding to fans the importance of development and patience…..which funny enough is assurance that we will enter in another long-term phase of the same development and patience- we got Kap to break out of this cycle and have a chance to win and think we thrown that away. No excuses, there none. 

[OldDutchChip]

18 minutes ago, OldDutchChip said:

Pomminville was a let down on day 1 - we went in on the wrong player - I don’t think you can create the least impossible line consisting of ALL captains but that we did - Koivu Parise and Pom were really underwhelming for what the concept should have delivered.

Hanzal - even worse. I never saw skill there, just a a bit of size w some FO skill (if i recall correctly)

both trades were a headscrather but expected (we had some link to buffalo so it was faith…where do we see it play out now 🤔)

and yeap exactly - you enjoy that development and have more patience, whereas I think we reached the point of “not again”, we reached the point where we need to act, we got the wild card in Kaprizov but will likely loose him shortly so the long game has to be changed, but the players that run the team are too stubborn to make that change for whatever reason and keep feeding to fans the importance of development and patience…..which funny enough is assurance that we will enter in another long-term phase of the same development and patience- we got Kap to break out of this cycle and have a chance to win and think we thrown that away. No excuses, there none. 

Least imposing, I meant

[OldDutchChip]

10 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

I think the A accomplishes that too.

Disagree

you can walk away from A without a second thought

a C is much more to a player and can anchor a player to a team - which is what we need w Kap 

[OldDutchChip]

10 hours ago, Mateo3xm said:

There has to be an incentive to come here. At the moment there really isn’t a whole lot. We have high taxes, it’s cold here, we are a middle sized market team, we have some good players but not enough, we have had cap issues for a long time, we have a lot of old players, a lot of young players and few in between, etc etc. Why would these big name players want to come to MN? Thats one of the biggest reason why I think its so important for specifically MN to do at least a rebuild at some point. It should have been done in the past a long time ago but they decided to “retool” instead. They are doing excellent in drafting but you only get so far with that. In order to win you need to get more than one elite player on a team and if you don’t have a desirable location you have to draft those elite players. The issue with this team is there wasn’t a whole lot of thought and preparation done in building it into a contender. From the sounds of it, they’ve been prevented from doing a rebuild by the imbecile owner. Almost every single cup team did a rebuild for at least 1-2 years. I can’t think of a cup team where they just traded their way into a cup. I could be wrong but if I am it doesn’t happen very often.

Would Tkachuk not want to play for MN over Ottawa? I think he would

Would Tkachuk like to partner up with Kaprizov and pal Boldy? I think he would

as for others - as I’ve said already - we are not at the big boys table, we scavenge in the left over bin. And then say same thing - oh why bother, it won’t happen to us poor Minnesotans 

this is crap - this is the approach that I want to uproot and it starts with having the balls to play big and be willing to put a good trade request out there. Not for Nyquist and Barz types. Ranty was just one name. But for every big name - we are never mentioned or never really make a serious attempt.

Will that change? Nah but I think it should

[OldDutchChip]

13 hours ago, M_Nels said:

Double edged sword here though, SJS, Buffalo, Anaheim, Chicago and Detroit have been in rebuilding mode for several years with no light at the end of the tunnel for any of them really. Could be argued that the Wild doing a "competitive rebuild" are closer to a cup than any of them. 

Winning or being in contention is something Wild have never done. Never. So to the previous poster - that’s a definite Yes - a team can become a competitor by taking chances and moving big pieces.

 Not all teams win, but can we maybe have a team ONE time that actually realistically competes for the cup?

In my mind, there was a way to compete and instead we still swim around the mediocracy like in a swamp, not able to drag ourselves out or not even realizing we are stuck - poetic! 🤔 teams go in and out to say Hi to us, but we are its eternal keeper 

[mnfaninnc]

7 hours ago, OldDutchChip said:

and yeap exactly - you enjoy that development and have more patience, whereas I think we reached the point of “not again”, we reached the point where we need to act, we got the wild card in Kaprizov but will likely loose him shortly so the long game has to be changed, but the players that run the team are too stubborn to make that change for whatever reason and keep feeding to fans the importance of development and patience…..which funny enough is assurance that we will enter in another long-term phase of the same development and patience- we got Kap to break out of this cycle and have a chance to win and think we thrown that away. No excuses, there none. 

So, really then, our differences teeter on 1 simple issue: the resigning of Kaprizov. If you're right and Kaprizov is impatient, this will have been all for naught. If I'm right and Kaprizov sees the future as bright and resigns, this will have been the right course. I don't know that things get resolved on July 1, but I'm pretty sure they will be resolved by October 1.

We seem to see both trades pretty identically. As for Hanzal, I think he broke the locker room and Fletcher had no clue that would happen. Perhaps he came in injured to begin with, but he was far too slow and bumping Haula down was unfair to one of their own. It was as egregious as not starting Talbot game 1 vs. St. Louis.

Edited Saturday at 01:42 PM by mnfaninnc

[mnfaninnc]

17 hours ago, M_Nels said:

Double edged sword here though, SJS, Buffalo, Anaheim, Chicago and Detroit have been in rebuilding mode for several years with no light at the end of the tunnel for any of them really. Could be argued that the Wild doing a "competitive rebuild" are closer to a cup than any of them. 

Of these teams, I think Detroit is the closest to come out of this mode. Really, they could be a Spurgeon away from breaking the playoff barrier.