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Special teams are incredibly important in crunch-time games, and the Minnesota Wild's power play had been struggling to cash in on their few chances in the last week or so. In their last four games, Minnesota went 0-for-9 with the man advantage, including two losses to big-time teams. Normally, a team like the Wild can ride out a four-game slump. However, needing to get a win against a top Washington Capitals team, John Hynes needed to do something drastic to shake things up. On Wednesday, the usually-conservative Hynes went bold, icing a five-forward power play unit. Some of the best, most talented teams have tried this tactic -- the Toronto Maple Leafs and Florida Panthers come to mind as the pioneers -- but the Wild have been slow to the party. Under Bruce Boudreau, they were among the last teams to fully embrace having four forwards on the power play. Dean Evason always felt confident enough in Jared Spurgeon to have him as a defensive safety blanket. As for Hynes, Spurgeon, Brock Faber, and Declan Chisholm have all had 50-plus power play minutes. You can understand a fully-healthy Wild getting tempted into a five-forward unit. Having Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, Mats Zuccarello, Matt Boldy, and Marco Rossi all on the ice? No one would bat an eye at that. But Hynes pulled that lever with Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek on the shelf, putting in Freddy Gaudreau and Marcus Johansson on the top unit. That raised eyebrows, or it would have, if it hadn't worked. 23 seconds into Minnesota's second (and final) power play chance, Gaudreau tipped Boldy's point shot to send the puck past Charlie Lindgren to tie the game. It was a necessary step to secure a crucial two points by knocking off the President's Trophy-leading Capitals. Gaudreau even iced the game by notching an empty-net goal. When Gaudreau first got to the Wild, he was plucked out of obscurity by Evason, whose long relationship with the player came from their days with the AHL's Milwaukee Admirals. Evason staked some of his reputation on Gaudreau, telling Michael Russo in August 2021, "I can attest to him... being a real, real good player, but a real good teammate as well." After a 44-point season, Evason got to take a victory lap. "I think my feelings personally on Freddy are well-known by now and I think it's an organizational feeling as well," the coach declared the following September. "You could play Freddy anywhere." But when Evason got fired amidst a slow start from many Wild players -- including Gaudreau -- it put Gaudreau into somewhat uncharted territory. Gaudreau was a late-bloomer, making the NHL full-time at 28, under a coach who had a unique relationship with him. How would it work under Hynes, who had no connection to Gaudreau at all? As Gaudreau's struggles compounded, it didn't work. During the 2022-23 season under Evason, Gaudreau averaged 16 minutes and three seconds per night for Minnesota. During Gaudreau's final 37 games in his first season under Hynes, that average time on ice fell to 13:24. Early this season, Hynes put Gaudreau on fourth-line duty, with him averaging just under 14 minutes a night in October, a month in which he went scoreless until the final game. His struggles under Hynes led to widespread speculation that the Wild might seek to give him a fresh start under the coach who had 1000% faith in him. However, no such move materialized, and Hynes, Minnesota's front office, and the fans all should be happy about that right now. It’s the State of Freddy Hockey now. Goals have been tough to come by in St. Paul this March, and Gaudreau's been one of the only reliable sources of them. His six scores in March leads the team, and his eight points are behind only Matt Boldy, tying him for second on the Wild. On a squad that's struggling to keep up trying to elevate the team in the wake of an absurd string of injuries, Gaudreau is one of the few players seeming to gain strength as the season wears on. And whether Gaudreau sees it this way, he's proving that he's no one-coach wonder. Hynes is leaning on Gaudreau like he never has before and is finding why Evason had such trust in the player. Since the start of February, Gaudreau is averaging 17:16 per night -- more ice time than Gaudreau's peak season (16:16) under Evason. During that span, Gaudreau is fifth among Wild forwards in 5-on-5 time, fifth in power play time, and by far their top penalty-killing forward. When defending a one-score lead with a 5-on-6 against the best goal-scorer of all time, Hynes had Freddy Hockey out there to stop Alex Ovechkin from tying the game. As Evason said, Hynes is finding he can play Gaudreau anywhere. Of course, some of this increase in playing time is out of necessity. During February and March, Ryan Hartman missed time due to suspension and Eriksson Ek has been out for over a month. If Gaudreau was simply eating minutes, maybe that's not a perfect indication of trust. But Gaudreau is stepping up, and as the five-forward power play showed, Hynes is looking for ways to get him into the game. It's working, and Gaudreau is suddenly in sight of setting a career-high in goals. He scored 19 two seasons ago, which means he needs just two in his final nine games to not just hit a career-best, but crack the 20-goal mark for the first time. More importantly, the perpetual underdog is helping an underdog Wild team claw out points as they grow closer to clinching a playoff spot. Last night saw him help Minnesota pick up a huge regulation win against Washington. Earlier this month, he notched two points in a 4-3 win against the Seattle Kraken. He scored the only tally in a 1-0 shutout of the Boston Bruins. Combine those big-moment scores with his always-solid two-way game, and Gaudreau is showing he's a player capable of earning the trust of any coach.

“It is going to be alright. It’s all good!” “This team is so awful. I’m angry!” “Listen, this is exactly what you’d expect to happen, so really, it is what it is. Just go with the flow, bro.” Odds are that when you think of the Minnesota Wild right now, a phrase that sounds like one of the three above starts running through your head. Whichever one it is, it’s also likely the same phrase that runs through your head most of the time. Sports fans tend to fall into one of three categories. Scroll through the comment section on any sports website. You’re likely to see each one of them battling for the souls of the other two in an increasingly escalating debate that eventually dissolves into a bunch of fiery declarations about who lives in their parents’ basement and who just needs to open their eyes and “actually watch the games.” And let’s be honest, we’re lucky if it stops there. But we here at Hockey Wilderness are a civilized bunch intent on delivering wholesome content to our loyal and knowledgeable readers. So, instead of rehashing the same conversations you’re likely to find in the comment sections on lesser sites, what you’ll see here today is what happens when three highly rational, completely objective hockey fans engage in a spirited discussion about how the Wild will fare in this year’s Stanley Cup Playoffs. In one corner, you have Optimist Brian. In the other, Peter the Pessimist. And up there, perched from the rafters and taking in the big picture, is Rational Randy. ---------------------------------------- The prompt: The Minnesota Wild will find playoff success this postseason and win at least one round. Optimist Brian: They can definitely do it! If you don’t count the past two months, the Wild are basically one of the best teams in the league. No reason they can’t ramp it back up in April with all their big guns. Peter the Pessimist: Listen, good hockey is like jazz music – I know it when I see it, and with this bunch, I haven’t seen it in a while. Plus, I mean, if we’re not counting the past two months, I’ve only gained four pounds since Christmas. So why don’t my pants fit then? Rational Randy: The way I see it, you can’t win or move comfortably in your pants if you’re not healthy, so of course, the Wild have been struggling lately. I believe that answers Peter’s question as well. Let’s see what happens if everyone gets healthy and the Wild can give opponents a healthy diet of Kirill and Co. every night. Time will tell, fellas. Optimist Brian: That’s exactly what I’m saying! We all know that when the Wild put the pedal to the medal and play their game, they get rewarded for their efforts. In general manager Bill Guerin, we trust! This is the guy who finally got Kaprizov to come over and who led the team to the best regular season in franchise history. Peter the Pessimist: Listen Brian, would I trust Bill Guerin to spin a good yarn and pick up the tab at the bar? Absolutely. Do I trust him with my hockey team? Sorry, but that ship flew the coop when he handled the team like he has this year. And really, even before that, things started getting weird. Rational Randy: Well, the way I see it, going into the season, the Wild weren’t expected to be as good as they have been so far, so we have to keep that in mind. Have they been as good as we would have hoped? No. But they haven’t been awful either. Time will tell what happens. We just gotta let the universe unfold as it will, bros. Optimist Brian: Well, listen, the universe unfolds according to the will of the hockey gods, and this year, they have to be on our side! I mean, the Wild put on their hard hats every game and go to work, and they’re bound to get rewarded with some puck luck at some point. Why wouldn’t this be the year they finally do? It’s the final year of Flower Power, after all. The gods be with us, I say. Peter the Pessimist: What in the name of Manny Fernandez are you two blabbering on about? The universe and hockey gods don’t win you hockey games! It’s Xs and Os, execution, being a well-oiled machine, and star power. And right now, the Wild are headed down the home stretch looking like the rickety sled in Cool Runnings, and the team’s stars are being held together with duct tape. Rational Randy: You know, Peter, some people have used duct tape to do some really great things. I had a wallet made out of it for all of middle school. The Wild’s chances have definitely gotten worse with all the injuries they’ve had, but all you really need is a chip and a chair, and then once the cards are dealt, it’s all up to fate. Time will tell. Let’s just sit back and enjoy the ride, dudes. Optimist Brian: You’re damn right I’m gonna enjoy the ride! How many teams do you know that could survive this many injuries to key players and still be pretty much a lock to make the playoffs? You know why? It’s because they have the intangibles and put the pieces in place to succeed. Their goalie tandem features an emerging star and a sure-fire hall of famer. They have a great mix of young talent and steady vets who all know their roles. Look at Marcus Johansson. He’s practically the Greek god of off-puck neutral zone positioning. That’s the stuff you need to win! Peter the Pessimist: Oookay. Let’s unpack this for a second, Brian. Your rationale for the team making a playoff run is that the Wild played well to start the season, they have a backup goaltender who they’ve barely played in the last month, and because they have Marcus freaking Johansson? What in the name of Justin Fontaine are you smoking? Randy, come on, this guy’s nuts, right? Rational Randy: Well, I can see both of your points, really. There’s a lot to be said for having a veteran presence in the room, and Fleury is known to have been a valuable mentor to young goalies in the playoffs. And Johansson does bring some defensive value, but Greek god is a little over the top. So yeah Peter, Brian’s probably smoking something. But that’s just his journey, man, just like the Wild are on theirs. Time will tell what happens, compadres. Optimist Brian: The Wild won this week! They are the best! Peter the Pessimist: The Wild lost this week. They suck. Rational Randy: You win some, you lose some, bros. Optimist Brian: Let’s go Wild! Let’s go WILD! Peter the Pessimist: Uhh yeah…I’m gonna go. Randy, can we be done here? Rational Randy: Sure thing, fellas. Rational Randy abides.

Based on what we've seen so far, there's only one way that Liam Öhgren is helping the Minnesota Wild get to the playoffs this year. As trade bait. I don't say that disrespectfully or because there's any shame in not being ready for an NHL playoff run as a 21-year-old rookie. Öhgren can create his own shot at the AHL level but can't quite do it against bigger, stronger NHLers. That's not good or bad. It just is. Unless you're trying to get the Wild to the playoffs without Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek. Once Eriksson Ek went on the IR, Minnesota had gone 0-3-0 before being forced to make a move, trading for Gustav Nyquist. It wasn't inspiring, perhaps, but when your team scores two or fewer goals in seven of their past nine games... you gotta do something. To make the Nyquist trade, they had to send Öhgren and fellow rookie forward Marat Khusnutdinov to the Iowa Wild for salary cap reasons. Those ripples showcase Minnesota's issues as a potential buyer: They have little flexibility, few moveable pieces, and almost no draft capital. The Wild will enter the 2025 Draft with only their second and sixth-round picks and a fourth-rounder they picked up from the Toronto Maple Leafs for facilitating a Ryan O'Reilly trade two deadlines ago. They've already moved their 2026 second-rounder to acquire Nyquist. So, what's left? A lot, actually. Minnesota has the second-best prospect pool in the NHL, according to The Athletic's Scott Wheeler. They have cornerstone pieces in Zeev Buium, (and, they hope) David Jiricek, Danila Yurov, and Jesper Wallstedt. Beyond those headliners, the Wild also have intriguing forward depth in Riley Heidt, Hunter Haight, and Charlie Stramel. Öhgren is sort of stuck in between those tiers. Few consider him a potential impact player, but he's close to NHL-ready and a cut above the Heidt/Haight/Stramel crowd. So it makes sense that, when asking Who's expendable?, Öhgren's name would come up. In fact, it did in The Athletic's round-up of players most likely to get dealt. Now, you've gotta give to get. Still, the Wild should go out of their way to keep Öhgren at the deadline, even if it means risking falling out of the playoffs. Why keep him over someone like Heidt, Haight, or even their 2026 first-rounder? It's a long-term fit issue. Many of Minnesota's forwards fit a similar prototype: Smart players who must rely on their offensive skill to make an impact in the NHL. Heidt, Haight, and Ryder Ritchie may play hard, but they don't have the potential to be, say, an elite forechecker like Eriksson Ek. Someone like Stramel might, but despite his strides at Michigan State, whether he makes it to the NHL is still an open question. As I said earlier, that's not good or bad. It just is. Öhgren is simply different from the pack. His 6-foot-0, 187-pound frame isn't imposing, but his playstyle should be once he settles into the NHL. Öhgren's game profiles similar to Eriksson Ek's. He has the skill to be on the power play but is effective on the forecheck. If the Wild want the kind of third-line scoring threat they had a few years ago with Eriksson Ek, Marcus Foligno, and Jordan Greenway, Öhgren is their most likely prospect to fill that role. That's probably not going to be the case with the smaller Heidt or Haight. Ritchie is 6-foot-1, so maybe he will become that player. Still, at least at the draft, he looks like someone whose ID you'd check before selling him lemonade. Obsessing over height and weight charts is a good way to make mistakes in player evaluation, but here's the thing: Someone has to fill the physical role on a team. It's not about fighting or blasting guys with hard hits. Instead, it's about having players who can forecheck and withstand physical pressure, which is essential. Öhgren is their top prospect who cleanly fits that bill. And if they don't develop someone like Öhgren, they'll try to find that player elsewhere. All you have to do is look at the last two summers to see that. Marcus Foligno got a four-year deal that's working out great now but carries the potential to fall off hard toward the end. Ryan Hartman signed a three-year extension and his value has plummeted to the point where he's getting called "just a knucklehead" by NHL executives. Yakov Trenin came in as a free agent and is on pace for eight goals in the first year of a four-year pact that pays him $3.5 million annually. It's hard to say that Öhgren is more important than the Big 4 of Buium, Jiricek, Wallstedt, and Yurov, but arguably, he's just as important, even if Öhgren doesn't quite stack up to them talent-wise. Great teams have great players at the top, of course, but teams also need strong role players to make a deep run. There's a place in Minnesota for someone with, say, Nino Niederreiter-type potential, which is something Öhgren can provide that few others in the system offer. You can't say, The fifth-best prospect in our system is completely untouchable, but the Wild would be wise to find any way they can to keep Öhgren in-house.

The Minnesota Wild are coming up on another offseason, and you know what that means: It's time for Marco Rossi trade rumor corner. The Wild's young center has been in the rumor mill for each of the past two offseasons, and it appears his 22 goals and 54 points in 70 games (so far) may not save him for a third round of rumors. After a trade deadline reprieve, the speculation machine started firing up again on Thursday's "Worst Seats in the House" Podcast with Michael Russo. Quoting Russo: Somebody asked [The Athletic colleague] Joe Smith on his podcast that he believes it's 70% [likely] that Marco Rossi is traded this summer. A person asked if I agreed with that, and I would actually say it's higher. I genuinely think that, reading the tea leaves, I think that they're gonna move him this summer... They are so far apart on what Rossi's camp his value is versus the Wild, it's not even funny. They're in different universes right now. Here we go again. There's the possibility that Rossi is on the Matt Dumba track, always available for a perfect return that will never arrive, presenting no one reason to worry Rossi could be on the move. However, Rossi is a restricted free agent this offseason, which means he's in line for a big raise that the Wild simply don't want to pay, perhaps even via offer sheet. It's a situation that at least has the potential to force the Wild's hand. Whether any trade is a good idea depends on the return, and we don't know what that might constitute. However, if Minnesota is looking for a center-for-center trade, it will be tough to upgrade from Rossi. As of Sunday, his Standings Points Above Replacement has been 4.1, which leads the Wild and puts him in the top-15 league-wide among regular centers. Let's just say that Jack Eichel, Leon Draisaitl, or Wyatt Johnston ain't walking through that door. That means the Wild can either try buying low on a formerly elite center like Elias Pettersson or make a lateral move, at best, in a center swap. The former may be a long shot, and the latter doesn't make much sense. That's fairly concerning because if a center-for-center swap isn't possible, then trading Rossi will put them, by definition, down a center. If that happens, the Wild will have become alarmingly cavalier about giving away talent down the middle. This happened, to a lesser extent, at the trade deadline when Minnesota shipped out Marat Khusnutdinov in a trade for winger Justin Brazeau. Khusnutdinov had few NHL accomplishments. Still, flipping a 22-year-old, speedy center for a slow, 28-year-old fourth-line winger was an odd choice, to say the least. Especially given how Rossi's recent injury scare showed how close the Wild's center depth is to running on fumes. Maybe Khusnutdinov wouldn't have helped with that, but he at least offers more upside than the Wild's current options. You don't have to look far to see how other teams value -- and honestly, hoard -- centers. The Colorado Avalanche traded premium draft capital to land Brock Nelson and Charlie Coyle at the trade deadline. The Dallas Stars go six-deep with Johnston, Matt Duchene, Roope Hintz, Jamie Benn, Maverik Bourque, and Sam Steel. Heck, they're throwing Mikael Granlund at the pivot before resorting to a Brendan Gaunce-type. Honestly, even with a healthy Rossi and Eriksson Ek, the Wild's center room will have difficulty keeping up with the sheer depth of the Western Conference's top teams. So what happens if they remove Rossi from the equation? Outside of a center-for-center deal, John Tavares is the only high-end free-agent center. Tavares is having a productive season (29 goals, 60 points in 62 games), but he'll also turn 35 before next season starts. It's also worth wondering whether a player who's played in New York and Toronto will see Minnesota as a desirable landing spot when the franchise has historically struggled to attract free agents without local ties. If the Wild strike out on an established center, then the franchise's eggs all go into the Danila Yurov basket. Yurov is a top prospect, but the Wild just saw a 21-year-old prospect in Khusnutdinov struggle to transition to the NHL after putting up solid numbers in the KHL. Yurov has advantages Khusnutdinov doesn't: he's bigger and has a better shot than Khusnutdinov. Regardless, pinning their hopes on a young player immediately adjusting to a bigger, faster league halfway across the world seems dubious. There's also a difference between shifting from wing to center in the KHL and doing so in the NHL. There's reason to think that Yurov can make the transition -- he has the size, skating, and skill to stick at the position. Still, even lifelong centers are sometimes better suited for the wing. Without Rossi, Minnesota could easily be left without a Plan B if Yurov can't stick down the middle. And even if Yurov is an NHL-caliber center and does make a seamless transition to the position... since when is it bad to go three-deep at center? It's almost becoming a requirement to win now. The Cup Champion Florida Panthers are another team with more centers than spots for centers. The runner-up Edmonton Oilers have two of the best five centers of the league, and Ryan Nugent-Hopkins is behind them on the depth chart. Dallas made the Conference Finals last season, and we've already talked about their situation. Up to this point, Russo and Smith's belief that the Wild will trade Rossi has come up bust, but it's never wise to dismiss someone as plugged-in as Russo. It feels like there's got to be fire to accompany this much smoke. Still, unless the Wild can pull off something huge, Wild fans should hope this round of Rossi rumors don't pan out. Centers are gold in the NHL, and the Wild have two high-end, Under-30 centers on their roster, with the chance to get a third in Yurov. Trading Rossi (likely) wouldn't just be a misunderstanding of the NHL's economy; it'd be a failure to properly read the Wild's map to a Stanley Cup.

It was always going to be easy to dunk on the Minnesota Wild at the trade deadline. Short of putting big-money players like Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek on LTIR, they simply didn't have the flexibility to grab a big fish like Mikko Rantanen or Brock Nelson or Brock Boeser. They couldn't get a medium fish, either. We must consider that difficulty when judging what the Wild did at the trade deadline. Maybe you're not thrilled about the Wild flipping a second-rounder for Gustav Nyquist, but what else could they have done? In a playoff chase, standing pat isn't much of an option, especially with Minnesota's offense sputtering. But the Wild did manage to find a way to make a move, swapping out Jakub Lauko on their active roster for Justin Brazeau of the Boston Bruins. Did they get better for the move? Probably. All due respect, Lauko's a "Nice guy, tries hard, loves the game" kind of guy. He's willing to get physical, has speed, and is a bit of a sparkplug. Still, you've got to have some offensive utility in the NHL, and Lauko didn't show much of that in Minnesota because his hands were a weakness. Meanwhile, Brazeau offers Minnesota three things they need at the moment: His 6-foot-5 frame, right-handed shot, and sneaky-good goal-scoring ability over his short NHL career. Since making the NHL last season, just days after his 26th birthday, Brazeau has potted 15 goals in 76 games. That's not a ton, but considering his ice time, it's fairly efficient. Since the start of the 2023-24 season, Brazeau's 0.95 goals per hour (in all situations) tie him for 144th among 411 forwards with 750-plus minutes during that span. That rate puts him right there with Jesper Bratt (0.96 Goals/60), Mark Stone (0.95), and Evgeni Malkin (0.94). Not bad. And, perhaps notably, more than anyone currently on the Wild aside from Kaprizov (1.69), Matt Boldy (1.13), Marco Rossi (1.00), and Eriksson Ek (0.97). Maybe Brazeau doesn't do much else, but scoring goals is the hardest thing to do in the NHL. However, if Brazeau indeed has the touch he showed in Boston, he has a chance to help Minnesota a bit. It's kinda weird that a team fighting for their playoff lives was regularly scratching him, but hey, it's worth a shot. If the move was for Lauko and the sixth-round pick they threw to the Bruins, this is a fine move, even if it doesn't move the needle all that much. But the Wild also threw in Marat Khusnutdinov, a soon-to-be-23-year-old center with upside. Giving up on an interesting young player before he hit 100 games makes the move much harder to swallow. Two things can be true at once: Khusnutdinov hasn't been an NHL-caliber player since making his debut in March of last season, and this was too soon to trade him. It's not just that Khusnutdinov scored just three goals and 11 points in 73 games. It was that he rarely took his tools -- his high-end speed, his ability to be a pest at 5-foot-10, the hands he showed in the KHL -- and put them together. He was merely solid defensively and a black hole on offense. Brazeau is likelier to help the Wild make the playoffs in 2024-25 than Khusnutdinov was, especially with the latter in the AHL because of the salary cap. As a short-term move, that's an upgrade. But why are the Wild playing the short game? No one in Minnesota thinks it's the Wild's year. Ownership acknowledges this is Year 2 of the front office's five-year plan. When Kaprizov came out looking like an MVP, and Minnesota stacked up wins, that was fun, of course. Still, no one at the Xcel Energy Center really thought this team was a Cup contender. Certainly not with $15 million in dead cap space. And, seemingly, that included the front office. A team going for it wouldn't have traded their first-round pick for David Jiricek, whose value was future-focused. They would have kept their powder dry to pursue a Nelson, a Boeser, or someone who could provide immediate help. What made the Jiricek move so great was that it was playing for 2025-26, when the Wild would have some money to throw around and build up some depth. It was a team looking at their window and making moves to take advantage of it while being honest about their chances this season. That was a step in the right direction. Khusnutdinov for Brazeau feels like a step in the wrong direction. Presumably, Minnesota sees their window as Years 3-through-5 of their plan. Who's more likely to make an impact then? A fast 22-year-old center who had a strong career in the KHL before arriving in Minnesota? Or a big 27-year-old winger with a nice shooting percentage in less than 1,000 NHL minutes? There's a decent chance that in three years, Brazeau will be a solid fourth-line NHLer, and Khusnutdinov will be back in the KHL. It's also plausible that neither player will be in the NHL in three seasons. But trading in the NHL is partly based on playing the odds, and the chances that Khusnutdinov will be a solid middle-six NHL forward in three years are much higher than Brazeau. Again, the Wild lacked flexibility in dollars to spend and assets to trade, which must be respected. But to what end did Minnesota part with a fast, young center? To get slightly better, sure. But in a Central Division where the Dallas Stars just got Rantanen and the Colorado Avalanche landed Nelson and Charlie Coyle? It seems like the Wild traded Khusnutdinov for a knife to bring to a howitzer fight, and that simply doesn't feel like enough reason to do that.

