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Somehow, the biggest lightning rod in the Minnesota Wild's abbreviated playoff run was the player with the team's third-fewest minutes. But that's what fans will focus on when a team takes Marco Rossi, their second-leading scorer in the regular season, and plays him for 11 minutes and 8 seconds per night. For context, that's less than Marat Khusnutdinov, a fourth-line center with seven points in 57 games, got during the regular season. Having seen the Wild's postseason play out, it's clear what happened. John Hynes (and possibly Bill Guerin, judging from some of his radio comments) decided that Rossi couldn't make an impact in a series against the Vegas Golden Knights. He started on the third line with Marcus Foligno and a clearly washed Gustav Nyquist, a role Rossi hadn't been in all season. After struggling in his playoff debut, the Wild demoted him to the fourth line with Yakov Trenin and Justin Brazeau. And that's where he stayed. Scoring goals in back-to-back games didn't get him out of the doghouse. Engaging physically in Game 5, where he registered three hits and three blocked shots, didn't do the trick, either. No style of play, no level of success was getting him off the fourth line. There was nothing he could do. In doing so, the Wild doomed Rossi to their self-fulfilling prophecy. By treating him as if he couldn't make an impact, they put him in a position where he was least capable of making one. Despite the three points in six games -- a 0.50 PPG average that is, mind you, tied for 19th in franchise history, between Kevin Fiala (0.53 PPG) and Mikko Koivu (0.47) -- Minnesota got a result they can point to and back up their suspicions. His detractors (including those in the Wild organization) can point to three flashpoints: Rossi being on the ice for the Game 5 overtime goal. His double minor in Game 6. And his having the worst expected goals percentage at 5-on-5 this series, as noted by The Athletic. Make of the errors what you'd like, I guess. Rossi was part of that Game 5 breakdown -- although there's a pretty good case that Zach Bogosian was more responsible. Even though Brayden McNabb lifted Rossi's stick into his own face in Game 6, Rossi still has to control his stick. But as for his expected goals percentage... what did the Wild expect? Out of 18 forwards with 150-plus minutes at 5-on-5 for the Wild during the regular season, Trenin was 10th in goals for percentage (44.4) and 11th in expected goals for percentage (47.5). Brazeau ranked dead last in both categories. Both players were in the bottom half of generating actual and expected goals per hour. That trio didn't generate offense outside of two nice passes off a Trenin forecheck. The Rossi-Trenin duo combined to get just a 28.5% share of the expected goals in their limited time on the ice. Minnesota generated expected goals at a rate of 0.99 per hour with that tandem, which is abysmal. When apart from Trenin, his expected goals share boosted up to 49.3%, and the Wild generated 2.44 expected goals per hour. If you're looking for a reason why Rossi would have disappointing numbers with Trenin and Brazeau, it's not hard to figure out. There's a reason Hynes doesn't consider playing Matt Boldy or Kirill Kaprizov on the fourth line for an entire playoff series. Maybe you're thinking something like, Look, a player isn't entitled to a spot in the lineup because they scored 60 points in the regular season. This is professional sports. It's not about fairness or being a hard-working kid with a good attitude who does everything the team asks of him. It's about results. And, hey, maybe that's right. So let's take a look at Rossi's results. In 66:47 of all-situations time, Rossi scored three points. Mind you, only 3:30 of that was on the power play, less time than the likes of Nyquist and Marcus Johansson. Despite being a power play afterthought, he put up 2.70 points per hour during his ice time. For fun, here's a list of Wild players who Rossi's career points per hour rate beats out: Zach Parise, 2.66 points per hour Kirill Kaprizov, 2.40 points per hour Marian Gaborik, 2.36 points per hour Ryan Hartman, 2.30 points per hour Jason Pominville, 2.28 points per hour Wes Walz, 2.26 points per hour Brian Rolston, 2.03 points per hour Kevin Fiala, 1.89 points per hour Pavol Demitra, 1.86 points per hour Matt Boldy, 1.86 points per hour Eric Staal, 1.86 points per hour Nino Niederreiter, 1.82 points per hour Small sample size, but damn, that sounds like someone Minnesota should've put on the ice if they wanted not to lose three games by a goal each. Only Hynes didn't do that. It's one thing for a coach to bury his team's second-leading scorer on the fourth line and win the series. They can claim they pushed the right buttons, and scoreboard. Who's gonna argue? But when they lose a series of one-goal games? There are gonna be questions to answer, especially for a coach whose playoff results aren't exactly above reproach. It was a predictable outcome for the Wild, partly because they ensured it, both for Rossi and the series as a whole. Minnesota played Rossi on the fourth line, and now they can claim he played like a fourth liner. That makes sense. The logical conclusion for Hynes turning his third-most-potent scoring threat into a fourth-liner was the one we saw. The Wild offense drying up the second Kaprizov and Boldy started running out of gas. Don't worry -- with the increasingly inevitable Rossi trade coming up, it appears that no lessons will be learned from any of this.