Brian Burke, the former NHL executive turned hockey luminary, has a theory about officiating in hockey. The first call of a game is the most important one because it sets the standard for the rest of the night. It lets players and coaches know where the line is and gives them an idea of what kind of game the officials will be calling that night. So when referee Carter Sandlak’s first call during Monday night’s tilt between the Minnesota Wild and the Los Angeles Kings was a slashing infraction against Marco Rossi after he disrupted Kevin Fiala’s attack with a one-handed tap to the former Wild sniper’s stick, the Wild, while agitated at the soft call, knew where the line was. At the very least, they could expect an “even-up” call. However, less than two minutes after the call against Rossi, Sandlak didn’t call a blatant two-handed slash by Trevor Moore onto Jared Spurgeon’s hands. Given the standard the referees had set with their initial call, the Wild captain was understandably upset by the discrepancy. Early in his next shift, the normally stoic Spurgeon couldn’t keep the frustration and annoyance from his face as he prepared for a neutral zone faceoff. When the puck dropped, the defenseman jumped immediately into the play as if shot out of a cannon and led a Wild attack that included two grade-A scoring chances for Ryan Hartman. That shift set the tone for the rest of the night for Spurgeon. He was simply phenomenal, with assists on Hartman’s game-tying power-play goal in the second period and Marcus Johansson’s game-clinching empty netter in the third, on which Spurgeon disrupted a pass and chipped it to Johansson. His impact also went beyond the scoresheet. Spurgeon was a force all over the ice. There was a puck battle with Adrian Kempe later in the first period when he initiated contact, made a hard stick play to establish positioning, and forced a change of possession. There was a sequence early in the second when he made multiple incursions into the offensive zone on Rossi’s dynamic shift that led to a Kings penalty. Then, there were multiple instances of domination against LA’s dynamic, powerful young center, Quinton Byfield, who probably saw Spurgeon in his nightmares. With the Wild on the penalty kill nearly halfway into the second period, Spurgeon shadowed Byfield down low and threw him against the boards with a surprisingly impactful body check. Later in the second, Spurgeon hit Byfield again during a race to the puck, then immediately stripped Fiala with a poke check that gave the Wild possession. On his first shift of the third period, Spurgeon aggressively pinched down the wall in the offensive zone. He took a perfect line when tracking back on a backcheck and out-leveraged Warren Foegele for a loose puck near the net, which allowed for an easy breakout. Spurgeon had Byfield’s number again on the penalty kill early in the third period when he poke-checked the puck off his stick as Byfield carried it into the zone, then immediately deflected his passing attempt, leading to a loose puck that ended with a tripping penalty on the Kings. It was a vintage performance by Spurgeon, with a little extra sandpaper mixed in. And he did a lot of it while looking, frankly, pissed off. Who can blame him? The Wild’s soft-spoken captain is a perennial Lady Byng candidate who lets his play do the talking. When he engages with officials, it’s usually in the form of a respectful conversation between whistles or during stoppages, and there’s never any of the yelling and foaming at the mouth that often occur when players and coaches are displeased with a call. Spurgeon had every right to feel disrespected and angered by the immediate contradiction Sandlak made to the standard he initially set two minutes prior. Missed calls happen every night because referees are human, and being an official is difficult. Still, when a blatant discrepancy occurs against a respected veteran, there are bound to be some angry players on the ice. In past seasons, the Wild occasionally let their ire with the officials derail them in games. With star players missing this year as the season heads into the final stretch, they can’t afford to lose their cool when calls don’t go their way. Instead, they can do exactly what Spurgeon did on Monday night. They can get angry and channel that anger into their play. What the Wild captain displayed against the Kings exemplified why he was named as just the second full-time captain in the organization’s history. The Wild will need more of that if they want to make a run in the playoffs. So, while the Wild never did receive the “even up” they deserved, it didn’t matter. Jared Spurgeon took matters into his own hands, evened it out himself, and led the team to a much-needed victory.

“Asset Management” is something of a hockey-writer buzzword. Usually, it’s a euphemism writers use to say they didn’t like something a GM did. In this case, that’s partly true. However, along with that perspective, the Marat Khusnutdinov trade seems to be a failure of patience. In the interest of maximizing playoff chances this year, management just sold an asset that was about to mature. The trade is not without its benefits. The Minnesota Wild sent out Khusnutdinov, Jakub Lauko, and a sixth-round pick for Justin Brazeau, a 27-year-old right-handed winger with a solid two-way game. Brazeau’s offensive impacts are much better than Khusnutdinov or Lauko’s this year. For a team ranked 26th in five-on-five goals per minute, that’s a significant impact. Between Nyquist replacing Lauko and Brazeau replacing Khusnutdinov, that could be an extra one to four goals over a playoff series. It’s also helpful for the Wild to consolidate a long list of bottom-six wingers before the trade: Lauko, Nyquist, Marcus Foligno, Vinnie Hinostroza, and Yakov Trenin can’t all play on the bottom two lines. On top of that, the Wild had three bottom-six centers in Khusnutdinov, Ryan Hartman, and Freddy Gaudreau. Shipping out two of those players for one better player makes sense and still leaves Minnesota an extra forward in case of injury. On the other hand, the Wild traded away center depth. That’s typically a strength of teams who make a deep playoff run. Brazeau’s size makes him a natural fit for Hynes’s penalty kill system, which is predicated on denying zone entries rather than in-zone defense. Faster, smaller players such as Khusnutdnov and Lauko are better for in-zone defense when the opponent has the puck on their stick, but Brazeau’s 6-foot-5 frame gives him the reach to stand at the blue line and prevent zone entries. It’s also better suited to battling in the corner to win and clear pucks, another of Hynes’s priorities on the PK. Jakub Lauko and Marat Khusnutdinov have had good isolated impacts on the penalty kill already -- especially Khusnutdinov. On the other hand, that’s only an 81-minute sample at four-on-five, so analytics should take a backseat to the opinions of Minnesota’s coaches and pro scouts. Also, the Wild’s penalty kill hasn’t been good overall, so perhaps Brazeau’s scheme fit will buoy the success of the rest of the unit in a way not captured by his measured analytical impacts. There’s no question that the purpose of this trade was to fill out Minnesota’s depth scoring and hope that Brazeau and Nyquist can help the PK more than Lauko and Khusnutdinov. The question is, will this all be worth it? Minnesota is paying a high price for Brazeau. For starters, the Wild sent the Boston Bruins a bottom-six replacement in Lauko and a sixth-round pick to grease the wheels. More importantly, they’re parting with the most valuable long-term asset in Khusnutdinov. There’s no reason to expect Khusnutdinov to be a more effective player than Brazeau in the near future. While he’s a measurably inferior player in his rookie year, Brazeau is 27 and has only played 76 NHL games. Research from HockeyViz.com indicates that players’ offensive and defensive impacts peak years before age 27, so Brazeau’s chances of improving his current performance rely on bad luck in small samples. On the other hand, Khusnutdinov is only 22. The odds of him continuing to progress at the NHL level are very reasonable. While his 2024-25 offensive numbers are at or below replacement level, he’s performed the basic functions of a bottom-six center -- typically a role reserved for veterans -- as a rookie. In his first year playing on North American-sized ice sheets, stepping into a shutdown role and taking faceoffs is extremely admirable. Given an offseason and training camp to focus on his offensive game, it’s easy to project an improvement in his dismal offensive performance without sacrificing his defensive acumen. There are already signs of an offensive uptick peeking through this season. Plays like Khusnutdinov's assist against the New York Islanders show he's more comfortable with the puck on his stick in the offensive zone. In this case, he finds a way to use his skating to pull defenseman Tony DeAngelo (NYI No. 4) out of position. It’s a flash of offensive skill from the Russian centerman despite the limited space on the NHL ice sheets compared to those in the KHL. Just because he had an assist a month ago doesn’t mean he’s turned a corner offensively. Still, his edgework and vision are signals of untapped potential. Khusnutdinov’s defensive game is already effective. With a year or two to adapt to the limited space and superior talent in the NHL, it’s easy to imagine him becoming a middle-six center who can center a scoring line or play an effective checking role. That type of player is worth a $5 or $6 million AAV. Compare that to his trade value this year, in which he just one piece of a trade that netted a player whose on-ice value is only half of that. NHL asset management is more than just maximizing wins. Playoff wins are more important than regular season wins, so we must consider championship windows. At some point, though, should a team go all-in when there’s a chance to double their ROI one or two seasons down the road? It will be clear soon if this was an effective use of Khusnutdinov’s cost-controlled years. Perhaps Brazeau will prove the Wild’s pro scouts right with a few timely playoff goals. After all, Guerin’s staff has been right before about Vinnie Hinistroza and Declan Chisholm. On the other hand, if Khusnutdinov takes reasonable steps forward in the next two seasons in Boston -- his second and third full seasons in the NHL -- Brazeau will have to put together one hell of a 2025 playoffs to make that worth it.

The KHL playoffs are ongoing, and on Friday, Danila Yurov found himself on the ice for the first time since February 15. Unfortunately for his hopes of winning back-to-back Gagarin Cups, Metallurg Magnitogorsk fell to 0-2 in their best-of-seven first-round series. Of course, an early exit in the KHL might not close the book on Yurov playing in more playoff games. The Minnesota Wild have to be hopeful for the possibility of having Yurov at their disposal for the playoffs, which are now less than three weeks away. However, it's not as simple as, say, signing Zeev Buium once his season at Denver is over. When it comes to the Wild and Russia, how could it be any other way? Yurov will be in a situation where he's technically under contract until May 31 and unable to sign with Minnesota unless the team agrees to release him. It's possible -- Marat Khusnutdinov was able to exit his contract early -- but Metallurg is under no obligation to accommodate Yurov. Any fan who had to sit through the ordeal of bringing Kirill Kaprizov to North America has earned the right to cast any hope for a smooth, uncomplicated transaction with suspicion. Until a definitive answer to this question comes up, you can expect the Will They/Won't They? machine to hit full-steam in the next few weeks. It will be a massive question throughout April, and it'll likely obscure an even more important one. Namely, how likely is Yurov to help the Wild in the playoffs, anyway? It's easy to draw a one-for-one parallel between Yurov and Kaprizov. By the time Kaprizov got to the Wild, he was a highly-touted forward with 200-plus KHL games and a Gagarin Cup under his belt. Similarly, Yurov is considered a top prospect, has played 200 KHL games, and lifted the Garagin himself. But there's one big difference between the two. Kaprizov arrived in the NHL fully formed as a 23-year-old. He was just three months shy of his 24th birthday. His resume came with not one but four playoff runs in the KHL. There was no development left, essentially. Meanwhile, Yurov would be thrown into the NHL playoffs at just 21 years and four months. Beyond that, Kaprizov was ruled ineligible for the playoffs during the COVID bubble, meaning he got to log 50-plus NHL games before seeing postseason action. Yurov's season can't end until April 1 and could easily go longer. If you allow for the fastest possible timeline -- an April 1 elimination and 72 hours to negotiate a release, sign a contract, fly halfway across the world, figure out where to live, etc. -- Yurov will get five games, max, before seeing the playoffs. That's such a whirlwind that it feels impossible to know what to expect. Especially since we don't have a baseline of what Kaprizov might have done in August 2019 if he had been playoff-eligible. But do we have anything to go off of? Looking back since the 2010 Draft, there are few examples of a Russian forward who was a bonafide, top-level prospect and went straight from the end of the KHL season to have a meaningful role in the Stanley Cup playoffs. As far as I can tell, it's happened just once: Last year, Ivan Miroshnichenko played six regular-season games for the Washington Capitals before getting in the playoffs. He played one game, registering zero points and two shots in nine minutes and 31 seconds. So, we don't have much information on KHL prospects going straight from Russia to the playoffs. However, we have more information on what many top Russian prospects, who had the benefit of acclimating to a North American league before the postseason, did in their first trips to the playoffs. Let's take every first-round Russian forward drafted from 2010 to 2019*, plus a couple of bonus prospects, and look at their playoff debut (minimum two games). Vladimir Tarasenko, 2012-13 (age 22): 6 GP; 4 goals, 0 assists Valeri Nichushkin, 2013-14 (age 18): 6 GP; 1 goal, 1 assist Nikita Kucherov, 2013-14 (age 20): 2 GP; 1 goal, 0 assists Evgeny Kuznetsov, 2014-15 (age 22): 14 GP; 5 goals, 2 assists Vladislav Namestnikov, 2014-15 (age 21): 12 GP; 0 goals, 1 assist Pavel Buchnevich, 2016-17 (age 21): 5 GP; 0 goals, 1 assist Andrei Svechnikov, 2018-19 (age 18): 9 GP; 3 goals, 2 assists Denis Gurianov, 2019-20 (age 22): 27 GP; 9 goals, 8 assists Klim Kostin, 2022-23 (age 23): 12 GP; 3 goals, 2 assists Vasily Podkolzin, 2023-24 (age 22): 2 GP; 0 goals, 0 assists That's 10 players who managed to make it to the NHL and play some kind of role for a playoff team. Combine them all, and we're looking at 26 goals and 17 assists (43 points) in 95 games. For an 82-game pace, that's a fairly solid 22-goal, 37-point season, looking similar to Marco Rossi's rookie year (21 goals, 40 points). But of course, we're not looking at the regular season. We'd be talking about a seven-game series, not an 82-game marathon. Compress those paces into a playoff series, and we can expect around two goals and an assist (matching Kaprizov's playoff debut) for a full seven-game affair -- with a ton of variance. That's not a perfect guess. We don't know how big a disadvantage it is to have zero to five regular-season games of NHL experience. Still, it's probably the best guess we've got. Is it worth throwing the kid into the fire if Minnesota's "expected" reward is just two goals and three points? Not to get too depressing, but... have you seen the Wild in the playoffs? Look back at Minnesota's 2023 series with the Dallas Stars, and you'll see four players (Freddy Gaudreau, Ryan Hartman, Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Johansson) who had multiple goals for the Wild. Go back another year (2022 vs. the St. Louis Blues), and that number drops to two: Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek. Mind you, both of these series went six games. It's possible, even if Minnesota can get Yurov to the NHL and up-to-speed enough so John Hynes will put him in playoff games, that he won't impress. Better players have disappointed in the playoffs -- look how we're waiting for Matt Boldy's postseason breakout. Yurov could easily languish in limited minutes, get shut out by hot goaltending, or simply not be ready for primetime yet. It's a risk. However, in the context of the Wild's recent history, it is not huge. The biggest reason for Minnesota's postseason stagnation has been a lack of goals. The Wild have scored just 2.26 goals per game in the playoffs since 2020-21, which is dead-last among the 23 NHL teams with postseason games. When you're looking up at the Seattle Kraken, Montreal Canadiens, and the New York Islanders, it's safe to say you've got a problem generating offense. As is the case with Buium, introducing Yurov to the playoff mix would give Minnesota a level of upside that they simply don't have right now. Even when healthy, Minnesota's struggled to produce offense when Kaprizov's not on the ice. This team is largely identical to the one who couldn't score against St. Louis in 2022 or Dallas in 2023. It will probably be difficult to get him to St. Paul, but once he's here, it will not be hard to find a spot where he can add some desperately needed scoring punch. *Not including players who've never played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs, such as Alexander Burmistrov, Nail Yakupov, Kirill Marchenko, et al.

Mats Zuccarello has become a fan favorite, and for good reason. During his time with the Minnesota Wild, Zuccarello has proven invaluable. Zuccarello has scored 99 goals and 322 points with the Wild, including his career-high 79 points during the 2021-22 season. His elevated play in Minnesota is one of the many reasons he secured his latest contract. In 2023, Zuccarello signed a two-year, $8.25 million extension. Despite the risk of extending a forward in his mid-30s and his seemingly slowing production, Zuccarello is proving he can still play. He’s 37 and will turn 38 in the off-season. Age can become a liability in a physical game like hockey. Few players other than Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin continue to produce as they approach 40. Most NHL players retire in the early to mid-30s. Therefore, Zuccarello’s late-30s is a testament to his strength as a hockey player. Even more impressive? Zuccarello’s last three seasons, between age 34 and 36, have also been the best of his career. He had 79 points in 70 games three years ago, 67 in 78 two years ago, and 63 in 69 last season. However, all good things must come to an end. Zuccarello has had a down year with 15 goals and 41 points through 52 games. While his numbers are lower than we have come to expect, Zuccarello has experienced as much adversity this year as the rest of the team. He missed a large portion of the beginning of the season with an injury that happened in November. Since coming back, Zuccarello has played on an ever-changing Minnesota roster without Kirill Kaprizov. It is no secret that Zuccarello has had much of his success setting Kaprizov up, so we have seen less of Zuccarello’s scoring abilities in his absence. That was until the Wild needed him most. After an eight-game pointless streak through February, Zuccarello has scored three goals and five points in his last six games. Zuccarello’s scoring has been crucial for the Wild. Minnesota started strong in March, winning two critical games against the Boston Bruins and the Seattle Kraken. Zuccarello contributed to the game-winning goals in each game, picking up an assist on Minnesota’s goal in Boston and scoring the game-winning goal against Seattle. However, after winning twice, the Wild then lost two games to the Vancouver Canucks and the Pittsburgh Penguins. Minnesota should have beaten Pittsburgh and Vancouver but couldn’t beat the opposing goaltender. The Wild created chances and shots but failed to find chemistry. Zuccarello went pointless in both games. However, Zuccarello and the Wild have since hosted the Colorado Avalanche, who are one spot above them in the standings. It was a crucial game and a chance for the Wild to get right. They had lost to the Avalanche five games earlier, in the last game of February. Zuccarello bounced back against Colorado. He was the most noticeable player on the ice, scoring the first and only Wild goal in the second period. The Avs tied the game, pushing it into overtime and eventually a shootout. Zuccarello went first in the shootout and scored five-hole on Mackenzie Blackwood to give the Wild the lead. Two Filip Gustavsson stops later, and Zuccarello has scored the game-winning goal against a division rival, no less. Zuccarello has decided the outcome of three out of his last six games, making him one of, if not the most important player on the ice. He’s kept the Wild afloat while missing key players like Kaprizov. With the minimal scoring depth, the Wild have only scored 11 goals in the last seven games. They’ve needed scoring from everyone, including their 37-year-old setup man. However, Zuccarello hasn’t done this alone. During his recent scoring surge, Zuccarello has found chemistry with Frederick Gaudreau and Marcus Johansson. In Zuccarello’s last five points, Johansson has gotten two assists and assisted Zuccarello on a goal Gaudreau scored. Meanwhile, Gaudreau got an assist from Zuccarello on the game-winning goal in Boston and assisted Zuccarello on the game-winning goal in Seattle. Gaudreau and Johansson have been building chemistry throughout the year, but adding Zuccarello to their line improved their scoring. The three may reunite later in the season, but John Hynes has moved Zuccarello back to the first line while putting Gustav Nyquist on the second line with Johansson and Gaudreau. Putting Zuccarello on a line with Johansson and Gaudreau had sparked his scoring. However, his most recent goal against Colorado came on the first line with assists from Matt Boldy and Marco Rossi. That’s only further evidence that Zuccarello is a good player regardless of circumstance. He doesn’t need Kaprizov, Johansson, or Gaudreau to affect the game's outcome. Zuccarello is still finding ways to score. Even though his production has begun to slow down, Zuccarello has scored when the team has needed him most. Zuccarello’s time in the league may be nearing its end. However, his ability as a player and leader means he might still have a few good years left.