"Best Available Player" is a phrase that gets thrown around a ton at draft time. There's a beautiful simplicity to the philosophy. Just add talent, and get the best players you can. It's so obvious! Fans thinking, If I were the GM, I'd simply go BPA, is the basis of why, for example, the Minnesota Wild drafting Charlie Stramel in 2023 inspired backlash. It's why fans in 2024 laughed as the Philadelphia Flyers traded down one spot to not draft Zeev Buium, allowing Minnesota to pick up a talented defenseman for a third-round pick and the right to draft lower-ranked center Jett Luchanko. As for me? I'm more inclined to lean towards a "BPA" approach. It's not always that simple, of course. For example, there is rarely a clear-cut "Best Player Available." A team's scouts also might genuinely judge a prospect to have more or less talent than the consensus, muddying those waters further. However, I generally believe the purpose of the draft is to accumulate as much talent as possible, then patching up any organizational holes later. It also appears to be a philosophy that Wild director of scouting Judd Brackett buys into. He's a scout who tends to take fallers -- players with significant talent who slip through the cracks, for one reason or another. By contrast, Chuck Fletcher's regime, led by head scout Brent Flahr, loved late risers: players who were generally off the radar as first-rounders, but made massive strides in the months leading up to the draft. You can see the "fallers" throughout the Wild's recent draft history. Buium partly fell due to a loaded defensive class at the top of the draft. In 2022, Danila Yurov fell because of "The Russia Factor." In 2021, Jesper Wallstedt tumbled down the draft board, despite being widely considered the top goalie of his class. And, of course, in 2020, Marco Rossi fell to No. 9 overall. Statistically, there was an argument to make that Rossi was the best prospect in his class. Hockey Prospecting's model had him as the likeliest player to turn into a star, and the third-likeliest to play 200 NHL games. NHL scouts weren't quite as sold, but among that group, he still had a consensus ranking of seventh in his class. Faced with choosing between Rossi, a skilled winger (Cole Perfetti, who went 10th), a top goalie prospect (Yaroslav Askarov, 11th), and a bigger, lower-upside center (Anton Lundell, 12th), the Wild did what any BPA team would do: Grab the most talent at the most premium position. On paper, it worked brilliantly. This season, Rossi scored the sixth-most goals (24, tied with Tim Stützle) and points (60) of anyone in the 2020 Draft Class. He was sixth among his class in Standings Points Above Replacement (4.4, behind Stützle, Dylan Holloway, Lucas Raymond, Quinton Byfield, and JJ Peterka). He scored massive, clutch goals for a Wild team that made the playoffs by one point. Except, it seems, if you're the Wild's front office. Here, we see the potential pitfalls of Best Player Available. At the moment, Rossi was the best player Minnesota could have drafted. He's arguably still better than anyone chosen after him. But talent isn't everything. Even production isn't everything. The upcoming split between the Wild and Rossi is about more than that. On his "Fellowship of the Rink" podcast, The Athletic's Joe Smith asked his colleague, Michael Russo, where things went wrong in the relationship between team and player. Russo's response was illuminating: "I get the sense, talking to people within the organization, they just always want him to be something that he's incapable of being, because he can't just add a bunch of weight and size to him.... I think that [Bill Guerin] just doesn't feel that, if you add him to this team, that he's somebody that you can win with in the playoffs." You may be familiar with the dissenting argument, but let's take it at face value: What if Rossi isn't, and never was, a good fit for the organization? If they think that, then this is an issue they should have seen coming. Rossi was listed at 5-foot-9, 185 pounds at the 2020 Draft, and he's listed at 5-foot-9, 182 pounds today. It's not like that was a surprise. The Wild were also among the smallest teams in the NHL heading into 2020-21, and that's something that hasn't changed over time, either. How wasn't this a problem in 2020, but is a problem now? Even more frustrating is that the thing Rossi is supposedly incapable of being -- A Mikko Koivu/Joel Eriksson Ek-style power center -- was available to them at that spot! Lundell is 6-foot-1, 196 pounds, and has been a center exactly in that Koivu/JEEK mold: A touch limited offensively, but dominant in his own zone. They could have just done that! Maybe Minnesota wouldn't have made the playoffs with Lundell being thrust into a No. 1 center role instead of Rossi. But they'd at least have the fit they wanted, avoiding this awful situation they're hurtling toward. The Wild have shown their hand on Rossi. Everyone saw his coach bury him on the fourth line during the playoffs. Everyone's heard his name in trade rumors for years. We also know that the Wild don't seem prepared to pay him more than $5 million per season. That last part is perhaps most significant because teams know that if they sign Rossi to an offer sheet in the $6 to $6.8 million range, the Wild will likely take the compensation, which will be first- and third-round picks in 2026. If that route is in their back pocket, and teams know the Wild don't like him, what's the incentive to give up a top center prospect? Or a young player with upside? Or take him as the centerpiece to a blockbuster deal? Why not just get him for two picks they probably won't care much about? I suppose you can give the Wild a bit of credit for fixing this disconnect between organizational and drafting philosophy in 2023 with Stramel. Fans may still be miffed that they didn't get super-skilled winger Gabriel Perreault. However, if Rossi and his 60 points are apparently not good enough for St. Paul's brain trust, it's not likely they'd be high on a small winger with below-average speed. Still, that correction can't make up for the original sin of taking a player the front office never seemed enamored of in the first place. It's been five years since that draft. Five years of development for Rossi, and five years of the organization pouring resources into him, only to be on the verge of selling him at a discount. If that happens, it's hard to conclude anything other than the team wasted the time of everyone involved, including themselves, and the fallout of going BPA might end up setting back their Stanley Cup aspirations.