In many ways, David Jiricek is effectively the Minnesota Wild's trade deadline pickup. Minnesota parted with its 2025 first-round draft pick to land the disgruntled top defenseman prospect, which might have contributed to a quiet trade deadline during which the Wild made few moves to boost its struggling offense. To be clear, that opportunity cost was well worth obtaining Jiricek. Even if he couldn't catch on with the Columbus Blue Jackets, big, mobile, offensive, right-shot defensemen don't grow on trees. Generally speaking, teams can only get them with top-10 draft picks. The Wild were wise to take advantage and get Jiricek at a discount price. But despite being, technically, a member of the Wild for the past six games, he's made zero impact for a team that's desperate for offense. It's not because of poor play or rookie growing pains but because he can't get into games. Jiricek has been a healthy scratch since his recall and hasn't played a game at any level since February 28, when the Iowa Wild faced off against the Milwaukee Admirals. Sometimes, players find themselves on the outside looking in at an unfortunate time. Their team starts rolling, and they don't want to upset the apple cart. However, that's not the case for the Wild, even if they are 3-3-0 through March with Jiricek in the press box. Over the past six games, the Wild have scored two, zero, four, one, one, and one goals, respectively. Nine goals in six games. They got two points banked for a 1-0 shutout, then a 2-1 shootout victory. Still, the track record of success for teams that score 1.5 goals per game is, generally speaking, not good. It's no secret how thin Minnesota is on offense with Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek out. It's a situation where most teams would look to a top offensive defenseman for a spark, but the Wild aren't in any sort of hurry to let Jiricek draw in. Why? In an ideal situation, the Wild would take things slow with the 21-year-old defenseman. His backward skating will have to be refined and maybe rebuilt, a project that won't be possible until the offseason. Is it theoretically better to wait until he's 100% ready to hit the ground running before putting him in the NHL? Sure. But, in practice, the Wild need goals. And Jiricek is a player who, regardless of his warts, should help Minnesota score goals. Almost any coach in a playoff chase will defer to "reliable" veterans over unproven players. Still, we're getting to the point where sitting Jiricek for Zach Bogosian is inexcusable. Bogosian had a surprisingly great start in Minnesota as a trade pickup in 2023-24, but the veteran defenseman has fallen back to earth this season. Bogosian has been out-scored 27-34 at 5-on-5 this season, and his presence hasn't helped much on the penalty kill; he's allowing 11.1 goals against per hour while short-handed. People often perceive veterans as more defensively reliable than their young counterparts, but Bogosian hasn't been reliable in his own end this year. He also isn't moving the needle on offense. Bogosian has zero goals and two assists over his past 20 games. While it's not the only poor offensive showing on the team, we're not looking at a player who's been doing much on either side of the ice. John Hynes doesn't even appear to have that much faith in him -- since the 4 Nations Faceoff ended, Bogosian's averaged just 14 minutes a night. You can't say Jiricek would definitely come into the lineup and be an upgrade over Bogosian. But at the same time, what do the Wild have to lose? They're already not scoring and relying on superhuman performances from Filip Gustavsson to get them two points. And it's not like Minnesota even has to go through the trouble of getting Jiricek out of Des Moines. The dude's right there. But beyond the potential advantages to the NHL club in terms of goals and wins, playing Jiricek should also help Minnesota long-term. Jiricek's been a regular for the Iowa Wild since the trade, but he's been subject to the same general struggles most players have dealt with in Des Moines this year. He's only scored six points in 26 games in Iowa, a huge drop-off from the 60 points in 88 games he had for the Cleveland Monsters in Columbus' system. The Wild have a chance to get him playing minutes on a playoff team and perhaps even on a power play that still has talent, even without Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek. It's a great chance to get a player who's already been traded and struggled on a new AHL club and get him rolling offensively, giving him something to build on for next season. While Jiricek's been a good soldier so far, shouldn't Minnesota be careful to ensure the young defenseman they invested so much into is happy with his role? Granted, you can't force-feed a player who's not ready into a playoff chase. Still, how good can Jiricek feel about not playing for two weeks at a time, spending all his time in the press box? Especially when he asked out of his previous team because they didn't trust him to play in the NHL? You'd hope that wouldn't become a problem for Jiricek on his second team. Still, why even run the risk of damaging the relationship? Why have him ride the pine when the thing he does -- generate offense -- is exactly what Minnesota desperately needs right now? It just feels like continuing to sit Jiricek takes away upside from the Wild in the here-and-now while creating nothing but downside going forward.

In October, The Athletic revealed that Bill Guerin had presented Minnesota Wild owner Craig Leipold with a five-year plan. “It’s about becoming a true contender,” Guerin said. “I don’t want to try to fool anybody. I don’t think we’ve been serious contenders in the past. I just don’t. And we’re trying to get there.” Guerin said the Wild are in Year 2 of the plan, with a few crucial tenants. They must re-sign Kirill Kaprizov, who is eligible for an extension after this season. Core players like Matt Boldy and Brock Faber must “thrive,” while top prospects like Jesper Wallstedt and Danila Yurov must “arrive and be impactful.” Finally, Minnesota must sign a few difference-making free agents once the league reduces the cap penalties for buying Zach Parise and Ryan Suter out in 2021. Spotrac projects the Wild will have $19.6 million in cap space next season, ranking them 19th in the league. Kaprizov will demand top dollar, and the Wild must decide whether to bridge or commit to Marco Rossi. Mr. Leipold expects July 1 to feel like “Christmas.” Still, he appears to have tied Guerin’s fate to Kaprizov. Mr. Leipold said that when Guerin begins talks with Kaprizov and his agent next offseason, Guerin will communicate his entire “plan” to him. “[Kaprizov is] the most important part of our five-year plan,” Mr. Leipold said. “I think I can say that.” Besides letting Kaprizov sign elsewhere, Mr. Leipold has given Guerin free rein to manage the Wild as he sees fit. Guerin has become the closest thing the NHL has to Jerry Jones. He doesn’t own the Wild like Jones owns the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys. Still, Mr. Leipold extended Guerin’s contract and elevated him to president of hockey operations in 2023 after four straight first-round exits. “Four years ago, Bill brought his championship pedigree to our organization, and the improvements he’s made to our hockey team and organization are self-evident,” Mr. Leipold said in 2023. “The results are both tangible and intangible, and he continues to demonstrate his talent for building a Stanley Cup-contending team. We are excited about what the future holds for fans in the State of Hockey.” Mr. Leipold didn’t want a complete rebuild, so he doesn’t hold Minnesota’s two first-round exits and missing the playoffs last year under cap hell against him. Still, the Wild consciously decided to try to contend under the Parise-Suter buyout penalties instead of accruing higher draft capital. Mr. Leipold also doesn’t seem concerned about Geurin’s conflicts with his former cap guy and travel secretary. Mr. Leipold said there’s “zero heat” on Guerin, who’s in his sixth season. “If we’re almost there, maybe it takes us a sixth year [of the plan],” Leipold said. “I’m okay with that. … But we have to start with a plan and feel good about where we’re going. We have to get out of this. I don’t like not making the playoffs. It’s embarrassing.” Jones manages the NFL’s most discussed franchise with immunity because he’s the owner. Unlike the league’s other general managers, he doesn’t report to anyone. He will maintain the job as long as he can find someone to coach the Cowboys and players who will sign in Dallas. Still, despite having ample resources and an aligned power structure, the Cowboys haven’t capitalized on their regular-season success in the playoffs. They haven’t been out of the second round since winning the Super Bowl in 1995. Before going 7-10 last season, Dallas had won 12 regular-season games for three years in a row. However, they lost in the first round once and in the second round the other season. The Wild had 113- and 103-point seasons in the two years preceding Guerin’s promotion. However, his teams have always lost in the first round of the playoffs. The Wild haven’t reached the second round since 2014-15 and have only advanced to the conference finals once, in 2002-03. Guerin has locked in a good, young core headlined by Faber, Boldly, and Joel Eriksson Ek. The Wild also developed The Athletic’s second-best prospect pool without tanking. After missing the playoffs last season, Minnesota appears to be on track to qualify this year. Still, lingering issues indicate underlying problems within the organization. Minnesota told Wallstedt to get a place in the Twin Cities because he’d be part of a three-goalie rotation. Instead, they sent him down to Iowa because of cap issues, which affected his game earlier this season. Minnesota’s handling of Wallstedt this season appears to violate the five-year plan. The Wild also have had a pattern of irregular prospect management. They overbaked Boldy and didn’t seem to have a plan with Rossi. They traded for David Jiricek in late November, and he played well in January. Still, we haven’t seen him since. A strong prospect pool is only helpful if the coaches and front office develop the players correctly. Mr. Leipold also expressed his frustration with missing the playoffs. Still, Guerin retained Dean Evason after Craig Berube outcoached him with the St. Louis Blues, and Peter DeBoer beat him with the Vegas Golden Knights and the Dallas Stars. Guerin fired him after a 5-10-4 start last season. By the time John Hynes took over, last year’s team was too far gone to make the postseason. But perhaps they could have if Hynes had coached the team from the start. The Wild also entered Year 1 with much of the core under contracts with no-move clauses. Signing Faber, Boldy, and Eriksson Ek at value makes sense. Extending Ryan Hartman, who’s had discipline issues, and peripheral players like Marcus Johansson, Freddy Gaudreau, and Jon Merrill doesn’t make much sense when they comprise a core that hasn’t won in the playoffs. That was in Year 1, and the Wild seem focused on the present more than the future in Year 2. They sent a second-round pick to the Nashville Predators for 35-year-old Gustav Nyquist at the deadline. They also traded 23-year-old prospect Marat Khusnutdinov to the Boston Bruins for 27-year-old rookie Justin Brazeau, a larger player with less upside. Locking in a core makes sense once a team has succeeded in the playoffs. Trading prospects to fill roster holes is common practice when teams are a player or two away from contending. However, that’s not the case with Minnesota. Still, with each passing day, it feels less like the Wild have a plan. Instead, they’ve empowered Guerin to do whatever he feels will make the team better at any given moment. Hopefully, Kaprizov believes that’s a winning formula.

You’ve probably seen the “Not Weird. Wild.” commercials. Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello ride a tandem bicycle and eat PB&Js. The pillow fight in Matt Boldy’s hotel room. Brock Faber’s mother reminds him to wear his glasses as he waits for the Gus Bus. They’re pretty weird but kinda fun. However, the problem is that the Minnesota Wild have taken on the persona of their advertising campaign. They traded a second-round pick for 35-year-old Gustav Nyquist in what’s likely a lost season. That’s weird. Trotting Kaprizov out to play the nameless Utah team before he has surgery? Kinda strange. Trying to carry three goalies while in cap hell and messing with Jesper Wallstedt’s confidence? Doesn’t make a lot of sense. On the one hand, the Wild look like they have a good young core as they escape the worst of their Zach Parise-Ryan Suter buyout penalties. Kaprizov, Faber, and Boldy are bona fide stars. Marco Rossi and Joel Eriksson Ek are viable top-6 centers. Minnesota has risen Vinnie Hinostroza from the dead! The Wild also have Corey Pronman’s second-ranked prospect pool. They will likely make the playoffs, giving their green players valuable experience. The cap is rising faster than expected, accentuating Boldy and Eriksson Ek’s contract value while covering for some overzealous extensions. Still, the Wild are paying Ryan Hartman, who’s recently gone from glue guy to unglued, $8 million over the next two years. Perhaps his recent eight-game suspension will serve as a wake-up call. However, it’s also possible he’s lost control, and Minnesota should have offloaded him a year ago. Minnesota also would have benefitted from extending Rossi after his All-Rookie season last year. With the rising cap, they could have gotten him at value. That would have given them the flexibility to use him as a third-line center if Charlie Stramel pans out while assuring they have two viable top-6 centers if he doesn’t. Rossi has already matched his career-high 21 goals from last season while looking like a top-line center. Once the season concludes, the Wild must either extend him on a market-rate deal under the new cap or offer him a bridge contract. If they bridge him, they are assuming that Stramel will pan out. Otherwise, they’ll have to spend a lot to extend him or let him leave in free agency. Stramel only had 20 points in his first two seasons at Wisconsin. However, he finished with 25 in 34 games after reuniting with his US National Development Team coach, Adam Nightingale, at Michigan State this year. Still, the Wild reached for the 6-foot-3, 215-pound Stramel at the draft, and he may develop into a depth center. Even if Stramel becomes a star, the Wild have a strange approach to player development. Despite his rookie production in the AHL, they didn’t trust Boldy after he came over from Boston College. They brought Rossi up for 19 games as a rookie, then never recalled him after he had 51 points in 53 games with Iowa two years ago. They will likely take the same approach with top prospects like Stramel and Zeev Buium. Guerin bought out Parise and Suter in July 2021 but wanted to maintain a competitive roster. Since then, they’ve twice lost in the first round and missed the playoffs last year. Worse yet, Guerin held onto Dean Evason after Peter DeBoer outcoached him with the Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars, only to fire him when the team started 5-10-4 two years ago. Minnesota was competing with the Winnipeg Jets for the Central Division at Thanksgiving. Three months later, they’re battling to stay out of a Wild Card spot and made a desperate trade for a 35-year-old former player. Injuries have been a factor, but the Boston Bruins raised concerns about Minnesota’s medical staff after Charlie McAvoy played through an AC joint injury and suffered from an infection at the 4 Nations Face-Off. Those may be valid complaints, given they allowed Eriksson Ek to play on a broken leg in the 2023 playoffs and Kaprizov to play before a major surgery this season. To summarize: The Wild bought out Parise and Suter and tried to win with limited cap space instead of tanking for top picks. Unless they rally this season, they haven’t gotten to the second round since 2014-15. Guerin has locked in Boldy, Eriksson Ek, and a core of aging, declining players who haven’t advanced in the playoffs. Meanwhile, he played hardball with his franchise player, Kaprizov, and dragged his feet with Rossi. Minnesota’s prospect pool is its greatest strength. However, the Wild could have doubled down on it by bottoming out to get better picks. Instead, they’ve tried to win while in cap hell and recently traded a second-round pick for a player in his mid-30s. Furthermore, they’ve prioritized veteran experience over young players with upside. The Wild will benefit from increased cap space after this season. Still, they won’t change their fate unless they change their methods. Minnesota will need cost-controlled players with upside after extending Kaprizov under the new cap. They already have $75.9 million committed to next year’s roster, and most of their core has long-term deals with no-trade clauses. Knowing what we know now, how they’ve navigated cap hell was kind of weird. Then again, it’s the Wild.

The Minnesota Wild are finally getting flexibility this offseason. Most of this will come from the bulk of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter's buyout charges disappearing, which helps Minnesota to get to nearly $22 million in cap space, according to the NHL's estimates. That number sounds like a lot, and relative to the cap room the Wild have had the last four years, it's a windfall. It's also a number that might disappear faster than we'd think. After taking care of Marco Rossi's RFA status, acquiring a top-six player, potentially retaining other RFAs like Declan Chisholm, and maybe dipping into the goalie market after Marc-André Fleury's retirement... their flexibility might not last long. So, it makes sense that Wild fans would like to see the team trim more salary. More flexibility can't be a bad thing, right? And a fairly obvious target for the would-be The Bobs in the fanbase to downsize is Jared Spurgeon. It's not a hard argument to make. Spurgeon is 35 years old, which is generally not an age you want to be paying $7.575 million to a player. The Wild have his successors in place, with Brock Faber (22) already established as a top-pairing defenseman and David Jiricek (21) still considered a great defensive prospect. Spurgeon has also missed 15 or more games in three of his last four seasons, including playing just 16 games in 2023-24. And, fair or not, Spurgeon does have the distinction of being the constant in a 13-year stretch where Minnesota has only advanced past the first round once. You can see all that listed out, and understand why someone might think Spurgeon is a viable trade candidate. But you can also watch Spurgeon playing for the Wild this year, and if you are, it's hard to argue that Minnesota is better off without him. The Wild got blown out on Saturday afternoon 5-2, but Spurgeon showed the kind of plays he's still capable of making at 35. In the final seconds of the period, Nico Hischier (who scored his 31st, 32nd, and 33rd goals of the season), Jesper Bratt (20 goals), and Timo Meier (22 goals) caught Minnesota for a 3-on-1. Jared Spurgeon was the only thing standing between three top-line forwards and certain paydirt. And then... You can dish out the blame to Meier for actually deflecting the shot harmlessly away, but Spurgeon's stickwork calmly guided Meier into that spot, creating maximum chaos with zero help. It was vintage Spurgeon: relying on his feet, poise, and experience to snuff out threats. It'd be one thing if this were but one flash of his former glory, but Spurgeon is every bit as ageless as he looks. Frankly, we're past the point where someone needs to investigate his attic for a portrait of a graying Spurgeon getting turnstiled by some young forward. The man spits in the face of aging curves. Spurgeon's workload may be decreasing. His 20 minutes, 31 seconds per game is the first time he's averaged fewer than 21 minutes a night since his rookie season. However, his play during that time has hardly missed a beat. Look at the bottom graph to see his xStandings Points Above Replacement (an all-in-one metric from Evolving-Hockey) over time: You practically have to take out a straight edge to confirm that his 2024-25 season is a half-step below the incredibly consistent level of his prime. It's still enough for him to have entered Saturday with 3.3 xSPAR, which ties him with Jake Sanderson and others for 25th in the NHL. As for those three points in the standings, those absolutely matter, given that Minnesota is currently tied with the St. Louis Blues for the last Wild Card spot and just six points ahead of the playoff bubble. Why let those points go to another team? Given Spurgeon's age, it's hard to see him playing at that high level for much longer, but there are always outliers. It's fair to say Spurgeon has been one of those outliers and is as good a bet as anyone to continue to do so. Here are the top 10 players in total xSPAR between ages 30-to-34 seasons during the Analytics Era: Zdeno Chara, 28.1 Lubomir Visnovsky, 28.0 Mark Giordano, 27.9 Shea Weber, 25.0 Brent Burns, 24.3 Dan Boyle, 24.0 Brian Campbell, 23.8 Roman Josi, 22.8 Kris Letang, 22.1 JARED SPURGEON, 21.1 Josi is the only player in Spurgeon's age range, so we have data on the next two seasons for each player. That should give us a pretty good look at possibilities for Spurgeon in the final two seasons of his deal with the Wild. With that in mind, here are their xSPAR totals for their age 36 and 37 seasons, followed by their rank among all defensemen in that range: Chara, 9.3 (first) Campbell, 8.2 (fourth) Boyle, 7.0 (seventh) Letang, 5.7 (10th) Giordano, 4.8 (11th) Burns, 3.3 (T-14th) Visnovsky, 3.2 (T-16th) Weber, 1.5 (T-32nd) Of course, there are no guarantees, but besides Weber (limited to 48 games due to injury), every defenseman joining Spurgeon was more than usable, with three (and arguably five) elite players in that group. You can't ignore the absurd longevity some of these players had, either. Brent Burns is 39 and only now seeing Father Time catch up with him a bit. Giordano had a similar path in his late-30s. Boyle retired after his age-39 season and was an elite puck-moving defenseman until the end. And, of course, Chara was a first-pairing caliber defenseman until age-41 and still had three more seasons to give the Boston Bruins. As long as Spurgeon's body holds up, it's hard to see an imminent decline. He's the definition of a dude with Old Man Skills. Spurgeon's a great skater, but not in a straight-line speed sense. He relies on craftiness and positioning to manipulate attacking forwards. Spurgeon's always been a puck-mover, but his offensive toolkit is more about making smart plays than dancing through traffic and dazzling with his puck skills. The hands and feet may go eventually -- that moment comes for all players -- but someone who relies on their brain to excel is a better bet to age gracefully. Having an extra $7.575 million to play with this summer might be tempting for Minnesota, but investing that money in Spurgeon, who's bankable for three points in the standings, is a strong use of that cap space. Even if Jiricek is ready next year, we've seen the insane workload Faber has had to take on, and how it's grinded him down in each of the last two seasons. Keeping both Spurgeon and Jiricek in-house to hedge against Faber having to take on 25-plus minutes a night feels like a wise plan. Someday, we'll wake up and witness a version of Spurgeon that can no longer help the Wild. It's inevitable. However, that moment isn't here and will not likely arrive soon. Spurgeon still has much more to give, and it'd be a shame to see him helping another team make the playoffs next season.

When we think of the face of the league, Alex Ovechkin, Sidney Crosby, or Connor McDavid come to mind. All talented players who have been integral players on the same team since their rookie year. However, most NHL careers are not this steady or consistent. Vinnie Hinostroza is an example of a talented player who is still trying to find the right fit. The Chicago Blackhawks took Hinostroza 169th overall in the 2012 draft. He made his NHL debut in 2015-16 and played 3 seasons in Chicago. Chicago traded him to the Arizona Coyotes, and he had a brief stint with the Florida Panthers before they traded him back to Chicago. Hinostroza signed with the Buffalo Sabres, Pittsburgh Penguins, and Nashville Predators before the Minnesota Wild claimed him off waivers on February 5. The Predators signed Hinostroza but assigned him to their AHL affiliate in Milwaukee. However, Nashville called him up on December 29, 2024. Hinostroza was the AHL’s leading scorer then, with 11 goals and 33 points. Unfortunately, this success did not translate to Nashville. Hinostroza had 0 goals and 2 assists in 13 games and averaged 11:32 minutes per game. Minnesota added him to the lineup for their February 6 game against the Carolina Hurricanes. He got a practice and a pregame skate with his new team but immediately produced with the Wild. Hinostroza scored at the start of the 3rd period with Minnesota, breaking both his 26-game goal drought and the Wild’s 2-game goal drought. At 5-foot-10, 183 lbs., Hinostroza isn’t a large player but uses his size to his advantage. For his goal with the Wild, he gets around Carolina center Jordan Staal and tucks under him to bat the puck in. In 17 games with the Wild, Hinostroza averages 14:31 TOI and has 4 goals and 2 assists. Why has he been so productive with the Wild? Hinostroza is only playing three more minutes per night, but he’s playing with a better team. The Wild rank 7th in the Western Conference, while the Predators are in 14th. Hinostroza doesn’t have highlight reel plays, but he scores greasy goals. Maybe his style didn’t work as well in Nashville, or he’s motivated to prove himself in Minnesota. Regardless, his goals and assists come from hustling to the puck, getting his body in front of opponents, or muscling his way to the front of the net. That playstyle is especially important in playoffs, where a last-ditch effort to cram a puck into the net often decides the game, rather than fancy, multi-pass, top-corner shots. Hinostroza’s goal against the Seattle Kraken on March 4 is a microcosm of Hinostroza’s playstyle. Hinostroza pushes to the front of the net, shaking off the Kraken defender. Mats Zuccarello takes a shot on net, and Hinostroza can deflect it in because he’s in the right spot. Most of his points for the Wild look similar. He digs in close to the net to bat in any loose pucks rather than staying wide for a one-timer. Team chemistry has also boosted Hinostroza’s production. Ryan Hartman and Hinostroza grew up in Chicago and met playing for the Chicago Mission, an AAA youth team. They later reunited while playing for the Rockford IceHogs, the Blackhawks AHL affiliate. The pair aren’t just former teammates but close friends: Hinostroza was also a part of Hartman’s wedding party. Since the end of Hartman’s suspension, the Wild have paired the Chicagoland forwards to great effect. Hinostroza has already been much more successful than he was in Nashville, and Hartman has 6 points in 10 games, compared to 17 in his previous 48 games this season. Strong players know their linemates well and can predict where they will be, allowing them to constantly be in the right place at the right time. The way this pair moves in sync reflects their history of playing together. Hinostroza got the second assist on Hartman’s goal against the Kraken last Wednesday. He picked up the loose puck along the boards and held onto it, drawing the Kraken up high in the zone. Hinostroza waited until Zach Bogosian crossed the blueline before passing to him. He had other passing options but had the patience to take an extra moment and wait for Bogosian, who was coming from an undefended angle. Bogosian then passed to Hartman, who took the lane that Hinostroza opened up and scored. Hinostroza’s assist against Buffalo on Saturday is also an example of his hustle and use of body making the play. Hinostroza raced to catch up with Sabres defenseman Owen Rogers, muscled in front, and beat him to the puck. He took a quick look up and nudged it back to Yakov Trenin. Trenin then passed it out front to Marco Rossi, who scored. The Chicago native is not afraid to battle it out in the corner, and his size allows him to be physical without drawing a lot of penalties. He also has good patience with the puck and can make smart decisions and clean passes under pressure. Hinostroza has struggled to find a long-term home in the NHL but has good chemistry with the Wild. He took a long and winding road. But Hinostroza may have found a place he can call home.

Brock Faber set an unrealistic standard for Minnesota Wild defensive prospects. The former Golden Gopher came straight from getting to the National Championship Game to the NHL lineup for a playoff team. The smooth-skating defenseman got all of 40 minutes of regular-season warm-up time before stepping into a regular shift during the playoffs. Welcome to the NHL, kid. But, incredibly, he thrived right away. His skating and defense came as advertised, and he showed more poise than any 20-year-old defenseman could be expected to have. Two years later, the Wild are hoping that Zeev Buium can make an even crazier leap to the NHL. The Wild drafted Buium in June, and the Denver Pioneers defenseman turned 19 in December. How often has a defenseman gone from the draft to the NHL playoffs in ten months this century? Three. Charlie McAvoy (2016 Draft), Adam Larsson (2011), and Cam Fowler (2010). If you want to give credit to Thomas Harley (2019), who got just under 11 minutes in one playoff game... fine, make it four. It's ridiculous to expect such a young defenseman to make a playoff team's roster with no NHL experience. It's silly to think a 19-year-old can step into the pros and show Brock Faber's level of maturity and hockey sense. Rationally, I understand this. Even having said all that... Other than age and NHL experience, what has Buium done to show he can't be the exception? That he can't help the Minnesota Wild when they make the playoffs? It's not his resume, which is downright Faber-esque. He's already led the Pioneers to a National Championship while logging the most minutes of anyone in the NCAA. Like Faber, Buium led Team USA to a Gold Medal at the World Junior Championship, even making the breakout pass that secured the Golden Goal in overtime. Better yet, Buium will go to the NHL with an offensive track record that we've arguably never seen before. He led NCAA defensemen in points (50) last season, enough for him to finish among the top 10 players overall. He's likely going to repeat the feat. No draft-eligible NCAA defenseman scored more points than Buium last season, and only Lane Hutson scored more points in his Draft+1 year in the NCAA. The talent is there, and so is the track record of stepping up in gigantic games. There's just one more part of the equation: The need. And it doesn't take much searching to see how Buium could benefit Minnesota, even in high-stakes playoff games. When healthy, the Wild seem to have the left side of their defense settled between Jonas Brodin, Jake Middleton, and Jon Merrill. Brodin is the quintessential shutdown defenseman, Middleton has the coaching staff's trust despite second-half struggles alongside Faber, and Merrill has performed well in his defensive third-pairing role. John Hynes has Minnesota playing some of the lowest-event hockey in the league, and their left defensemen are perfectly suited for these tight-checking games. As much as games can turn to defensive slugfests in the playoffs, special teams are also often a determining factor. Minnesota's penalty kill gets most of the scrutiny, which has allowed a mediocre Wild power play to fly under the radar. The Wild have scored just 7.15 goals per hour with the man advantage (which has actually trended upward since Kirill Kaprizov's injury), ranking 21st in the NHL. The Carolina Hurricanes and Los Angeles Kings are the only playoff teams that have performed worse. Buium has the skill to be an instant injection of offense for the power play. At Denver and with Team USA, he's proven to be a difference-maker in transition and within a structured set-up. Scott Wheeler, who ranked Buium as the NHL's second-best prospect in The Athletic, breaks down all the skills he brings to the power play: "His shakes and deception have gone from a strength to a game-breaking quality. His head is always on a swivel. He opens up and walks the line to create lanes for his shot and pass so well, even working off his off-side. He side-steps past opposing players with ease." It might be difficult to convince Hynes to trade a known quantity in Merrill to put in an untested rookie, but the upside is more than worth any risk. The problem for Minnesota is that even if Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek return to the lineup, they will be huge underdogs in the first round. The Vegas Golden Knights and Dallas Stars have toppled the Wild's core over the past few postseason trips. The Winnipeg Jets seem to have Minnesota's number, and the Colorado Avalanche have Nathan MacKinnon and Cale Makar. Partly because of the Wild's salary cap restrictions, Minnesota will enter any first-round matchup with a massive talent deficit. No offense to Merrill (or, if you prefer, the struggling Middleton), but it's very unlikely that they will turn the tide of fortune in Minnesota's favor. Fair or not, you can say definitively they haven't in three postseason trips so far. But Buium can close the talent gap, and that's something the Wild must seriously consider. It will probably take some picking and choosing of spots to get him into the games. Remember, even Faber averaged under 15 minutes a night against Dallas as a rookie. Still, it shouldn't be difficult to use Buium as a power play specialist who can draw into some sheltered minutes at 5-on-5. Maybe these expectations are way too high, but all Buium does is pass tests. He's got the National Championship, and he's got the Gold Medal. Why not put his powers to the ultimate test and try to get the Wild out of the first round for the first time in a decade?

Drink if you’ve heard this before: the Minnesota Wild have a penalty-killing problem. It wasn’t always like this. Before the 2020s, the Wild were synonymous with good shorthanded play. It made sense, given their staunch defensive reputation, which has returned in the 2024-25 season. Strangely, the penalty kill has not followed suit. It seems that enough is finally enough. John Hynes has changed the penalty kill system. The Wild ran a 1-2-1 diamond at the start of the year. Jack Han identified a 1-2-1 diamond in his book Hockey Tactics 2025. It’s the same system that Minnesota ran in the previous two seasons, as Han identifies in earlier versions of the book. Under this system, one defenseman covers the net front, and the other three players fill out the rest of a diamond shape in their own zone. By defending the net front with the weak-side defenseman, the strong-side defenseman is free to attack the puck carrier. It can be extremely effective when that strong-side defender creates turnovers, which they can clear to the other end of the ice. Any four-on-five defensive scheme will have holes. The hole in this system is that it leaves the weak side of the ice open to a dangerous pass. The penalty killers are betting they can force a turnover before the puck carrier can thread a pass to the opposite side of the ice. Call it the Diamond Gambit. When the gambit fails, it looks like this. Notice that Freddy Gaudreau and Marcus Foligno are in a passing lane, but there’s still a dangerous shot available to Seth Jones from the point. Part of the issue is that Bogosian retreats to the net front rather than attacking the puck carrier, which gives Connor Bedard time and space to find Jones. However, it’s theoretically possible for Bedard to find that pass even if Bogosian applies pressure correctly. The benefit of this system is that it pairs well with an aggressive box, which Minnesota uses when their opponent has three players at the blue line. It allows their PK forwards to apply pressure when the puck is high in the zone, potentially creating a turnover. The 2-2 box has largely been solved since the advent of the 1-3-1 power play shape. It works great in your beer league, but the passing skill of the modern NHL, combined with the 1-3-1 spacing, renders it ineffective. That’s why the Wild combine this with a diamond system. If the opponent successfully works the puck deep into Minnesota’s zone, they shift to the diamond. That frees Minnesota’s strong-side defenseman to pressure as well. It’s all pressure, all the time. That scheme aligns with Hynes’s vision for the penalty kill. He wants to stop entries whenever possible and create turnovers at all costs. When successful, the opposing power play won’t ever generate chances because they’ll spend the full two minutes trying to enter Minnesota’s zone and set up their shape. It’s the best route to an elite penalty kill. The trouble is that it hasn’t worked for the past two years. The Wild’s PK ranked 30th in the NHL last year with a 74.5% kill, and they’re worse this year at 71.3%. The main culprit is high-danger chances. Last year, Minnesota ranked 26th in high-danger 4-on-5 goals against per-two minutes. This year, they’re 31st. Even worse, the Wild rank 27th in shorthanded shot attempts against. The entire point of the diamond is to prevent shots from happening anywhere in their zone, and they have not enjoyed that benefit in the current system. Hynes’s penalty-killers must walk before they can run. Rather than trying to return to their elite PK form of 2022-23, getting back to average would be a major step in the right direction. Therefore, Hynes appears to have implemented a 1-1-2 penalty kill structure to serve that goal. This can also be called a “wedge-plus-one” because of the wedge shape created in front of the net. This system is specifically designed to challenge high-danger passes. In a 1-3-1, the most dangerous plays come from the flankers, pictured above as the gray players near the faceoff circles. One such example happened in the Los Angeles Kings game. That’s a bad example of how to execute the wedge-plus-one, but it shows the staple play of a 1-3-1: a pass from one flanker to another. Let’s look at a better rep against the Utah Hockey Club. Notice how early in the video, both defensemen are in position to block a shot from the flanker. Gaudreau, the forward playing the “point” of the wedge, is in position to deny cross-seam passes. You can see Gaudreau turn his head to check on Utah’s weak-side flanker. He then turns his eyes toward the puck carrier, planting himself and his stick in the passing lane. The Diamond leaves the weak side of the ice poorly defended. Instead, this system has two players, Gaudreau and Brock Faber, defending their opponent’s most dangerous play. The high forward -- in this case, Yakov Trenin -- applies pressure to the puck carrier and defends the passing lane back to the point. That avoids opportunities like Seth Jones’ goal in Chicago. However, the wedge-plus-one’s pitfall is on display against Utah. It doesn’t create effective pressure as often as the box or diamond. Brodin can’t sit in the shooting lane and pressure Hayton simultaneously, and the same goes for Faber. The Pittsburgh Penguins power play had success from the same area. However, the Wild will likely improve their ability to execute a new system over the final games of the season, which should reduce plays like this. Hynes didn’t implement a penalty kill with an Achilles heel that would allow the opponent to walk through the slot. As Minnesota’s defense corps gets healthier and the players get more comfortable with the system, they can execute it better. That’s not a guarantee. Implementing a new system outside of training camp is challenging, especially for a team that rarely practices and is already fatigued due to a season-long injury streak. If the players can’t adopt the nuances of this new system, it could be even leakier than the diamond. Still, the benefits of a league-average penalty kill would be significant. If the Wild continue to take about 2.5 penalties per game, but they improve their PK from 71.3% to a league-average 78.4%, that projects to an extra 1.25 penalty kills over a seven-game stretch. In other words, it could be enough for one goal per playoff series. The Western Conference playoff picture is stacked with elite power play units. The Winnipeg Jets' power play ranks 1st in the NHL, followed closely by the Vegas Golden Knights (2nd) and Edmonton Oilers (6th). One of those three will most likely be Minnesota's first-round opponent. Entering those series with a bottom-five penalty kill would lead to a quick exit. Hynes is betting that the Wild can establish this systems change before those teams come to town. Call it the Wedge Gambit. I like it better than the Diamond one.

It was easy to come away from Monday's 3-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings and think that Matt Boldy was a difference-maker for the Minnesota Wild. The fourth-year winger set up the game-winning goal on the power play by feeding a beautiful cross-ice pass to Mats Zuccarello, who promptly sent it past Darcy Kuemper. Of course, games are won based on goals, so yes, Boldy did help make the difference last night. But throughout his career, we've been used to seeing Boldy be a difference-maker in many other ways. Now that we're nearly 70 games into the season, it's safe to say that version of him hasn't been on the ice in 2024-25. You won't see the drop-off in the stat sheet. Historically, Boldy's been good for 25-30 goals and 60-70 points per season, and he's on pace to hit 25 goals and 68 points. Still, entering the year, the hope wasn't that Boldy would duplicate his scoring; it was that he was ready to take The Leap and emerge as a player with 50-goal potential. Obviously, that didn't happen. Were we just dealing with unrealistic expectations? Maybe, but under the hood, Boldy looked like someone primed to join the ranks of the top players in the NHL. During his first three seasons, Boldy's play was worth 14 Standings Points Above Replacement, per Evolving-Hockey. That's a lot to begin with (36th in the NHL over that time), but particularly for someone in his age group. Looking at every player from their ages-20 through -22 seasons since 2007-08, Boldy's SPAR is tied for 26th in the NHL, alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner. That's absurd company. Matthews put two 60-goal seasons and a Hart Trophy on his resume, while Marner has produced over a point per game in the past seven years. Moreover, Boldy's game was so well-rounded. His offensive impact rated in the top-40 of anyone in his age group, while his defensive impact was in the top-20. Boldy was a two-way monster in the making, with scoring touch, to boot. Again, Boldy's still getting his numbers, and it says something that even in an underwhelming year, he can still rack up points. But you can see in the eye test that something feels different. He doesn't seem as dominant from shift to shift, and the signature moments -- the ones where he weaves through traffic with impossible puck control -- feel more infrequent. To confirm, that's not your mind playing tricks on you. Boldy's ability to drive play on both ends of the ice has done a vanishing act, and it reflects itself in his all-around stats. His SPAR for the season is just 0.7. In his first three seasons, he was fourth, fourth, and second on the Wild, respectively. Now? He's 13th on the Wild, sitting between Jake Middleton (0.8 SPAR) and Jon Merrill (0.6 SPAR). As much as folks have buyer's remorse on the Yakov Trenin deal, he's out-SPARred Boldy, delivering the Wild 1.2 points in the standings. That's not supposed to happen. Moreover, Minnesota can't afford for this to happen. They have the $15 million in dead cap because of the Zach Parise/Ryan Suter buyouts and another $20 million of payroll on injured reserve between Kirill Kaprizov, Jonas Brodin, and Joel Eriksson Ek. They can't also have their return on investment on Boldy's $7 million cap hit be fewer than a point in the standings. Not if they want to hold onto their playoff spot. It's easy to look at Boldy's season since Kaprizov's initial injury -- a span in which he has scored eight goals and 26 points in 33 games -- and conclude that the former BC Eagle can't be The Guy. While the 2024-25 version of Boldy doesn't look like it, we've seen Boldy carry that torch in Kaprizov's absence before. During the 2022-23 season, Kaprizov missed a month's worth of games, and Boldy responded by going on a tear, scoring 13 goals and 19 points in 13 games. Minnesota went 7-3-3 during that stretch, largely thanks to Boldy catching fire, and made the playoffs. And remember, Boldy had been having a pretty underwhelming season in terms of scoring, with just 17 goals and 42 points in the 65 games prior. So, what's different this year? It's hard to say for sure -- maybe it's a blip on the radar, perhaps there's some sort of injury we don't know about, and something else might be happening. But there is an interesting thread to connect between 2022-23, when he struggled offensively, and this year when his all-around game suffered. During the 2022-23 season, the Wild asked Boldy to carry a line basically on his own for the first half of the season. They'd traded Kevin Fiala and wanted to keep Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello together. They also wanted to pair Eriksson Ek with Marcus Foligno and Jordan Greenway. Therefore, his linemates became Freddy Gaudreau and a rotating cast of characters, all of whom weren't nearly a difference-maker like Fiala. Then Minnesota put him with Joel Eriksson Ek and traded for Marcus Johansson, who thrived with the two big, shooting forwards. That coincided with that Kaprizov-less tear Boldy had to end the season. Last year, the talent around him wasn't a problem. Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek were his two most common linemates, and that trio was dominant. However, with so many injuries, we're seeing Boldy have something similar to his supporting cast from 2022-23. It's not a perfect analogy. His most common linemates are Marco Rossi (43.3% of his 5-on-5 minutes), Zuccarello (35.3%), and Eriksson Ek (33.3%), and those are three talented players. Are they the right match for Boldy, though? Rossi doesn't seem to have quite the chemistry with Boldy as he shared with Kaprizov. His on-ice goal and expected goal creation numbers are lower with Boldy than without, even as he pulls Boldy's significantly up. Zuccarello's producing well for his age. Still, his 5-on-5 impact isn't quite where it used to be, particularly when Kaprizov's not around. As for Eriksson Ek, he's spent basically the entire season playing hurt, diminishing his offensive ability. It could be a coincidence that Boldy is struggling now, but we're at least seeing the start of a pattern. Maybe Boldy can't be The Guy... or at least, The Only Guy. We've seen him at his best whenever there's a superstar paired with him to unlock his abilities and see that fade whenever that support disappears. It feels a bit like Mikko Rantanen struggling with the Carolina Hurricanes: There's a big difference between Nathan MacKinnon and even a good, high-end offensive player like Sebastian Aho. Does that mean Rantanen isn't a great player? No. It doesn't have to mean that for Boldy, either. But this season might put another layer of urgency onto the Wild to go out and get premium offensive talent in the summer once those buyout hits become much less onerous. This team can't keep being an injury away from collapsing and struggling mightily to produce offense. If Minnesota wants Boldy to emerge as their second star, that's still on the table, but it will have to be with players who can feed off of his high-end offensive game and vice versa.

Brock Faber is one of the Minnesota Wild's most consequential players. He leads the team in time on ice at 5-on-5 and the penalty kill, and is tops among Wild defensemen in power play ice time. They task him with shutting down the opposing team's top players nightly. He does all that as a second-year player who ranks sixth in the NHL in average time-on-ice per game. Faber has performed admirably for much of the season, but his excessive deployment is becoming a concern in Minnesota. For the second straight year, the defenseman is playing far worse in the second half of the season. The defender's dip in play has become especially pronounced in recent weeks. In his last 10 games, Faber has two points and 19 giveaways. He has also struggled to possess the puck, with an under-50 Corsi-for percentage in seven of those contests. While the plus/minus stat is generally an incomplete indicator of individual play, it is concerning that Faber is a minus-11 in those last 10 matchups. If you're wondering why we’re highlighting Faber when other players around him are struggling, that’s fair. But this isn't just a regular slump. Minnesota's No. 1 defenseman has been a flat-out liability in 2025. The Wild have played 29 games since January 1, with Faber playing 25 of those games. During that span, Faber's on-ice expected goals-for percentage at 5-on-5 (43.7%) is significantly lower Minnesota's mark with him off the ice (48.5%), according to Natural Stat Trick. Given that Faber has logged nearly 19 minutes per night of 5-on-5 play alone, that's a huge red flag for the Wild. A big reason for their struggles is that their No. 1 defenseman isn't dictating the play like they expect him to. The Calder Trophy runner-up had a very good reason for his decline in the second half of last season. He was not only playing with cracked ribs, but was forced to play more than the team intended due to Jared Spurgeon's hip and back injuries. Minnesota is having injury issues again this season. Still, as far as we know, Faber isn't among the walking wounded. Instead, the most likely culprit is that the Wild lean on Faber in high-leverage situations, and they do so too much. Despite Faber's waning effectiveness, the Wild are putting more on him than ever. In his last 10 games, Faber has averaged more than 26 minutes per game, ranking second in the NHL. At this point in the season, Faber is clearly starting to fatigue. "It's hard. I'd be lying if I said it wasn't," Faber told The Athletic. "But at the same time, I'm doing what I love. It's hard to focus on negative thoughts — 'I'm playing bad, this hurts, I'm tired' — when I'm playing here and with the group we have." While his attitude is good, his lack of energy is starting to cost the Wild in crucial situations. Occasionally, he plays well before fading late in games. Faber's outing against the Vancouver Canucks on March 7 was one of his best recent efforts. He had a goal and dominated possession with a 66.2 Corsi-for percentage. Still, he seemed to tire at the end of the game, and it cost the Wild when the smooth-skating Faber got beat to a puck by Teddy Blueger, who scored an empty net goal to ice the game. Blueger made a great effort to beat Faber, but the Minnesota defender had the inside track. When a play like that happens once, it isn't too concerning. However, Faber has had a recent pattern of pucks beating him, so it's time to take a closer look at these incidents. In the Wild's next game, Faber got out-raced on an empty net again. Faber was upset by the play and broke his stick on the net after Crosby's goal. Minnesota's star defender discussed the two plays with The Athletic. "It was frustration, getting beat to two races (in 36 hours)," Faber said. "I felt like I could give a lot more… if I was fresh. I felt like they were long shifts, and I'd say 90 percent of that's on me for either not changing or taking too long of a shift or whatever it was. I don't want to blame it on being tired, but after being out on the ice for two minutes, it's hard to be at your best." In an expression of leadership, Faber takes responsibility and doesn't want to blame it on fatigue. Still, although he’s 22, he’s one of the most heavily-used defenders in the league for the second straight season. That isn't to say the narrative on Faber should be negative. The young defender is one of the best in the game and can be a tremendous asset to the Wild. Faber's fatigue is more an issue of how Minnesota needs to manage him going forward. It's easy to say Faber’s contract dictates that he should be able to manage his heavy workload, but it bears mentioning that Faber is dealing with more than simple No. 1 defenseman minutes. Only Ryan Suter played more minutes in a season for the Wild than Faber did last season... as a rookie! This year, Faber's average time on ice has increased from 24:58 to 25:18. That doesn't even reflect the extra 93:22 he accumulated in four games during the 4 Nations Faceoff. Even with Suter demonstrating the ability to take on that workload year after year, the general consensus was that Minnesota could get better play out of him if they lightened his responsibilities. Why shouldn't that mindset apply to Faber, as well? But unfortunately for the Wild, they lack options. Injuries to key defensive players have given the team no choice but to overextend their best blueliner as they try to hold on to a playoff spot. It's difficult to imagine where the young D-man’s minutes will go if the Wild even tried resting him. While the Wild don’t have a ton of options, help might be coming. The Wild have spent a lot of assets building their defensive group, most recently trading a haul for David Jiricek. They have one of the most vaunted defensive prospects in the league, Zeev Buium. However, Jiricek has struggled to get into games since joining the Wild, even if he has played reasonably well in his limited action. Buium has the potential to be a star eventually but should be able to contribute once he's finished his season with Denver, even if people may be unreasonable expecting him to have an immediate impact. Jiricek and Buium are two young players in their own right, so expecting them to make an impact immediately is a lot to ask. Still, they need to lighten Faber’s load by addressing an aging top-four that includes Jonas Brodin, Spurgeon, and Jake Middleton. With seven years left on Faber's contract in Minnesota, the Wild must find the best way to maximize their asset. The defender has drawn praise for his minute-crunching abilities, but at what cost? With his second year in a row seeing his play dip in the second half, it may be time to evaluate whether that's what the Wild want him to be. He's a great player, thrust into a difficult situation, and it seems to be affecting him negatively. If the Wild want their investment to work out, they'll have to figure out how to lighten the load.