For the second time in five years, the Minnesota Wild are importing a highly-touted prospect from the KHL to the State of Hockey. The first one, of course, worked out pretty good. Now, they've finally signed forward Danila Yurov to a three-year, entry-level contract starting with the 2025-26 season. You don't have to take our word for it, either: Yurov is the Wild's second first-rounder (after Liam Öhgren) of the 2022 Draft and seemed poised to make the jump to North America last summer. He'd followed in Kirill Kaprizov's footsteps, winning the Gagarin Cup as a KHL Champion. In 2023-24, he notched 21 goals and 49 points in 62 games, surpassing Vladimir Tarasenko as the highest-scoring U-21 forward in KHL history (since tied by Ivan "Dimmadome" Demidov last year). Instead, he re-signed with Metallurg Magnitogorsk in the KHL, telling The Athletic, "I want more consistency from myself and to gain physical strength." It was a bit of a wait, though not nearly as long as the five-year odyssey with Kaprizov, but the moment is here. Now the question goes from, When does he get here? to What's next? The truth is, we don't know. Following his KHL breakout, a lower-body injury slowed Yurov's production, and he only scored 13 goals and 25 points in 46 games last season. You'd probably feel better about his prospects for next year had he stacked back-to-back stellar seasons, but injuries happen. Regardless, this probably isn't going to be a Kaprizov-type situation, where the 2020-21 Calder Trophy winner arrived fully formed. Remember, Kaprizov was 23 years old (and 263 days) when he debuted with the Wild. He came to Minnesota with 293 games of KHL experience -- 340 if you count the playoffs -- a Gagarin Cup, two goal-scoring titles in the KHL, and an Olympic Gold Medal. Alex Ovechkin and Georgy Zhukov are he only more decorated people in Russian history. Yurov has the Cup, but his resume can't touch Kaprizov's, which is understandable. He's two years younger than Kaprizov when he signed with the NHL. Yurov's 209 games played (270 counting the playoffs) in the KHL don't tell the whole story. His 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons saw him log 42 combined games, but at under five minutes a night. The following year saw him play 59 games, but at an average of just barely over eight minutes per game. So really, Yurov has two years of experience as a true regular in the KHL, as opposed to Kaprizov's five or six. There's still some development left for him, where there simply wasn't for Dolla Bill Kirill. Forget the 40-goal, 76-point 82-game pace Kaprizov was on for his rookie season -- Yurov reaching the 27 goals and 51 points Kaprizov actually scored (in the COVID-shortened season) is probably better than the best-case scenario. Looking at first-round rookies from Russia since 2010, their track record isn't fantastic. Let's look at the top 10 in terms of points per game: 1. Matvei Michkov, 2024-25 (age 20): 0.79 2. Nail Yakupov, 2012-13 (age 19): 0.65 3. Vladimir Tarasenko, 2012-13 (age 21): 0.50 4. Evgeny Kuznetsov, 2013-14 (age 22): 0.46 T-5. Andrei Svechnikov, 2018-19 (age 18): 0.45 T-5. Denis Gurianov, 2019-20 (age 22): 0.45 7. Valeri Nichushkin, 2014-15 (age 18): 0.43 8. Vladislav Namestnikov, 2014-15 (age 22): 0.37 T-9: Vasily Podkolzin, 2021-22 (age 20): 0.33 T-9: Fedor Svechkov, 2024-25 (age 21): 0.33 That's three guys out of the 15 who qualified who got a half-point or more per game. And we're talking about some fantastic KHLers who took time to get up to speed. Tarasenko was literally the best Under-21 player in league history, but it took him until his third NHL season to score 30 goals. Kuznetsov had multiple 40-point seasons in the KHL, but it also took him time to ramp up. It's an adjustment that includes, but goes beyond the jump in talent and the speed of the game. Yurov is moving halfway around the world and has to adapt to a different culture. Oh, and he has to keep learning to play the most difficult position on the ice, which he only started playing regularly two years ago. The Wild front office seems confident in his ability to adapt to the center position, intending to start him at the pivot to begin the season. Is he going to be ready for that role immediately? That's an open question, and it's possible he might never be a better fit at center than at wing. That's not to say Wild fans shouldn't be excited for Yurov next year. This is an exciting day, and Yurov is a player who could be electric in Minnesota. But is patience going to be required? Absolutely. Next year may be go-time for the Wild as an organization, but it's going to be Yurov's first step toward a long and productive career. Fans (and the front office) must keep that in mind.