When the Minnesota Wild acquired 27-year-old Justin Brazeau from the Boston Bruins on Thursday night, they got a little better. While it might not be the blockbuster some have hoped for, it should help the team this year. Brazeau should fit in well on a team looking to improve because all the 6-foot-6, 227-pound forward has done throughout his career is continuously improve. In his first draft year, Brazeau was a big, slow, unrefined forward on a bad North Bay Battalion team that finished near the bottom of the OHL standings. While the Battalion hadn’t improved much two years later, Brazeau certainly had. The right-shot wing had developed some serious game. The Battalion named him team captain, and he finished second in the league in scoring, behind future Dallas Stars sniper Jason Robertson. While it’s normal for overaged players to dominate at the junior level, nothing about Brazeau was normal. More often than not, when players reach the threshold of professional hockey, heavyweight forwards tend to settle in as bottom-of-the-lineup players meant to set the tone with physical play. Any scoring they provide is considered a bonus. But Brazeau had capitalized on soft hands and a long reach to develop into an all-around force with legitimate scoring touch. However, skating was the biggest element lacking in his game. Still, the Toronto Maple Leafs saw his production and potential and inked him to an AHL contract. He ended up spending his first professional season in the ECHL with the Newfoundland Growlers, where he finished second on the team in scoring in his age-22 season. Brazeau became a full-time AHL player in the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. However, he struggled with the AHL’s pace, and Toronto didn’t re-sign him, making him a free agent. The Providence Bruins swooped in and signed the hulking winger, and that’s when his professional career began to take off. Although he started the season with the ECHL’s Maine Mariners, Brazeau went on an absolute tear in the first 18 games. The Providence Bruins called him up, and he never looked back. Brazeau tore up the AHL that season and received multiple contract offers from other AHL teams but chose to stay in the Bruins organization. Brazeau continued to be a dominant force in the AHL over the next two seasons, putting up big scoring numbers while also dominating physically. Although Brazeau isn’t a fighter, he learned to use his size in professional hockey to become a menace with the puck and on the forecheck. Even though speed will never be his strength, he learned to move efficiently around the ice and take good angles to get to spots at the right time. That, combined with the slick hands he had developed in juniors, allowed him to pile up the points and score slick goals in tight. Last season, the Boston Bruins called Brazeau up to the NHL in early April, and that’s where he’s been ever since. Fans around the league received their introduction to Brazeau when he returned from injury and entered Boston’s lineup for Game 5 of their series against Toronto. He instantly made an impact with his physical play and capped off an excellent series by putting in a dominant shift that led to an assist on Hampus Lindholm’s game-tying goal in Game 7. Then, he put his signature on the playoffs with a wonderful goal in Game 1 of the 2nd round against the Florida Panthers. He picked up a puck in the neutral zone and thundered down the ice on a breakaway, beating Sergei Bobrovsky with a slick move to tuck home a goal. Boston lost in six games to the eventual Stanley Cup champion Panthers. Still, Brazeau’s performance down the stretch and in the playoffs earned him a full-time NHL gig for this season. He’s responded with a solid 10 goals and 10 assists in 57 games, playing in the bottom six and getting time net-front on the power play. That’s the role he’ll likely play in Minnesota. Search YouTube for Brazeau’s goals in juniors, the minor leagues, and the NHL. You’ll notice that many of them come from right in front of the net. He often corrals a loose puck, makes a slick move, and uses his long reach to deposit the puck in the net around an outstretched goalie. It’s the type of player the Wild haven’t had in a while, maybe ever. Suppose Brazeau can continue to perform at the level he has and demonstrate the ability to improve continuously as an NHL player. After all, he’s a 27-year-old player in the middle of his prime. Then, he can be a valuable piece that can be a force come playoff time, where physical play ramps up. Given the Wild’s historical struggles against heavy teams in the playoffs, Brazeau will be a welcome addition that should provide a physical presence every night. So, while this might not be the big splashy move that many fans had hoped for, it makes the team better, which counts for something. And for what it’s worth, getting better is all Justin Brazeau knows how to do.

Things down in Des Moines looked ugly earlier this year. The Iowa Wild's start to the season was less than ideal. They were 0-6-1, and their top prospects were floundering. That was surprising, given that they hired Brett McLean in the offseason and had some veteran additions mixed in with the youth. It looked like Iowa had set this team up to succeed, but that has not been the case. It’s been a rocky season. Until recently, when Iowa has started to gain some traction. They were on a three-game skid in the middle of February, and Jesper Wallstedt hadn't been consistent all season. Things looked gloomy. Then, a 14-save third period sparked Iowa in a 3-2 overtime win over the Grand Rapids Griffins. Suddenly, the Wild are back. Iowa has continued to be clutch and won four in a row. Three of their four wins have come in overtime. The Wild are only six points out of a playoff spot. They have many games against the Rockford Ice Hogs, which has the final playoff spot, and the Central Division coming up. They have an opportunity to climb the standings and earn meaningful points. Iowa lost Daemon Hunt, their best defender and leader, to the Columbus Blue Jackets in the David Jiricek trade. Devin Shore has only played 14 games for the Iowa Wild and was supposed to be a team leader, but he’s spent most of his time with the big club. Brendan Gaunce has been their leading goal scorer until his call-up. However, Minnesota has offered Iowa reinforcements by sending Marat Khusnudinov and Liam Ohgren down. Marat Khusnutdinov will debut with the Iowa Wild, and it should be a solid reset for him, allowing him to find his offense. Khusnutdinov is fast and has elite hands, which should allow him to score in the AHL. Look for him to get power play and penalty kill time and lead this team in minutes as an all-situations star. Ohgren has dominated in Des Moines this year. He’s a welcome addition to a team that struggles to score goals. Ohgren scored 23 points and 12 goals in 25 games in Iowa earlier this season. Iowa has made more additions to the offense. The Wild sent Joseph Cecconi to the Ontario Reign for forward Tyler Madden. Madden has 25 points in 47 games this season and can help the Wild in the middle six more than a defender helped their top six. Hunter Haight is also on a tear, with six points and four goals in the last three games. The rookie forward now leads the team with 18 goals and is second behind Travis Boyd with 31. His play has brought a spark of enthusiasm to the team and lifted them. Graeme Clark, 23, has also stepped up and was responsible for the most recent overtime winner. The Wild acquired him from the New Jersey Devils for Adam Beckman at the start of the year. Clark is fourth on the team in points with 27. On the blue line, David Spacek leads the defense with 23 points in 54 games. Carson Lambos has also chipped in with 25 points. Those two have been the only source of production on the back end, with Jiricek taking a more defensive role. The Iowa Wild have steam. They hold their fate in their own hands, and some highly skilled forwards are on their way to help get the team to the playoffs.

Over the weekend, the Minnesota Wild broke the ice on their trade deadline. They traded for Gustav Nyquist, who they previously acquired at the 2022-23 trade deadline. Bringing Nyquist back is a bit puzzling, given he’s 35 and has 21 points in 57 games this season. Nyquist probably makes the Wild marginally better, but the issue is how he fits into their roster construction. With Joel Eriksson Ek out, they could have used some help at center. Michael Russo and Joe Smith broached how the Wild could get reinforcements for Eriksson Ek in The Athletic. After seeing who may be available, Minnesota could better spend its assets elsewhere. Nyquist should be a fine pickup, but this trade leaves the impression that the Wild had much better options to explore at center. Filling a gap in the lineup Picking up a center became vital to the Wild when Joel Eriksson Ek went down with another injury. Eriksson Ek is having issues staying in the lineup this season after being one of the team’s more durable players early in his career. Minnesota’s lack of center depth becomes incredibly apparent with Eriksson Ek out. Marco Rossi, 23, is good but inexperienced. Frederick Gaudreau is having a bounce-back season but isn’t a second-line center. With all due respect to Brendan Gaunce and Devin Shore, they’re replacement-level NHL players. Bill Guerin said he expects Eriksson Ek and Kirill Kaprizov to return in the regular season. What if Eriksson Ek gets hurt again? What if his recovery takes longer than initially anticipated? The Wild would have to roll their current center setup in the playoffs. That won’t go well. Instead of investing in their gap down the middle, Minnesota traded for Nyquist. Who could they have targeted, though? There were options. Many linked the Wild to New York Islanders center Brock Nelson, but he doesn’t appear available. On Inside Trading, Pierre LeBrun reported that the Islanders are still trying to sign Nelson despite their place in the standings. The Wild could pry him away with significant assets, but this year’s team isn’t worth investing much capital into. Dylan Cozens is another name that gained some traction. However, that also could take significant assets and be a high-risk trade. Even if the Wild didn’t want to shop for a huge asset, there were options in a similar price range to Nyquist. In their article, Russo and Smith named Scott Laughton and Yanni Gourde as potential candidates to help the Wild’s center depth in Eriksson Ek’s absence. Philadelphia reportedly wants a first-round pick for Laughton, but the asking price always starts high. Laughton also has another year on his contract and a reasonable cap hit at just $3 million annually. Gourde is coming off an injury, and the Wild could acquire him for a reasonable haul. Gourde is 5-foot-9, 174 lbs., undersized for a center. Still, he has a winning pedigree after his two Stanley Cup wins in Tampa Bay and is a proven playoff performer with 41 points in 82 career postseason games. He’s tenacious, responsible defensively, and provides a bit of a scoring punch. Is that not exactly what the Wild need? A move for a center would have helped the Wild with Eriksson Ek’s injury and could also have helped the team during its impending playoff run. Strength down the middle leads to success When you look at the roster construction of several of the league’s most successful teams, strength at center is a common theme. However, the most recent Stanley Cup winners have had center play and depth. The Florida Panthers have Aleksander Barkov, Sam Bennett, and Anton Lundell, and the Vegas Golden Knights had Jack Eichel, Chandler Stephenson, and William Karlsson. The best teams in the league typically have good center depth. The Wild have Rossi and Eriksson Ek, but neither are as good as Vegas or Florida’s centers. Still, it’s a good start. If Minnesota had acquired Yanni Gourde or Scott Laughton, they’d at least have excellent depth. The Wild must go on a playoff run soon to show Kirill Kaprizov they’re serious about competing. If they have to spend an asset to do that, they would be better off spending it on developing an identity as a team with center depth rather than an aging scoring winger who only marginally helps the team. Guerin traded for Nyquist because he was familiar with him and because the Preds retained salary and only got a draft pick in exchange. They pulled the trade off well before the deadline, but Nyquist might not make the Wild that much better. How does Nyquist fit? It might be unfair to characterize the Nyquist trade as completely negative. In a vacuum, he adds something to the lineup. Nyquist brings some scoring depth the team sorely lacks and has some experience with the team. He’s also a decent playoff producer, scoring nine points in his last 12 postseason games. The issue with Nyquist isn’t the player he’s been; it’s the player he is now. At 35 years old, the Swedish forward is reaching the age at which a decline might be coming. He had a fantastic season for Nashville last year, scoring 75 points in 81 games. However, he’s been much less productive this year. His 21 points in 57 games is his lowest scoring rate since he broke into the league in 2013-14. Nyquist’s age and decline make this trade a considerable gamble. Is it possible he’s had a bad year in Nashville, along with everyone else on that team? Maybe a change of scenery could help him regain some of his scoring form from last year. However, it’s also possible that the winger is starting to decline at age 35. The gamble the Wild are making is particularly concerning, given what they gave up for Nyquist. A second-round pick is valuable, especially for the Wild’s front office. According to The Athletic, Minnesota has built up the league’s second-best farm system. Perhaps the Wild don’t need any more prospects. However, if Nyquist doesn’t move the needle, the Wild are giving up what could be a valuable asset for a few games of a declining asset. Are you confident that Gustav Nyquist makes the Wild a bona fide contender? I’m not. Nyquist might give the team another scoring option. In the best-case scenario, he’s a good contributor in the playoffs. Even if that happens, the team could have spent these resources much better on a center. They need an insurance policy on Eriksson Ek. Strength down the middle could be an advantage in the playoffs. The Wild had better targets.

Very suddenly, it seems like the Minnesota Wild could have a little bit of wiggle room at the trade deadline. If Joel Eriksson Ek's injury keeps him out until the end of the regular season, the Wild could take advantage of LTIR and free up $5.25 million of cap space. That would change things from the status quo, where Minnesota is virtually unable to make a trade, to a scenario where the Wild could be actual players. As a result, The Athletic is daring to speculate about the Wild landing a center. You already know one of the names: native Minnesotan Brock Nelson. The second name is, at least on paper, much more intriguing. Dylan Cozens of the Buffalo Sabres. It's easy to see why the Wild would be interested in The Workhorse From Whitehorse. He's 24-years-old, and right-shot centermen who've scored 30 goals are in short supply. Since the 2014-15 season, there are only 17 players who've scored 30 goals and won 500 faceoffs in a season. Only 13 of them are active. It also doesn't hurt that Cozens has the kind of frame (6-foot-3, 207 pounds) the Wild seem to covet down the middle. It's easy to see Cozens as a cornerstone for a franchise's future. However, a deeper look reveals that Cozens is a substantial risk for any potential suitor -- and that's being generous. The big thing to consider with any breakout season is whether it's sustainable. Is the new success born from genuine growth from a player, or is there some smoke-and-mirrors happening? At first glance, Cozens' 2022-23 season seems like a breakthrough. He shot 14.7%, which is a touch high. However, he scored 31 goals on nearly 27 expected goals, which doesn't seem outrageous by any means. Worst-case scenario, Cozens seemed ready to settle into the 25- to 30-goal range, which is terrific for a center. Since then, Cozens has just 29 goals in 136 games -- an 18-goal 82-game pace. The thing is, you'd expect to see a significant drop in expected goals, but that's not entirely accurate. Last year's 18 goals came from 23.6 expected goals. This season, he's on pace for 16 goals on 21.9 expected. The chances are down, sure, but not back-to-back-sub-20-goal seasons down. Looking at his young career, it seems like Cozens might not be a particularly talented shooter. That 14.7% from his 31-goal season is a definite outlier. Take out that season, and his career shooting percentage drops from 10.1% -- about league-average -- to 8.4%, which is pretty abysmal. For context, fourth-line grinder Brandon Duhaime has a career 8.2 shooting percentage. It's important to note that talented players sometimes take a while to flip a switch and get higher-percentage shots. In Nathan MacKinnon's first four seasons, he only shot 8.1%, and he's shot 11.1% with one of the highest shot volumes in the NHL ever since. Twenty-four isn't too old for the light to come on, either. Joel Eriksson Ek shot an absurdly low 6.8% through his age-23 season, which is lower than, for example, Jared Spurgeon's career mark. But once he figured to get to the net, his game flourished, and his shooting percentage has been at 10.1 ever since. Maybe Cozens just needs to have something click. But even if that's the case, there are still two major red flags for the young center. The most obvious hole is his defense, which is close to the bottom of the barrel. According to Evolving-Hockey's Goals Above Replacement metric, 432 forwards have played 1000-plus minutes in the past three seasons, and Cozens' defensive impact per minute ranks 402nd. Cozens is a dead-ringer defensively for Cole Caufield, except that Caufield has at least scored 33.7 goals per 82 games over his career. Cozens has scored 19 goals for every 82 games since joining the NHL. And look, you don't have to care about defense 100%. If you're talking about someone like Caufield or Kyle Connor, you'll take the good with the bad. Their offensive prowess -- particularly on the power play -- helps coaches and fans live much happier with any defensive lapses on their own end. If Cozens isn't a stout two-way guy, he can still be a big, right-shot, goal-scoring threat down the middle. Eriksson Ek can handle the defense and let Cozens do his thing. The problem here is that Cozens isn't some major power play threat. In fact, he's one of the least productive forwards in the NHL on the power play. Over Cozens' four full NHL seasons, he's logged 670 minutes on the power play. He's one of 145 forwards who have 500-plus minutes during that time. Cozens ranks 133rd in goals per hour (0.99) and 122nd in points per hour (3.58). That's atrocious. There isn't a meaningful distinction between Cozens' numbers and Marcus Johansson's power play stats over that same time (0.92 G/60; 3.70 P/60). Again, Cozens is young enough that you can guess he'll have some room to grow after a change of scenery -- but how much are we talking about? Cozens is making $7.1 million per season, which will look increasingly better as the cap increases. Still, the player has to perform, especially because taking on someone like Cozens will surely cost a top prospect. I could potentially be the de facto "Christmas Morning" addition, with a trade taking the place of free agency. If the Wild get Cozens, they might not be able to do anything else, at least not without trading a more productive player like Matt Boldy or Marco Rossi. Maybe the Wild would be inclined to roll the dice on Cozens. There are absolutely upsides to such a move. Getting a player at this stage in their career is better than getting an older player with similar defensive warts (looking at Brock Boeser, perhaps). Cozens' ability to play the pivot is attractive, but those red flags are bright. If a change of scenery isn't the missing piece to unlock a new level of skill from Cozens, the Wild might be stuck with another half-decade-long albatross in his contract.

Even after dropping two straight games on back-to-back nights by a combined score of 8-1, the Minnesota Wild are still a relative lock to make it into the playoffs. As of Wednesday, Evolving-Hockey has their playoff odds at 90.4%. Barring a total collapse, the only question left is who they'll play -- more specifically, where they'll play. As a (likely) Wild Card team, they'll get put in either the Central Division or Pacific Division playoff bracket. Interestingly, Minnesota hasn't been a Wild Card since the 2015-16 season and has never jumped into the Pacific Division side, which has generally been much less of a meat grinder than the Central. Once again, the Central Division path looks like a gauntlet. The Winnipeg Jets have been hot almost the entire season, with Connor Hellebuyck playing like a runaway Vezina Trophy winner and someone who should lift the Hart. The Dallas Stars were already intimidating, then loaded up with Mikko Rantanen at the deadline. Meanwhile, the Colorado Avalanche lost Rantanen and have a 15-6-1 record since making the deal. The Pacific Division doesn't look like a cakewalk. The Edmonton Oilers made the Cup Final last year, and the Vegas Golden Knights are two years removed from winning it all. Still, if you had to pick your poison, a team would generally prefer the Pacific. Edmonton's got their vulnerabilities, and the Los Angeles Kings haven't proved they're a "playoff-style" team in their current configuration. However, it's hard for someone to watch the Wild these last two nights and come away thinking there's an ideal first-round matchup anywhere. Maybe that's not fair. The team is missing Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek, (arguably) their two most important players. They didn't have Jonas Brodin in the lineup Monday night against Dallas but kept things fairly even in scoring chances. While the Wild laid an egg on Tuesday against Vegas, that was on the second half of a back-to-back with travel. All this is true. It might sound doomer-ish, but it's also difficult to come away from these last two games and think that either playoff bracket could yield a good result for Minnesota. The Wild threw their best punch at the Stars for 59 minutes without Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek. The result was zero goals for Minnesota. Meanwhile, all Dallas needed to do was score twice in a minute to build an insurmountable lead. If you're a Wild fan, maybe you can take some comfort in that Minnesota cut Vegas' lead to 2-1 in the third period and even lit the lamp to tie the game before waiving off Marco Rossi's goal due to playing with a high stick. But don't fool yourselves. When Brett Howden scored to lift the Golden Knights to a 2-0 lead, they had a 13-to-5 shot advantage over Minnesota. After surviving the Wild's "charge" back in the third period, they needed only 13 seconds following a Ryan Hartman penalty to put the game completely out of reach. Minnesota's on red alert with the St. Louis Blues on the Wild's heels to pass them up in the standings. "Everything can happen in the playoffs, but first we gotta worry about getting there," Mats Zuccarello told the media postgame. It's true in the abstract, but St. Louis isn't their problem. All the Blues can do is pass Minnesota up for the first Wild Card spot and bump them into second place. The objects in the rearview mirror are the Vancouver Canucks (six points back of Minnesota with a game in hand) and Calgary Flames (seven points back, two games in hand). And the fact is, both teams are nearly out of runway for their playoff hopes to take off. The Wild have 10 games left and realistically only need seven or eight points to clinch a spot. A 3-6-1 record probably does the trick. The bigger worry is the sheer talent gap between the Wild, as currently assembled, and the top teams. St. Louis passing Minnesota in the standings would leave the Wild to (likely) face the Winnipeg Jets in the first round. Minnesota's 0-7-1 against the Jets since April 2023, being out-scored 32-to-13. It's hard to feel good about that matchup. But what's the difference between the Jets and the Knights? Vegas has also had Minnesota's number over these past three years. The Wild are 1-6-2 against the Golden Knights, who have out-scored Minnesota 36-17. If history is destiny, then we're only talking about the difference between a four- and five-game series. It's too hard to ignore how Minnesota didn't have an answer for Vegas' top players. Even more than the impact on the scoresheet by Jack Eichel (who had a hat trick) and Mark Stone (two assists), there's the fact that they weren't even going all-out, at least from a minutes perspective. In a do-or-die situation, Vegas isn't limiting those two all-star forwards to under 17 minutes per night. But that was all they needed to thoroughly handle Minnesota on Tuesday. Of course, they play the games for a reason, and you only need to look at the Wild's last two playoff series wins to see why. In the 2014 and 2015 playoffs, Minnesota knocked off two teams that won the Central Division. Few expected much from the Wild in either season, but they surprised two top teams in consecutive years. If Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek can hit the ground running and stay healthy enough to give Minnesota a great seven games, it could happen against Winnipeg, Vegas, Dallas, Colorado, whoever. At the same time, those upsets were a decade ago, their star forwards' health is far from a guarantee, and the Wild are dealing with salary cap limitations caused by their stars from 2014 and 15. Anything can happen, but a playoff series win for Minnesota feels like a tall, tall order after getting served a reality check in these past two games.

The Minnesota Wild have had awful injury luck, with over half a dozen core players missing time. The bubonic plague has struck this team. Only two players have played in every game for the Wild: Matt Boldy and Freddy Gaudreau. Team pillars Kirill Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin, Marcus Foligno, Jake Middleton, and Brock Faber have missed time. Kaprizov remains out with an unknown timetable. Bill Guerin said he believes that all of these guys will be back for the playoffs, and the team will be fully healthy going into the playoffs. Whether that happens remains to be seen. Still, what would a fully healthy Wild lineup look like? At full health, the Wild led the NHL in points in January, and Kaprizov was playing like an MVP. However, injuries and inconsistent play have dropped the team into the first wild-card spot in the Western Conference. Minnesota can stay afloat until the playoffs start. However, as it stands, this team would face an early exit in the opening round. The Wild made two additions at the trade deadline and lost two significant players. They sent Marat Khusnutdinov and Jakub Lauko to the Boston Bruins. The Wild brought in big winger Justin Brazeau and old friend Gustav Nyquist to add depth. Both players have playoff experience, and Brazeau brings the size and strength that teams often rely on in the postseason. Nyquist has 30 points in 77 playoff games. He has playoff experience with three different teams. The Wild also added Vinnie Hinostroza via waivers. Ryan Hartman’s childhood friend has had a respectable six points in 16 games. The former sixth-rounder has carved out a nice role in the Wild’s bottom six and should be a key depth piece in the playoffs as a responsible two-way forward with some punch. In net, Filip Gustavsson has been one of the best goaltenders on the planet over the past month, regaining his early season form. He recently held a shutout streak over five periods in last week's games against the Seattle Kraken and Buffalo Sabres. The Wild have seen Gus stand on his head in multiple playoff series. Remember Game 1 in Dallas two years ago? Gustavsson was outstanding in Minnesota’s double-overtime win. However, the Wild have seen Gus at his lowest at the midpoint of this season and for most of last season. Nobody knows how Gustavsson will play in the playoffs, but it looks like he’ll be at his best when the games matter the most. Assuming the hockey gods allow everyone to come back healthy, here is what Minnesota’s first-round lineup could look like: Kaprizov - Eriksson Ek - Boldy Mats Zuccarello - Marco Rossi - Nyquist Marcus Foligno - Hartman - Marcus Johansson/Hinostroza Yakov Trenin - Gaudreau - Brazeau Devin Shore/Brendan Gaunce The added depth and Rossi’s emergence allow the Wild to load up the top line without losing depth scoring. Nyquist and Zuccarello have extensive playoff experience and will be able to support Rossi on the second line. Minnesota’s bottom six is tough to figure out because it wants the size that Foligno, Trenin, and Brazeau offer but also needs the centers in Hartman and Gaudreau. Neither one has been playing a fourth-line role, but that’s how things shake out. I thought keeping the two childhood friends together in Hartman and Hinostroza would foster chemistry. Potentially a late-season Liam Ohgren addition, but history suggests he’ll be watching from home. On the defensive side of the puck: Middleton - Faber Spurgeon - Brodin Zeev Buium - Zach Bogosian The top four is as good as it gets. There’s not a team in the league that can say they are clearly better than that group. The curious decision comes with the bottom pair. I imagine the Wild will want to keep Bogosian’s physicality in the lineup. Jon Merrill hasn’t been too bad this season. However, the Wild would love to have Buium’s puck-moving ability on the powerplay and the breakout, similar to how Faber came in as a rookie two years ago. Expect Buium to have a similar impact. The Wild have not shown trust in Declan Chisholm at all this year, and I doubt he will draw in the playoffs unless injuries rear their head again. In net: Gustavsson. Simple. Keed the hot hand rolling. This team has stayed afloat amid all the injuries, and we’ve seen what the forward core can do when it is fully healthy. Minnesota's most likely draw is the Vegas Golden Knights, Dallas Stars, or Colorado Avalanche – all familiar foes. Competing with Colorado’s star power is hard, and Dallas’ forward core with Mikko Rantanen is unfair. Still, on paper, I like the Wild’s chances in the playoffs against Colorado or Vegas. Guerin has made this team more playoff-ready. Now it’s time to find out how far they’ll go. All stats and data via HockeyDB, Cap Wages, and Evolving Hockey unless otherwise noted.

The Minnesota Wild have made it to the third week of March without dropping in the standings. The Wild sit eight points above the Vancouver Canucks and St. Louis Blues. And despite winning only five of nine games this month, they are only one point below the Colorado Avalanche, who are third in the Central Division. Given Minnesota's growing list of injured players, its recent losses are no surprise. Marco Rossi joined that group after the Seattle Kraken game on Wednesday. Still, the Wild have found ways to win important games. After an embarrassing 5-1 loss to St. Louis, the Wild have had a noticeable surge in energy. They have won the last two games, beating the Los Angeles Kings 3-1 and shutting out the Seattle Kraken 4-0. While Minnesota’s offense drove winning after the St. Louis game, Filip Gustavsson’s goaltending is responsible for much of their success. Gustavsson was the starter for Minnesota’s 5-1 loss to St. Louis and its wins over L.A. and Seattle. He picked up his second shutout of the month against Seattle and fifth of the season, tying him for the second most in the league. Gustavsson’s ability to refocus after a loss is a good sign that he will be ready to carry the team through the playoffs. During his three years with the Wild, Gustavsson hasn’t had any postseason success. He started one game two years ago before missing the playoffs in 2023-24. Still, Gustavsson is stringing together an excellent season. He may no longer be in contention for the Vezina, but he’s been good enough to allow Minnesota to ride out its injuries. Going into the playoffs, we will see a Gustavsson we’ve never seen before. In a career-high 47 games, Gustavsson has gone 27-15-4 with a 2.51 GAA and a .917 SV%. These are incredible statistics. He may have looked like the league’s best goaltender at one point, but he dropped to 11th in the league in GAA and 6th in SV%. Gustavsson played a career-high 45 games in 2023-24 and had a 20-18-4 record, 3.06 GAA, and .899 SV%. He’s built off that this season, playing more than he ever has in the NHL and putting together the best season of his career. He’s putting together a breakout season while facing the fifth-most shots of any goaltender and has still managed the fifth-most saves in the league. That’s the type of goalie you want in the playoffs. Gustavsson has played well but has been inconsistent this year. At the beginning of the season, Gustavsson took the league by storm, and Minnesota strung together one of the best starts in franchise history. However, the Wild have cooled off since then. They have lost much of their firepower through injuries, and Gustavsson has looked human. Gustavsson’s ability to bounce back is impressive, making him stand out among Minnesota’s recent goaltenders. A goalie’s ability to move on from past losses and continue to play at an elite level can carry a team through the postseason. Gustavsson has two shutouts and five wins this month, playing with increasing confidence. It also becomes evident when Gustavsson feels good because he has a noticeably calm demeanor and excellent positioning in the net. His teammates have noticed his ability to steal games. “He’s steady,” Ryan Hartman said after the 4-0 shutout. “He doesn’t necessarily have to make too many flashy saves because he’s well-positioned out there. That’s always a good sign of feeling the game.” Gustavsson is steady, but he can also be flashy. Saves like the one he had against Michael Eyssimont in the Seattle game generate momentum, keep games close, and give the Wild a chance to win. His ability to swing a game's emotions in Minnesota’s favor will be crucial in the playoffs. The Wild will likely play the Vegas Golden Knights, Dallas Stars, or Edmonton Oilers in the first round. Therefore, it will be essential to have a player who can help push the team to the finish line. Gustavsson is that player, given how he’s playing leading up to the playoffs.

The Minnesota Wild are only months away from being players in the marketplace. For the past four years, Bill Guerin's front office has scraped by on cheap extensions for key players, hometown discounts, and backfilling through the minor leagues. Signing impact free agents like Jake Guentzel, Dougie Hamilton, and the late Johnny Gaudreau were never options. Even heavily discounted players like Ryan O'Reilly and Matt Duchene were off the table. So, too, were any trades involving major players. Just this season alone, the Wild sat on the sidelines as J.T. Miller, Dylan Cozens, Brock Nelson, and Mikko Rantanen (twice!) switched teams. But with about $13 million of dead cap hit disappearing this afternoon, the State of Hockey is gearing up for "Christmas Morning." The problem is, with so many other teams having already done their shopping, the Wild might be entering a "Jingle All the Way"-type situation. There's just one Turboman doll out there in free agency, and there are a lot of would-be Sinbads itching to scoop up Mitch Marner. The Wild might be a lead candidate to land pending UFA Brock Boeser, but recent comments by his GM suggest the NHL might see him as closer to Booster than Turboman. So, if free agency is out as a route to land a premier player, there's just one left: the trade market. On Tuesday, we discussed Elias Pettersson as a logical player to aim for as a top trade target, but unless you're Paul Fenton, a GM never wants to have just one trade option. So it was interesting to hear Michael Russo discuss a name we haven't heard connected to Minnesota yet on Thursday's "Worst Seats in the House" Podcast. JJ Peterka of the Buffalo Sabres. Here's Russo: The one thing that Bill Guerin tried doing at the trade deadline is giving up a bunch of assets. He doesn't want to give up picks. ... I think he wants to keep as many bullets in the chamber for this offseason; I still think there's gonna be some big trade he makes. I still keep looking at Buffalo. I know they loved Dylan Cozens, and [he's] obviously off the board. The guy I still think is JJ Peterka. I think they love him -- I would love him -- and the question is, what can you give up to get him? Would it be [Liam] Öhgren? And then you'd have to re-sign him, it would cost money, and what do you do with [Marco] Rossi at that point? Acquiring Peterka would be an interesting way to take advantage of Minnesota's competitive window. Peterka turned 23 in January, putting him in line with the Wild's young core of Matt Boldy (24), Marco Rossi (23), Brock Faber (22), Jesper Wallstedt (22), David Jiricek (21), and Zeev Buium (19). Peterka can grow with the Wild's core in a way that a 28-year-old like Boeser can't. But Peterka isn't just young, he's been productive in his NHL career. He just passed his career-best with his 51st point. His 47 goals and 102 points in his past two seasons are comparable to the Wild's young stars in Boldy (50 goals, 124 points) and Rossi (42 goals, 93 points). While Buffalo didn't trade him at the deadline, the trade rumors aren't likely to go away, either. However, if the Wild swing a trade for Peterka, that's likely their one shot at adding a star player to their ranks. After what would surely be a hefty extension for the winger, Minnesota wouldn't have the cap space to add elsewhere without dramatically shifting its DNA as a team. They also might run low on trade assets after deals for Peterka and Jiricek. So the question is one of opportunity cost. Is it worth closing off other avenues to get Peterka? The flying ointment with Peterka is that, unlike Pettersson, Peterka is a natural wing. Peterka isn't your guy if you want to see the Wild cash in their trade and cap space chips for a center. But even as the Wild already have Kirill Kaprizov, Boldy, and (for now) Mats Zuccarello on the wing, Peterka is capable of helping one of Minnesota's greatest weaknesses: 5-on-5 scoring. Partly because of injuries and partly because of their dead-cap-induced depth issues, the Wild are 28th in the NHL with 2.15 goals per hour at 5-on-5. That isn't just a this-year problem, either. In 2023-24, Minnesota ranked 26th in 5-on-5 goals per hour (2.43). The year before that, their 2.22 goals per hour were 29th. If you're looking for correlation and causation, losing Kevin Fiala was the turning point for Minnesota's offense. There's zero chance the Wild would go back and undo the trade, and even less chance the Los Angeles Kings wouldn't take Brock Faber back. Still, Minnesota has struggled to fill that void of speed and skill ever since. Peterka would be that player. There are 341 forwards who've played 1,000-plus minutes at 5-on-5 over the past two seasons. Peterka is tied for 25th in goals per hour (1.09) and 35th in points per hour (2.22). Here are some star wingers that Peterka bests in both categories: Rantanen, Clayton Keller, Sam Reinhart, Lucas Raymond, and Brady Tkachuk. While Peterka hasn't been a major factor on the power play, his ability to drive offense at 5-on-5 appears elite. Evolving-Hockey's Goals Above Replacement metric puts Peterka's Even-Strength Offense as the 11th-best in the NHL for the past two years -- one spot behind Kaprizov. For this season alone, his Even-Strength Offense is fifth, behind only Leon Draisaitl, Kirill Marchenko, Pierre-Luc Dubois, and Nick Suzuki. What would the Wild have to send back to Buffalo? Interestingly, Danila Yurov might be the closest swap in a one-for-one trade. In January, Corey Pronman ranked the NHL's best Under-23 players and prospects. Peterka came in at 43rd on his list -- in a tier reserved for players at the top/middle-of-the-lineup bubble. Yurov is in the same tier, ranked 49th on the list. Minnesota views Yurov as a potential top-six center, and he'll be on an entry-level deal, so there's plenty of reason to think that Guerin and Co. might balk at that price. But such a move would be intriguing over trading an established player like Rossi. Adding Peterka to a team with Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, Boldy, Rossi, Faber, Jiricek, and Buium gives Minnesota a potentially contending core that can compete as soon as next season. If the Wild can't swing a deal swapping Peterka for an amalgam of picks and prospects and choose to trade a Rossi instead of a Yurov, they can't say the same thing. Fans love potential, and it's hard not to see the upside in Yurov. But we know it's not always a smooth transition into the NHL. Rossi had difficulty translating his high-end AHL production into top-six numbers in the NHL. Öhgren played in men's leagues in Sweden but hasn't shown he's ready for the NHL this year. Minnesota ran out of patience with Marat Khusnutdinov, who struggled to adapt from the KHL to the NHL. (However, admittedly, he's less talented and touted than Yurov). If the Wild can land Peterka without taking anyone off their roster, they'll have a core of top-end, NHL-ready young talent. It's off to the races from there. So, while Peterka might not be the best player Minnesota could theoretically land this summer, and he comes with some flaws, the things he does well should help the Wild compete and do so immediately. The potential is obvious, all the Wild need to do is get off the sidelines and make their splash.

The narrative around Justin Brazeau has shifted quickly since the Minnesota Wild acquired him on March 6. In his initial tweet about the trade, Michael Russo called Brazeau “good down low below the dots and around the net.” He credited Brazeau with good hands and net-front ability. Perhaps Brazeau would bring the size the Wild need for the playoffs? Within three days of the trade, Brazeau came off the ice for a Matt Boldy double-shift in Pittsburgh. Not a big deal, right? The Wild needed a goal, and the new guy was a logical candidate to take a shift off. But 30 minutes later, one shift on the pine had turned into an entire period. Brazeau finished the game against the Pittsburgh Penguins with four minutes and ten seconds of ice time. So what happened? Did Boston Bruins GM Don Sweeney sell Bill Guerin a bill of goods? It would be a serious blunder from a pro scouting department that’s been effective previously. Previous trade targets like Jake Middleton and Marcus Johansson became vital role players. The same goes for waiver claims Declan Chisholm and Vinnie Hinistroza. Still, everybody eventually misvalues. So, let’s revisit the tape on Brazeau. What is he good at? First, Brazeau is big. He’s not just any power forward either -- he’s big. He makes Charlie Coyle look small, along with whatever NHL defenseman he happens to be standing beside. If you’re wondering who he’s battling with at the net front, that’s Jamie Oleksiak, whom the Seattle Kraken lists at 6-foot-7. That’s what it takes to box out Minnesota’s newest player. The goal above also demonstrates a good instinct for tipping pucks. Oleksiak isn't Joe Pavelski, but Brazeau checks all the fundamentals off. Not only does he establish position, but he places his blade outside the goal's frame. That means when the goalie is square to MacAvoy’s shot, he’s out of position when the puck hits Brazeau’s blade. Russo wasn’t wrong about Brazeau’s hands, either. He’s strong on the puck during open-ice puck battles. Sometimes, that allows him to make up for a bobbled pass or fumbled stickhandling. Brazeau combines that nose for the net and strong hands with a surprising vision to find his teammates. Tied up at the goalmouth, he can still pop this puck to Brad Marchand for a tap-in. He makes the play with his strong hands and is aware of his teammates in the middle of an unpredictable rebound. That vision is also on display coming out of puck battles. Specifically, Brazeau has several highlight-reel passes from behind the net. On the replay, note how this pass threads the needle between three Florida Panthers’ stick checks. It’s hard to find NHL tape on a player outside of his highlight reel, and it’s not a great idea to evaluate Brazeau based only on the 20 plays he made this year where he scored a point. We should also evaluate Brazeau analytically. Layer on The Athletic’s model, which considers an offensive or defensive rating of “zero” to be NHL average, and he evaluates clearly as a third-liner. The tape and the numbers agree that Brazeau is an effective NHL player. So why was he benched by a team that iced Yakov Trenin and Devin Shore for the rest of the night? The likely culprit is that Brazeau wasn’t yet up to speed on John Hynes’s systems in his first game with the Wild. Still, Brazeau is a power forward. How complicated can his role be? As the Wilderness Talk Podcast so eloquently put it, “Just go hit a guy. Go to the net!” That’s true enough in the offensive zone; however, unless Hynes wants to give all of the offensive zone starts to Brazeau instead of Boldy, Mats Zuccarello, and soon Kirill Kaprizov, Brazeau must fit into the other parts of Minnesota’s system. Minnesota’s breakout and defensive-zone coverage (two systems that work hand-in-hand) are very different from Boston’s. As identified in Jack Han’s Hockey Tactics 2025, Minnesota’s breakout is designed to maximize their mobile defensemen, while Boston’s is designed to shelter the poor footspeed of an aging roster. The Wild designed their defensive zone coverage to create turnovers behind the net or retrieve rebounds in the corner. From there, they change sides with a pass between the defensemen, opening space for D2 to carry the puck or seek a stretch pass to one of the two forwards skating deep. That maximizes Brock Faber, Jonas Brodin, Jared Spurgeon, and even Declan Chisholm’s skating ability. Minnesota’s breakout demands a lot from the forwards, specifically skating ability. Because both defensemen leave the netfront, one of the forwards swings low to protect the netfront at a slow glide. If that low forward receives a pass, they must pick up speed to carry the puck north. The other two forwards must get vertical quickly. One way to do that is by leaving the zone early. They must quickly get back if they misread the play and create a turnover. If they don’t take that risk, they’ll need exceptional speed to effectively threaten their opponents off the rush. Brazeau’s foot speed is well below average. His NHL Edge tracking data shows that his top speed is around the 10th or 15th percentile of NHL players, which is reasonable for a player of his size. Compare that to Marcus Foligno, a 33-year-old power forward, and you get a sense of Brazeau’s lack of speed. Some of his numbers may come up now that he’s playing in a system that demands faster skating on the breakout. Still, after 60 games, his top speed is likely accurate. So why wasn’t this a problem in Boston? The answer is their slow-developing breakout. The Bruins’ defensive zone coverage is designed to allow shots from the point, which can be steered into the corner or passes into the corner. Both should result in a board battle, which Boston’s larger, slower roster is well-suited to win. Then, players methodically work the puck up the strong-side boards. If the Bruins find the strong side overloaded with too many opposing skaters, they leak a slow reverse pass to the weak side of the ice to be handled by the defensemen. While that puck slides around the boards, the forwards have time to skate north. That applies to other areas of Boston’s systems compared to the Wild’s. For example, Minnesota’s forecheck is more aggressive and fluid than the Bruins’, which aims to set up a 1-2-2 neutral zone defense. Again, that’s designed to mask Boston’s skating. There are also important differences in the offensive zone. While Brazeau’s job is to go to the net, which is similar in both cases, the style of offensive possession is very different. Minnesota seeks to set up possession along the half-wall and then attack downhill. This offensive style is called a 2-3, meaning two players attack deep while three players support behind them. The 2-3 is more peripheral but allows players like Chisholm, Faber, and Spurgeon to attack deeper into the opponent’s zone. It also creates longer offensive possessions and usually means one of the forwards can help defend the rush, which is part of Minnesota’s defensive excellence this season. Below is an example of that play. Notice how all three forwards peel away from the net and toward the blue line, eventually opening space at the front of the net for Gaudreau’s tip-in. In contrast, Boston runs a more traditional 3-2 in which the forwards chase pucks, win battles, and then feed passes to the point. As the puck slides low-to-high, Brazeau has time to establish himself at the net-front. It also offers many opportunities to pass from behind the net into the slot, which generated more than one of Brazeau’s assists in Boston. So, how can Brazeau get faster? How can he produce in a different offensive system? The answer is simple, if unsatisfying: Brazeau needs time to adjust to new plays and new players. With time to learn Minnesota’s breakout and defensive zone coverage, Brazeau will correctly decide when to leave the zone early, which can cover for his low-gear skating without putting him out of position. Brazeau’s offensive zone possessions will become more valuable as he develops offensive chemistry. Brazeau’s strong hands, passing skills, and vision should eventually help his teammates maintain offensive possession. But first, he’ll need to learn whether to charge the net or peel to the point for a pass. Signs of improvement were already clear against the Colorado Avalanche. Brazeau played a more complete workload, logging 8:46 TOI -- all at five-on-five. Whatever issues got him benched against the Penguins didn’t keep him off the ice against Colorado. The Wild paid a steep price to bring in Brazeau at the trade deadline, and there are good reasons for it. As with any deadline addition, he must quickly evolve his game to fit Minnesota’s play style. Failing that, the juice won’t be worth the squeeze.

The Minnesota Wild left their goaltending situation alone during a stressful pre-playoff trade deadline. However, Marc-Andre Fleury announced his retirement last April, so the team must make a major decision this summer. Filip Gustavsson will enter the third year of his contract with a $3.75 million yearly cap hit. The Wild are unlikely to move the Swedish goaltender, who has a .913 overall SV% and .914 in the 2024-25 season. He played in 42 of Minnesota’s 64 games and will likely be the Wild’s primary goaltender again next season. However, the NHL must replace Fleury, which won’t be an easy task. The future Hall of Famer is in his 22nd season and boasts a .912 SV% overall and .904 this year. He has played 1,047 games, 17 playoff runs, and has won the Stanley Cup 3 times. Flower is universally loved and has given us countless funny moments, and the Wild won’t be able to replace his energy and leadership fully. He signed a 1-year, $2.5 million contract for this season and has been worth more than that to Minnesota. The going rate for great goalies is variable, especially with the unexpected salary cap increase. The cap generally raises by $1 to $5 million annually, except during economic hardship such as the COVID pandemic. The current 2024-25 cap, which is $88 million, will jump to $95.5 in 2025-26, $104 in 2026-27, and $113.5 in 2027-28. That means more money for the Wild to move around but higher expectations from goalies. Player production changes yearly, but goalies are especially known to go from good to great or vice versa. Therefore, GMs are hesitant to sign long-term contracts. Last season, Igor Shesterkin and Jeremy Swayman held out for a higher paycheck. Shesterkin eventually agreed to an 8-year, $11.5 million AAV contract and has a .905 SV% with a .918 SV% overall. Swayman signed on for an 8-year, $8.25 million AAV contract. However, he has a .898 SV% this year and an overall .913 SV%. Minnesota will have to spend in free agency to replace Fleury’s production, especially with the cap increase. The Wild will have to call someone up from Iowa or look elsewhere to replace him. The Iowa Wild have 3 active goalies: Jesper Wallstedt, Samuel Hlavaj, and Dylan Ferguson. Hlavaj has yet to play in the NHL, and Ferguson played in three games before signing with Minnesota. The Wild won’t count on either to play in 20+ NHL games next season. Wallstedt has been inconsistent this year. The Wild started the season with plans for a 3-goalie rotation. On October 8, 2024, they signed Wallstedt to a 2-year, $4.4 million contract extension that starts next year. Two days later, they sent him to Iowa due to limited cap space, where he initially struggled and needed a reset. The Wild gave him a weekend off and devoted time to work with him. Since then, Wallstedt has maintained a save percentage above .900 and hasn’t allowed more than four games in a game. Wallstedt played 23 games for Iowa this season and averaged a .884 SV%. However, the team in front of a goalie can make a goalie’s life easy – or cause them to spiral. Iowa ranks 30th out of 32 teams in the AHL, with 152 goals for (29th) and 203 goals against (30th). The Iowa forwards have not been productive this season, and Wallstedt has been unable to make up the difference in net. He also played 2 games for Minnesota this year and has 5 NHL games total. He has a .843 SV% in the NHL this year. However, he played against the Las Vegas Knights and the Winnipeg Jets, who are the fifth- and second-best teams in the league, respectively. He allowed 5 goals against the Jets, who rank second in goals for with 228 so far this season. Ultimately, Wallstedt has not played his best this season and is not ready to take over for Fleury. He has potential but needs more development time before Minnesota can depend on him. The Wild must look outside the organization for their backup tendy next season. Below are the top 5 goalies who will be unrestricted free agents (UFAs) at the end of the 2024-25 season. GP refers to games played in the 2024-25 season. Adin Hill - Las Vegas Knights Age: 28 AAV: $4.9 million GP: 38 2024-25 SV%: .940 Overall SV%: .909 Hill led the Knights to their first Stanley Cup and is on pace to play more games this season than he would most likely get in Minnesota. He has had a great season but isn’t good enough to take Gus’s primary spot. Hill will almost certainly find a better contract and more ice time than the Wild can offer him. Jake Allen - New Jersey Devils Age: 34 AAV: $3.85 million GP: 24 2024-25 SV%: .910 Overall SV%: .908 Allen is a solid contender. He may retire by the time Wallstedt is ready to play in the NHL full-time and may be willing to settle for a shorter contract. Allen is also likely to get similar ice time in Minnesota. However, he may ask more than the Wild are willing to spend. Alexandar Georgiev - Colorado Avalanche/San Jose Sharks Age: 29 AAV: $3.4 million GP: Colorado : 18, San Jose: 20 2024-25 SV%: Colorado: .874, San Jose: .876 Overall SV%: .904 Georgiev has been getting solid ice time for the Sharks since they acquired him from the Avalanche on December 9, 2024. Although his stats have not been stellar for either team, the Sharks are dead last in the league, so their defense likely often leaves him exposed. Still, he may not be worth his asking price. Vitek Vanecek - Florida Panthers Age: 29 AAV: $3.4 million GP: San Jose: 18, Florida: 1 2024-25 SV%: San Jose: .882, Florida: 1.00 Overall SV%: .903 The Sharks traded Vanecek to the Panthers on March 8. He only played 18 games in San Jose, but Florida has already put him in net. His SV% was not stellar with the Sharks, but again, he was on the Sharks. Vanecek’s overall SV% is decent. However, if he re-signs with Florida, he must contend with Sergei Bobrovsky, who played 42 games this season and has a .914 SV% overall. He makes $3.4 million per year, so Minnesota could negotiate a reasonable price for him. Still, it largely depends on how he plays the rest of the season. Frederik Andersen - Carolina Hurricanes Age: 35 AAV: $3.4 million GP: 13 2024-25 SV%: .911 Overall SV%: .916 Andersen has a great overall and season SV% but has been injured, so he has only played 13 games this year. Similar in age to Allen, he will likely retire soon and may be willing to take a short contract at a reasonable price. Given his recent injuries, he may also want a backup’s workload. The Wild can depend on Gustavsson for the 2025-26 season but will have to look outside the club for a Fleury replacement. While Wallstedt has potential, he is not yet ready to play full-time in Minnesota. The Wild’s best option is a trade or a UFA, where Andersen and Vanecek are their top options, depending on how they play the rest of the year and in the playoffs.

On Sunday, we posed a simple question with a complicated answer: After the Dallas Stars got Mikko Rantanen, how could the Wild poach a similar superstar to keep up? We left the question open at the time, but honestly? There's a pretty obvious answer. And it stared Minnesota right in the face hours after the trade deadline. Elias Pettersson broke open the scoring on Friday night's 3-1 victory over the Minnesota Wild. But it was a real possibility that Pettersson may not have played in that game at all. The Vancouver Canucks were reportedly entertaining offers on their star center leading up to the trade deadline. No one offered enough to land him. Still, it's interesting that Pettersson was still on the table, even after the team tried to solve a rift between him and J.T. Miller by trading the latter. On the other hand, Vancouver has been the definition of "embattled" this year, and Pettersson hasn't been exempt from the team's struggles. Pettersson's goal on Friday was just his 12th of the season, and he only has 36 points in 56 games. That's not just a drop from his 103-point pinnacle in 2022-23; he has fewer points in more games than Mats Zuccarello. If Pettersson talks persisted into yesterday, it's not hard to imagine both sides wanting to turn the page this summer. While the Wild couldn't sniff Pettersson talks at the trade deadline, they should be ready to strike this summer. Among anyone Minnesota could theoretically get for their "Christmas Morning," Pettersson checks the most boxes. For one, he's got the star power to match Dallas landing Rantanen. Per Evolving-Hockey, Rantanen has been worth 25.0 Standings Points Above Replacement since the 2020-21 season. If you read our Sunday piece, you'll know that's tied with Kirill Kaprizov for 13th among NHL skaters. Pettersson is slightly ahead of both, with 26.1 SPAR since 2020-21. That's 10th in the NHL over that time. Imagine a world where Kaprizov isn't the best player on the Wild. Adding Pettersson is one of the few ways that could become a reality. That's the most important benefit, but Pettersson offers the Wild more than his talent. Their search for a No. 1 Center would end the second they made such a deal. The days of debating whether Joel Eriksson Ek or Marco Rossi are actually a No. 1 Center would be in the past. NHL.com ranked Pettersson as the 10th-best center in the league in August. Elite Prospects had him ninth. ESPN's survey of NHL players and executives had him 10th going into last season. Even if he's hurt his stock since, Pettersson is still a slam-dunk No. 1 pivot. That doesn't just help the top of the lineup. Still, imagining Pettersson building Zuccarello-like magic with Kaprizov is enough to make anyone drool. However, having a top center is a force multiplier for a team like the Wild. Sliding Eriksson Ek and/or Rossi down the lineup also gives significant bumps to the second and third lines. Then there's Pettersson's contract, which carries some sticker shock at six remaining years at a $11.6 million AAV. Still, with the cap rising, that's a feature, not a bug. It does two things for the Wild. For one, it gives Kaprizov a helluva carrot to stay. Stick around, and you've got a 26-year-old star center setting you up for one-timers for the next six years. Just as importantly, Pettersson would give Minnesota Kaprizov insurance. Suppose the Wild can't agree on a long-term contract with Kaprizov. Then, their long-term plan becomes reliant on maxing out Rossi, Matt Boldy, Danila Yurov, Jesper Wallstedt, David Jiricek, and Zeev Buium's talents. Still possible, sure, but it's a much tougher path to a Stanley Cup. While it certainly wouldn't be good for Kaprizov to leave, even with Pettersson in the fold, at least the latter ensures they'd stay a net-neutral in superstars, compared to where they are right now. The problem is, if the Wild want to make a superstar trade like Dallas did, they'll probably have to pay a Texas-sized price for Pettersson. Still, it's so hard to overpay for a true top-15 player in the NHL. The Florida Panthers got Matthew Tkachuk, and it cost them a top-line forward coming off a 115-point season in Jonathan Huberdeau and a top-pairing defenseman in MacKenzie Weegar. Worth it, no question. Florida has a Cup ring to show for it. Dallas gave up a top young player in Logan Stankoven and two first-round picks to execute a trade-and-extend for Rantanen. A high price? Sure, but the Stars could easily win a Cup this year and have a superstar player locked up at a below-market price. Any team looking to compete should be willing to make that move. It will be difficult for Minnesota to overpay for Pettersson, especially with a down season and Vancouver's turmoil. What would that cost? The Wild have options. If Vancouver is willing to go with a prospect-focused package like the Carolina Hurricanes did in trading Rantanen, Minnesota is more than equipped to go that route. Danila Yurov is a top center prospect, and at 21 and with three seasons in the KHL, he's close to NHL-ready. Minnesota doesn't own their 2025 first-rounder, but they have their 2026 first and second-tier prospects like Liam Öhgren and Riley Heidt to offer. If the Canucks seek a more immediate return, the Wild can offer that, too. In most circumstances, trading a cost-controlled young goal-scorer like Boldy or a 23-year-old center on the rise in Rossi would be insane. But for Pettersson? If trading one of those players is the cost of doing business, you have to pull the trigger. Now, maybe you think his down season makes Pettersson a risk. Perhaps, but not as big of a risk as the Vegas Golden Knights took in trading for Jack Eichel while he needed unprecedented back surgery. But we know how that one ended for the Cup-winning Knights. Pettersson-caliber players simply don't come on the market often, and teams get rewarded for taking advantage when they do. It's hard to see the Wild having a bigger opportunity to set their team up for success on "Christmas Morning" than with a trade for Vancouver's top young center. Minnesota must move heaven and earth to get it done if that is on the table.

If you're a Minnesota Wild fan sick of the team being handcuffed by their salary cap situation, don't worry, you're not alone. After a trade deadline where the Wild were active but without much impact, general manager Bill Guerin sounded exhausted by the last four years of Cap Hell. "We couldn't do anything else," Guerin said at his press conference on Friday, explaining the Wild's moves. "I would have loved to be more involved today. But it's not our time to do that. We'll have our time. And you guys just have to wait." To be clear, "you guys" referred to the media, which Guerin appeared frustrated with. But we -- the fans, the media, and the front office -- are all in a state of waiting. We're all tired of seeing this team have to wait, bide their time, and run out the clock for the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyout scourges to fade. That's why, when Wild owner Craig Leipold talked about next summer at the beginning of the season, he referred to it as "Christmas Morning." However, if you look around the Central Division, it sure seems Christmas came early. The Colorado Avalanche had to offload Casey Mittelstadt... and another big piece we'll get back to in a bit... but they acquired Martin Necas, Charlie Coyle, and one of the Wild's major rumored trade/free-agent targets in Brock Nelson. They paid a price in sending top prospect Calum Ritchie to the New York Islanders, a prospect equivalent to Minnesota's Danila Yurov, according to The Athletic's Scott Wheeler. But are they a much more playoff-ready team today than last week? Absolutely. Still, we know what's coming -- Christmas Morning came for the Dallas Stars early. They basically stole Mikko Rantanen from the Avalanche, with the Carolina Hurricanes being an unintentional middleman. The move solidified Dallas' status as the favorite to come out of the Western Conference. Even better, they inked Rantanen to a bargain eight-year, $96 million ($12M AAV) contract. Again, Dallas paid a price. Logan Stankoven has been snakebitten this season, but if his expected goals (16.9) were more closely aligned with his actual goals (nine), we'd be looking at a 21-year-old with 37 points in 59 games despite logging 15 minutes a game. The two first-round picks they parted with will be, at worst, in the mid-20s, but that's still significant draft capital. But is it worth it to lock in Rantanen for a playoff run and eight extra years? Are you even asking? Rantanen's 27 goals and 70 points in 62 games don't show it, but he's had a down year in terms of overall impact. Particularly, his power play game is uncharacteristically poor... though it says something that he's still tied for 13th in scoring. Even so, since the 2020-21 season, Rantanen has produced 25.0 Standings Points Above Replacement, according to Evolving-Hockey, which is also tied for 13th in the league. Tied with Kirill Kaprizov, to put a fine point on it. If you're the Wild and planning for "Christmas Morning," how are you going to compete with that? Part of that fabled day will be (hopefully) locking Kaprizov into a long-term extension. But Dallas just added a top-15, Kaprizov-type player. Dallas preemptively raised the stakes. Look at the two major free-agent targets that most frequently get tied to the Wild: Nelson and Brock Boeser. Let's keep using the last half-decade as our measuring stick. Nelson's been worth 14.1 SPAR since 2020-21, which puts him tied for 81st in the NHL. Boeser is at 8.1 SPAR during that time, which has him tied for 200th. Don't get us wrong -- adding a top-100 and top-200 player in the NHL isn't nothing. Still, the gap between a top-15 player and a top-80 player is extremely significant. Just do the math: Nelson and Boeser's combined SPAR don't quite add up to Rantanen's impact over that time. And that's if the Wild were able to get both players in the fold. So, how can the Wild make a "Christmas Morning" splash that can keep up with Dallas and Rantanen? Mitch Marner (29.4 SPAR since 2020-21; fifth in the NHL) is the only UFA in that Rantanen tier and doesn't have the Minnesota-area connections most Wild free agents tend to have. Beyond that, Nikolaj Ehlers and John Tavares are closer to Nelson's level than a top-15 player. It will be difficult because it's rare for the NHL's best players to move around. You have to strike when a Matthew Tkachuk or a Rantanen becomes available. The Wild were financially unable to take advantage of the Star Player On the Move Sweepstakes this time around. That couldn't be helped, but now? They have to make sure they're ready for the next time. If they settle for less than an elite player, Minnesota may be doomed to live in Dallas and Rantanen's shadow.

The Minnesota Wild officially survived February, going 3-5-0. They started March with wins against the Boston Bruins and the Seattle Kraken. Minnesota’s last two wins have been a major relief because it had only managed to win one out of four games after returning from the 4 Nations tournament. It also didn’t help that the Boston Bruins had criticized their medical staff. With Kirill Karpizov and Joel Eriksson Ek out for extended periods (again) and Jonas Brodin week-to-week, the Wild’s chances of having a stress-free final 20 games are slim. However, the Wild are where they need to be to find success; it’s just not evident yet. With their strong start to the season and two recent wins, the Wild have kept the Avalanche out of reach of the third spot in the Central. As of this writing, the Wild sit two points above Colorado with the same games played. With a good run of games, Minnesota can hold its spot in the standings, but it won’t be easy. The Avalanche are still an outstanding team, even without Mikko Rantanen. Still, Colorado has something the Wild lack right now: a superstar like Nathan MacKinnon. However, the Wild may benefit from dropping in the standings. Minnesota is unlikely to exit the playoff picture, with the Vancouver Canucks and the St. Louis Blues being out of a wild-card spot with 67 and 66 points, respectively. While things could change, the Wild’s first-round matchup in the playoffs is likely to be the Dallas Stars or the Vegas Golden Knights. Which is the lesser of two evils? It’s hard to say, but the Golden Knights and the Stars are better teams than the Wild. Still, the Wild have a long history with the Stars, so Dallas eliminating them in the first round again won't be great for morale. The Stars are also more challenging to score against than the Golden Knights; they sit 30th in goals against per game (GA/GP) with a 2.57 average. Because of the Wild’s inability to score, they may want to play the Golden Knights in the first round. Therefore, dropping to the wild card may ultimately be advantageous. The Wild have only played the Golden Knights once this season, losing 3-2 on December 15. However, there is still a strong chance that Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek will be healthy in time for the playoffs, and Minnesota is good when they're fully healthy. I’m not saying it will be easy, especially since the Golden Knights are a favored team to win the Stanley Cup. Still, the Wild have found ways to win against good teams like the Washington Capitals, Edmonton Oilers, and Carolina Hurricanes. No matter who the Wild play, they need Eriksson Ek and Kaprizov back to generate enough offense to advance in the playoffs. With the Wild’s limited cap space, Minnesota's trade deadline will likely be uneventful. Even if the Wild are buyers at the deadline, there’s no magical trade that will solve scoring troubles. To put it into perspective, Matt Boldy has finally passed an injured Kaprizov as the leading point scorer. Boldy has 53 points in 63 games, while Kaprizov has 52 in 37 games and hasn’t played since January. The Wild don’t have enough offense to cover for sloppy defense. However, we have started to see what the Wild will look like by the end of the season, and I like what I see. However, that doesn’t matter. Despite the Wild’s offensive struggles, they have found their play style with their new lines. They play close games, with the last two wins decided by a single goal. That is the best they’ll get with their current core, and it might be enough. The Wild need to win using defense and goaltending. If the Wild can consistently keep the game close, they will always have a chance of winning. The team has all the pieces it needs, with players like Vinnie Histroza, Frederick Gaudreau, and Gustav Nyquist adding scoring depth. We have also seen Filip Gustavsson play confidently again, which must be a big part of this team's success. There might not be a perfect scenario for the Wild and their hopes for a deep playoff run. No matter the opponent, Minnesota must outwork them. Still, they have enough talent in place to advance for the first time since 2014-15.

I remember exactly when I knew without a doubt that Marco Rossi was ready for the NHL. It was the weekend of January 20 during the 2022-23 season, and the Iowa Wild were playing back-to-back home games against the Milwaukee Admirals. The Minnesota Wild had sent Rossi down to the AHL earlier that season after an unsuccessful start to his NHL career that saw him record zero goals and only one assist in the 16 games before his demotion. At the time, Bill Guerin declared that Rossi needed to develop some “f-you” to his game. And after that demotion in November 2022, the young Austrian player found it in Des Moines. Rossi was a demon on that weekend in January 2023. He wasn’t just the best player on the ice; he dominated. On Friday, he notched two assists, including one where he circled the offensive zone with the puck like Kirill Kaprizov before dishing to an open teammate to create a goal. On Saturday, Rossi scored twice, including a yeoman-like backdoor goal in which he outmuscled a defenseman to bang home a rebound with 15 seconds remaining to force overtime. My buddies and I left Des Moines that weekend full of excitement over what we had just seen from Rossi in those two games. He kept it up for the rest of the season and earned a late-season call-up to rejoin the big club in Minnesota. He hasn’t gone back since. Rossi found his swagger in Iowa. He learned to be a pro in North America. Now it’s time for Marat Khusnutdinov to do the same. 87. 103. 116. 188. Those are the number of AHL games it took for Brandon Duhaime, Connor Dewar, Rossi, and Mason Shaw, respectively, to develop their games and become NHL-ready. 0. That’s the number of AHL games that Marat Khusnutdinov has played. However, after the Wild sent him to Iowa this week, that number will soon change. Duhaime was 24 when he became an NHL regular with the Wild. Dewar and Rossi were 22. Shaw, partly due to suffering numerous ACL tears, was 23. Khusnutdinov is 22. What’s more, unlike the four players listed above, he didn’t have the opportunity to play some of his development years on North American-sized rinks. Duhaime played juniors in Canada and the United States before playing college hockey at Providence. Dewar and Shaw grew up playing in Canada, and they, along with Rossi, spent some of their most important development years playing in Canadian Major Junior leagues. (Dewar and Rossi played in the OHL, Shaw in the WHL.) On the other hand, outside of a couple of international tournaments, Khusnutdinov didn’t spend any time playing on NHL-sized rinks until he joined the Wild at the end of last season. Instead, he played on the larger international rinks where there’s more space, different angles, less physical play, and more time to make decisions with the puck. William Eklund, an emerging star for the San Jose Sharks who played 54 AHL games, described this difference well, saying that in the NHL, “you get a little less time and have to make a decision with the puck earlier. …You have like a split-second. In the NHL, it’s close to the net, but [in Europe] it’s so much wider, so you can skate around players easier.” The AHL plays an incredibly important role in developing NHL players. So far this season, 68 players have made their NHL debuts after spending time there. Last season, the number was 97. And as Duhaime, Dewar, Rossi, Shaw, and many other Wild players have demonstrated over the years, the time players spend there can be invaluable. In the NHL, everything is high-intensity, big-money hockey. Owners want wins. Coaches demand execution and high attention to detail. Every mistake can lead to a goal against. After 78 NHL games in which the speedy, hard-working winger produced 3 goals and 7 assists while also struggling on the penalty kill (along with the rest of the team, to be fair), it makes sense for him to spend some time building his game and confidence in Iowa. Winning is still important in the AHL, but it often takes a backseat to development. A young prospect can make a mistake at key times and not find himself stapled to the bench in the same situation next game. They can bite on a deceptive play and lose their coverage on the penalty kill, like Khusnutdinov did in the above clip from last week’s game against the Colorado Avalanche, and not see the highlights all over the internet. Every NHL player was a superstar growing up, but only a handful remain one once they make The Show. The rest have to find their niche if they want to stay. That means learning to translate their strengths into the roles they’re expected to play and developing new dimensions that make them better all-around players in a league where everyone has game. For many, the AHL is the place to do that. They’ll play on NHL-sized rinks in NHL-like systems against grown men, many of whom have or will play in the NHL. Many consider it the second-best league in the world, and if a young player can learn to dominate shifts there on a nightly basis, they can grow into an NHL player. Khusnutdinov can become an effective NHL player. He has the speed, tenacity, and work ethic required for smaller players like him. What he doesn’t have is the experience. He doesn’t have the swagger. But like those that came before him, now is his opportunity to get it. Once he does, he’ll be back in the NHL to stay.

According to hockey lore, the Minnesota Wild spawned from the seventh ring of hell at the turn of the century. Y2K caused hell to freeze. The stir-crazy sinners needed entertainment, so they created a hockey team that trapped their fans in a Sisyphusian loop. They would always win in the regular season and lose in the first round of the playoffs. Minnesota’s Man-Bear-Pigs became a heinous creature that fostered hope in November and despair in April. They’re forever good enough to make the playoffs but can’t beat the league’s best teams in a series. As a result, they never have good enough picks to add the high-end talent they need to contend. They push the rock up the hill for seven months, only to watch it fall after seven games. The Wild’s road to perdition started this year when they told Jesper Wallstedt to rent an apartment in the Twin Cities. However, they couldn’t keep him on the team because it’s almost impossible to carry three goalies. He’s only played two games with Minnesota and has an 88.1% save percentage in 21 games with the Iowa Wild. Minnesota brought Kirill Kaprizov back from injury for a 4-0 loss to the nameless Utah team in late January, only to shut him down the next day. He underwent the knife for a groin injury, and Bill Guerin recently said he doesn’t know how long Kaprizov will be out. Matt Boldy and Marco Rossi are Minnesota’s leading scorers in Kaprizov’s absence. The Wild have Boldy on a long-term contract, but they’ve hesitated to commit to Rossi. After Joel Eriksson Ek’s injury, Rossi is Minnesota’s only viable top-six center. The Wild could turn to Ryan Hartman, whom they extended for three years, $12 million two offseasons ago. However, Hartman is serving an eight-game suspension for smashing Tim Stützle’s head into the ice. He probably would have served less time, but he has thrown a stick at the refs and slew-footed Alex DeBrincat. Still, the Wild inspire hope as the eternal flames of damnation engulf you as you sip your morning latte. They beat the Dallas Stars after Kaprizov initially suffered his injury and the Colorado Avalanche to curtail a mid-January losing streak. They came out of the 4 Nations break with a come-from-behind win over the Detroit Red Wings. Minnesota’s latest devil magic is turning Vinnie Hinostroza into a secondary scorer. After suffering myriad injuries this season, the Wild turned to the AHL’s leading scorer for some offensive insurance. Hinostroza didn’t have a goal in 13 games with the Nashville Predators when Minnesota claimed him off waivers on February 5. However, he has three in his first six games with the Wild. Hinostroza had two in 26 games with the Buffalo Sabres two years ago and one in 14 games with the Pittsburgh Penguins last season. Hartman’s childhood buddy has heated up in his absence. Hinostroza is starting to look like the player he was in 2018-19 when he scored 16 goals for the Arizona Coyotes and in 2021-22 when he had 13 in Buffalo. The Wild have bargained with the devil before. They turned one of their young fans into a franchise cornerstone. Brock Faber had seven goals total with the Gophers and 27 points in his final college season. However, he averages eight goals and 33 points per 82 games in the NHL. Joel Eriksson Ek averaged six goals in his first four seasons, scored 19 in his fifth, and 30 last year. Rossi had no goals in his first 21 games and 21 in the past two seasons. Minnesota might need to sell its soul again. It must keep Kaprizov healthy and set Wallstedt up to join Filip Gustavsson in net next season. It needs Hartman to be Elmer’s glue, not Elmer Fudd. However, groin injuries are complicated. Sometimes, players can play through the pain; other times, it saps their production. Maybe Kaprizov wanted to test it before undergoing the knife. Wallstedt has had a mental reset and an 88.9% save percentage since January 25. Perhaps Hartman’s latest suspension is a wake-up call. Good intentions pave the road to perfection. Wild always push the rock up the hill. The momentum occasionally stalls, but they usually keep it moving. Sometimes, they strike fear like John Looney; sometimes, they act like Looney Toons. Still, they always captivate our attention. One day, the Wild may push their rock over the hill. However, everyone will sweat it out until then because there’s always a little too much heat around a team that plays on a sheet of ice.

The Minnesota Wild's never-ending string of injuries continued on Wednesday night. Marcus Foligno and Marcus Johansson were out, and Marco Rossi played only three minutes before taking a Matt Boldy shot off the inside of his knee. We don't know yet whether Saturday will see Rossi return to the ice or his 154-consecutive game streak will end. That streak doesn't compare to Phil Kessel's all-time Ironman streak of 1,064 games or the active NHL leader Brent Burns (911). But on this team? Rossi's been the T-800. Matt Boldy is the only other Wild player to have played every game this season, while Rossi and Brock Faber were the only two to play all 82 last year. Availability, as they say, is the best ability. However, Rossi's got another ability for the Wild. Dependability. He's second on the team in points, third in goals, and second in both faceoff wins (397) and faceoff percentage (47.9%). John Hynes has come to rely on Rossi, giving him over 18 minutes of ice time per night, fifth among Wild forwards. The Wild are already without Kirill Kaprizov, their would-be MVP, and Joel Eriksson Ek, who is considered their most dominant center. That's already enough to shake the foundation of any team, and it certainly has the Wild. In 12 games since Eriksson Ek's absence, Minnesota has gone 5-6-1, scoring 23 goals in that span -- not even two goals per game. With 13 games remaining, the Wild have to protect their seven-point cushion over the playoff bubble with defense and goaltending. That's already the reality for Minnesota, even with Rossi. What happens if he's out of their equation? It gets real bleak, real fast. It's so hard to recover from losing two top centers. Not only is their production gone, but backfilling puts a lot of stress on the centers who must step up in their place. Ryan Hartman hadn't played 19 minutes in a game all season. Suddenly, he's logging over 22 minutes. Freddy Gaudreau was on the ice for 17 minutes. AHL/NHL tweeners Devin Shore and Brendan Gaunce combined for 21 minutes of ice time. Credit to the Wild for pouncing on a Seattle Kraken team that was on the second half of a back-to-back, and credit to Hartman and Gaudreau, who had a goal and an assist, respectively. But if you're not worried in Minnesota, then you're dramatically underestimating the value that Rossi has provided to the Wild this year. With Rossi on the ice at 5-on-5, the Wild have out-scored opponents by a 50-to-32 margin, a 61.0% goal share. You may point out how Rossi spent the early part of the season as Kaprizov center, which, fine, fair enough. Since Christmas, Rossi's Goals For% has remained stable, out-scoring the opposition 21-15 (58.3%). Only two other Wild regulars -- Jared Spurgeon (13-10) and Mats Zuccarello (21-20) -- have a positive 5-on-5 goal differential in that time. As we say in the Wild Blog Biz: That's wild. Now, there's a good chance that a squad more beat up than the Tune Squad at halftime only needs to run out the clock and make the playoffs. Evolving-Hockey has Minnesota's playoff odds at 95.0%, and Moneypuck pegs them as 93.8% likely to make it in. Both sites project the playoff bubble at around 90 points, and the Wild could go 4-8-1 down the stretch and get to 92. But also, if anything could threaten that, it's missing both Eriksson Ek and Rossi until the end of the season. With those two on the ice at 5-on-5, the Wild out-scored opponents 71-47 on the season. That 60.2% goals share is even better than the top team in the NHL, the Washington Capitals (59.9%). Without either center on the ice, Minnesota gets out-scored 48-69, a 41.0% goal share that's only above the disastrous Nashville Predators. It's true that Rossi and Eriksson Ek get to play with top-six wingers like Kaprizov, Boldy, and Zuccarello, whereas Gaudreau and Hartman typically don't. Still, it must be said that all of those wingers are out-scored at 5-on-5 by a margin of 11-to-22 whenever centered by someone who isn't Rossi or Eriksson Ek. There's comfort in knowing that the bar to make the playoffs is very low at this point, given the points they've banked. But if Rossi is out for any extended period of time, the State of Hockey may have to white-knuckle it through the last three weeks of the season. Given the league's relative parity and the existence of the loser point, it's pretty difficult to pick up fewer than eight points over 13 games. Still, scoring 45% of the 5-on-5 goals while missing half your top power play is a way to do it. Unless the "Get Well Soon" cards to Rossi work their magic, the Wild might stumble into the perfect recipe to prevent them from a Wild Card spot.

On March 6, the Minnesota Wild traded Marat Khusnutdinov, Jakub Lauko, and a 2026 sixth-round pick for Boston Bruins forward Justin Brazeau. All three players are young and early in their careers but have potential despite limited performance. Often, a change of scenery is the key to unlocking better performance. Unfortunately, only the Bruins have immediately benefitted from the deal. Khunutdinov had 2 goals and 5 assists in 57 games for the Wild this season. However, he already has 2 goals for the Bruins in just 5 games, including this beauty: While Minnesotans may have buyer's remorse seeing Khusnutdinov’s sudden success, it's a testament to how important confidence and team placement can be. Brazeau has 0 points in 6 games for the Wild, but his stats reflect a confidence problem rather than a lack of skill. If Brazeau can dangle Sergei Bobrovsky like this in one of his first NHL games, he already has a seasoned player's confidence and scoring ability. He doesn’t have a future riding pine. Brazeau has scored 10 goals and 10 assists in his 63 games this season. However, he hasn’t scored in 18 games. He’s in his first NHL season, so 20 points in 45 games is solid, especially on a team fighting to make the playoffs. During the first half of the season, Boston regularly gave him 20+ shifts, never dropping below 17 per game except in the first 3 games of the season. However, in mid-January, Brazeau’s production and ice time decreased. The Bruins were on a 6-game losing streak from Dec 31, 2024, to January 9, 2025. During this period, it would have made sense for the Bruins to shift things around to break the losing streak, but Brazeau played consistently throughout it. He scored 2 goals and stayed +1 through the period, even though the Bruins allowed 24 goals against during these 6 games. Boston broke their losing streak in a 4-3 overtime win on January 11 against the Florida Panthers, in which Brazeau had an assist. Oddly, this was the start of Brazeau’s drop in production and ice time. It’s unclear whether the coaching staff lost confidence in him and reduced his ice time or he lost it in himself and started producing less. Regardless, it becomes a vicious cycle. Less ice time means fewer opportunities and often a drop in self-confidence, which means fewer goals and assists and less ice time. Coaches lose confidence in players or stop playing them despite their success for various reasons. However, in mid-January, Boston made no major coaching changes, no major players returned from injury, and made no headline trades. The only notable event around that time was a brawl at the end of Boston’s January 9 game against the Tampa Bay Lightning. Brazeau came away with a penalty and a game misconduct, but he served neither because it was at the end of the game. Additionally, the brawl was a result of Emil Lilleberg’s dirty cross-check against Bruins center Mark Kastelic. It was more likely to earn Brazeau a pat on the back than getting him benched and traded. Ultimately, it’s not clear what started the downward shift for Brazeau. Unfortunately, Minnesota has not put much faith in Brazeau either. He finally broke 10 minutes of TOI on Saturday after playing as little as 4:10 minutes in a game for the Wild. Still, this recent upward shift is a positive sign. Brazeau has been making the most of his opportunities despite minimal ice time. Brazeau may not have any points for the Wild, but he has been effective on the ice. He has 47 high-danger shots this season, compared to the 25.8 average for forwards. He has already had at least 2 near-goals for Minnesota, which shows his readiness to jump into action. He kept high pressure on the Los Angeles Kings on Monday night, picked up a loose puck, and nearly scored: During Minnesota’s game against the New York Rangers last Thursday, he sent a one-timer on net, which Igor Shesterkin saved. He’s creating and capitalizing on opportunities, and the points will come if Brazeau stays consistent. Brazeau has also been effective on PK. At 6-foot-6, 227 lbs., he has incredible reach and easily blocks passing and shooting lanes. His penalty kill defensive and offensive zone times are better than average. This season, he has spent 33% of the time in the offensive zone, compared to the 29.6% average. He has also spent 49.6% of the time in the defensive zone, compared to the 56.4% average. He has 5 blocked shots in 6 games for the Wild, which is well above the 0.5 average per game for a power forward and 0.4 per game for a smaller forward. While in Boston, he averaged 0.45 this season, which is still strong, considering he got considerably less ice time than other forwards. Brazeau has shown his value but has had a difficult couple of months. Still, he has maintained his strong defensive game and continues to create opportunities for the Wild. While his efforts have not yet resulted in a goal for Minnesota, he’s on track to contribute the way he did earlier this season.

Minnesota Wild general manager Bill Guerin addressed reporters last Friday afternoon. The NHL trade deadline had passed, and all the big deals seemed to come within the Central Division. The Dallas Stars got Mikko Rantanen. The Colorado Avalanche landed Brock Nelson. Draft picks flew through the air while Guerin and the Wild stood idle. It wasn’t shocking, considering Guerin had traded his 2025 first-round pick to land David Jiricek. The Wild are also still dealing with the final year of massive cap penalties from the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts, meaning the Wild would have had to place Joel Eriksson Ek or Kirill Kaprizov on long-term injury reserve (aka “The Mark Stone Loophole”) to add a significant salary. It led Guerin to admit the Wild “didn’t even try” to add a big name. But that came with a caveat. “It’s not our time. We’ll have our time,” Guerin said. “We’ve got a plan going for four years, and I’m not going to screw it up being short-sighted.” Guerin is referring to the five-year plan that Russo reported at the beginning of the season. As part of the plan, Guerin said he wanted to sign Kaprizov long-term and treat this summer like Christmas. Wild fans anxiously awaited this part of the plan, anticipating the extension and free-agent spending like buried lost treasure at the end of a Disney movie. But while Guerin has an eye on the future, he must have one eye focused on the present. PuckPedia projects the Wild will have roughly $22 million in salary cap this offseason. However, we must factor in Kaprizov's eight-figure extension. Therefore, Minnesota will still have $10 to $12 million to spend, leaving Guering to fill in the pieces of a roster that has been one of the worst teams in hockey since the start of the calendar year. It’s a wonderful fantasy, but Guerin hasn’t been effective when he’s had money to spend. It started in the days leading up to the 2023-24 season when he signed Marcus Foligno, Ryan Hartman, and Mats Zuccarello to contract extensions. Since putting pen to paper, Foligno and Zuccarello have been fine relative to their salaries. However, Hartman has had troubles on and off the ice that could lead to his departure next summer. There’s also the Jake Middleton deal that was signed last summer. Middleton looked like a bargain when he put up 13 points and a plus-22 rating in his first 29 games. However, his production has fallen off since returning from a finger injury. He has five points and a minus-10 rating in his past 24 games. At $4.35 million, you could do worse for a top-four defenseman. Still, there are too many skilled but flawed players like Middleton on this roster. Yakov Trenin was the next player in this group when he signed a four-year, $14 million contract in free agency last summer. The Wild didn't sign to be a scorer, but his lumbering presence hasn’t added much else, with 13 points and a plus-1 rating in 58 games. Minnesota's recent signings have created a predicament, leaving Guerin scrambling to save his team at this year’s trade deadline. He coughed up a 2026 second-round pick to acquire Gustav Nyquist from the Nashville Predators. However, the 35-year-old won’t make up for the loss of Eriksson Ek and isn’t likely to be part of their long-term plans. There’s also the Justin Brazeau trade, which cost the Wild Jakub Lauko and Marat Khusnutdinov. Lauko’s injuries somewhat validated the deal, but Khusnutdinov is only 22 years old. Although he was set to become a restricted free agent next summer, bringing him back on a bridge deal wouldn't cost much. The Wild should have been targeting young players with upside like him the past few years. Even the Jiricek trade looks like it’s for the future. Still, it's rooted in the present because the 21-year-old sits in the press box and watches Zach Bogosian and Jon Merrill flounder on the third defensive pairing. If the Wild trade Bogosian or Jared Spurgeon this offseason, you could see a path for Jiricek to get playing time. Still, as hockey's Santa Claus, it’s more likely Guerin will seek another 30-year-old to fill his spot in free agency. Even if you’re (rightfully) excited about Zeev Buium and Danila Yurov, they could be stuck in the black hole that has become the Iowa Wild if Guerin continues prioritizing veterans in free agency. Is spending a bunch of money on John Tavares (34), Jamie Benn (35), and Claude Giroux (37) worth it? Or would the Wild be better off getting younger and building a core to compete in hockey’s toughest division? The Stars and Avalanche took the opposite approach, building the foundation and supplementing it with big free-agent moves. But while Guerin hypes up his future, it’s all about the present, satisfying this franchise’s desperation to get out of the first round. It makes pointing to the future seem like a crutch for a front office that should have built a foundation two or three years ago. And it could make a summer that’s supposed to be filled with excitement feel significantly underwhelming.

When the Minnesota Wild was sitting atop the NHL standings at the beginning of December, Kirill Kaprizov made headlines for being a Hart Trophy candidate. While Kaprizov did a lot of heavy lifting, the Wild's goaltenders deserved much of the credit. Filip Gustavsson appeared to be a Vezina Trophy candidate, while Marc-Andre Fleury provided solid, if not spectacular, goaltending as the backup. However, recently, the Wild haven't looked like the team they did at the start of the year. Injuries to Kaprizov, Jonas Brodin, and Joel Eriksson Ek have contributed to this. Still, just as the team succeeded earlier in the season partly because of strong goaltending, its faltering now is also the product of increased inconsistency in net. Wild Need More Consistency From Their Goaltenders The Wild depend on opportunistic scoring while playing solid defensively and preventing goals. That playstyle produces excellent results when the goalies are playing well. Minnesota was among the best teams in the league when their goalies were performing to their potential. However, when that doesn't happen, the Wild can't outscore their problems. Since the 4 Nations Face-Off, the Wild have three wins and five losses while only scoring 15 goals. That pace of 1.875 goals per game would be last in the NHL. It’s also nearly a goal per game behind the Wild's 2.79 season average. That doesn't mean goaltending hasn't been an issue, though. In the Wild's last eight games, they've given up 25 goals (3.125 goals against per game). That would rank 23rd in the league, far worse than their season average of 2.86. The team can't win with key players injured unless their goaltenders stand on their heads. In recent games, Marc-Andre Fleury and Filip Gustavsson haven’t held up that end of the game. Diminishing Returns Filip Gustavsson was one of Minnesota's most exciting stories early in the season. By mid-December, Gustavsson was 14-5-3 with a 2.24 goals against average and a .922 save percentage. However, things haven't been looking as good since December for the Wild's primary starter. A brief injury limited his game time in December, and his play has regressed since then. Gustavsson had a .882 save percentage in January. He logged a .900 save percentage in February and had a poor showing at the 4 Nations Face-Off. In his last five games, he's been tremendous – or a key reason the Wild lost games. The NHL defines a quality start as a goaltender having a higher save percentage in a game than the league average save percentage for the season. The average save percentage in the NHL is .901 this year. Since the start of 2025, Gustavsson has made 16 starts for the Wild, and only six have been quality starts. Gustavsson has always been streaky, so this development isn't shocking. He also has a more significant workload this year than he ever has, already starting in 42 games and poised to surpass his previous high of 43. Therefore, the Wild would benefit more from leaning on some of their other goaltenders. Marc-Andre Fleury is having some consistency issues himself. That's to be expected, given he's 40 years old and will retire in the offseason. Despite his age, Fleury has still performed adequately as a backup. His .904 save percentage is above league average, and his .923 mark in January was helpful given Gustavsson's struggles. Still, his inconsistent play makes it difficult to depend on him. Using the quality starts metric, he's been productive for the Wild in 3 of his last six starts. Fleury's performance is less crucial, given he’s the backup. He's done his job as long as he isn't actively costing the Wild games. Still, between his and Gustavsson's recent play, you never know what you'll get. That isn't sustainable for Minnesota's success in a system that requires limiting goals. Analyzing Minnesota Wild Goaltending The Wild can’t depend on their goaltending. Gustavsson and Fleury have had good games recently, but they've struggled more often. Let's dig into why. Let’s start with the games since the 4 Nations Cup concluded, in which the Wild have gone 3-5. When a team's goaltenders aren't performing well, we must look at how the defense performs in front of them for context. According to moneypuck.com, the Wild have allowed 15 high-danger shot attempts in the last eight games. That 1.875 high-danger shot attempts per game is a bit higher than their 1.66 season average, but six of those high-danger shot attempts came in one game. The Wild are still doing a good job limiting high-danger chances. They're second-best in the league in that category. However, the defense has had an issue with giving up medium-danger shot attempts. Over those eight games, the Wild have allowed 7.75 medium-danger shot attempts per game, which would rank as the worst in the NHL over an entire season. Giving up so many shots from areas of the ice that aren't exactly lethal but are still quality attempts would lead to more goals and make the goaltenders' job much harder. The Wild defenders could better limit those chances. Still, Minnesota’s goalies have given up eight low-danger shot attempt goals in the eight-game sample. Let's look at the Wild's matchup with the Colorado Avalanche on February 28 to understand how that can affect a game. The Wild were up 2-1 in the second period in a crucial matchup with Colorado. The Avalanche scored on a shot from Jonathan Drouin with a .07 expected goal percentage. Moments later, Jack Drury scored on Gustavsson on a shot with a .05 expected goals rate. By the end of the game, Gustavsson had given up two low-danger shot attempt goals and had a -2.11 goals saved above expected rating. The Wild can’t give up goals like that at this crucial juncture in the season. Of course, the expected goals stat isn't always fair. For example, this goal Gustavsson gave up against the Seattle Kraken. https://twitter.com/nhl_goal_bot/status/1897145264164446231 According to the location on the ice, that shot only had a 4% chance of scoring, but Jon Merrill screening Gustavsson made it a difficult save. The Wild have had issues giving their goaltenders clean looks at shots recently. The Wild could help their goaltenders by clearing the crease of opposing players a bit more or not screening their own goalie, like on the Larsson goal. Minnesota must make defensive improvements that would go a long way toward helping the Wild’s netminders succeed. But Gustavsson and Fleury must also uphold their end of the bargain. Recently, they've had too many lapses in concentration and given up too many easy goals. These issues need to be solved now. With the Wild struggling to score, their season could depend on it.

After trading for Gustav Nyquist last week, the Minnesota Wild have again dipped their toes in the trade waters hours before Friday afternoon's trade deadline. The Wild have acquired 6-foot-5 winger Justin Brazeau from the Boston Bruins. In exchange, they are sending back young center Marat Khusnutdinov, pending unrestricted free agent Jakub Lauko, and a 2026 sixth-round pick. Brazeau is 27 years old and will be an unrestricted free agent this summer, but you have to imagine that the Wild will be interested in re-signing the player before he hits the open market if he gets off to a good start in St. Paul. He has a massive body and can move around the ice well enough for a forward of his size. Through 57 NHL games this year, his first full season up in the National, Brazeau has scored 10 goals and 20 points. Not bad at all for a player averaging fewer than 13 minutes a night on a mediocre Bruins team. If he can provide some offensive juice to a Minnesota bottom-six forward group that is certifiably juiceless, then it is a move that is no doubt a winner. Going the other way, Khusnutdinov is a player who might still have way more to show. The Wild thrust their former second-round pick right into the NHL after coming overseas from the KHL towards the end of last season and never showed any offensive jump. Essentially, he was and still is a young player who has been cemented as a bottom-six center and never anything more than that. In 57 games this season, Khusnutdinov has scored two goals and seven points. The Wild are also letting Jakub Lauko return home to Boston. The Bruins traded him to Minnesota last June, and just months away from free agency, he gets to play for them again. He almost certainly would not be staying with the Wild as he has battled injuries this season and never really gained footing in St. Paul. So it's a prospect who the Wild might be selling as high as they can on before he either crumbles back to not even being worth a roster spot (or he can also pop off in a different system with more focus on development and have him play actual AHL games) -- all for a pending free agent who the Wild will get a first look on and try to re-sign before the end of the season. It might be an inconsequential move, but it is the dice roll that the Wild currently need to make. With almost no cap room, getting Brazeau and his league-minimum contract for a player who can certainly score more goals than the player you are giving up is the low-commitment gamble that a team fighting for security in the standings can make. If nothing goes well, the Wild sent a player who did not fulfill his hype to Boston and gained a roster spot they can give to a different promising center like Danila Yurov, Hunter Haight, or anyone else willing to win the battle next training camp. All in all, not too shabby.

Minnesota Wild fans had a case of déjà vu over the weekend. Stuck in the middle of a stretch where they lost three out of four games coming out of the 4 Nations Tournament, general manager Bill Guerin got on the phone and acquired Gustav Nyquist from the Nashville Predators for a 2026 second-round pick. The move calls back to a 2023 trade when Guerin acquired Nyquist from the Columbus Blue Jackets to give the Wild a boost at the deadline. But while the fit for this year’s team is debatable, Guerin might be on the right track as the Wild need to turn back the clock to make a run to the playoffs. It begins with a callback to the 2022-23 Wild. Minnesota was in a precarious position, sitting in the final wild-card spot in the Western Conference with a four-point lead over the Predators on Feb. 9, 2023. The Wild weren’t the offensive powerhouse they were on their way to the playoffs the previous year and had just lost Kirill Kaprizov to a lower-body injury. Trying to play high-scoring games with their opponents seemed like a way to book tee times in early April, so then-head coach Dean Evason pivoted and installed a gritty brand of hockey. Filip Gustavsson became a lynchpin in the change and responded with a blazing hot stretch. He posted a 6-0-4 record, allowing 1.6 goals per game and a .946 save percentage that took the load off the offense. Marc-André Fleury also did his part, going on a seven-game winning streak and posting a .934 save percentage over his next nine starts. While the goaltending did its job, the offense did just enough to spark a 17-game point streak. The Wild scored 2.70 goals per game during the streak. However, 21 goals over the final four games inflated that number. Until the hot stretch at the end, the Wild averaged 1.92 goals per game in the first 13 games and leaned on Gustavsson and Fleury to lead the way. The Wild didn’t have the extreme results they had during the 17-game point streak that helped them separate in the playoff chase and earn an automatic spot by jumping into third place in the Western Conference. Still, they continued to play the same brand of hockey with 2.87 goals and 2.35 goals against over the final 31 games. Minnesota even landed the first punch in their playoff series with the Dallas Stars, winning a 3-2 double-overtime thriller in Game 1 and scoring a 5-1 win at home in Game 3. However, Dallas’s offense overwhelmed the Wild, outscoring them 11-3 in the final three games to win the series in six. It was a time that Wild fans gravitated and clung to as they watched their team this season. That run still has some sentimental value, and it may be the best way for Minnesota to proceed over the next few months. Kaprizov is out with a lower-body injury again, while Joel Eriksson Ek has joined him on the shelf. Guerin told reporters he has no idea when either player will return, putting a gaping hole in the Wild’s offensive production. Minnesota could use the Mark Stone loophole by putting either player on long-term injured reserve to create salary cap space for a second trade deadline deal. However, Guerin is also optimistic that both players will return by the end of the regular season, forcing Minnesota to use what they have, barring a dollar-for-dollar trade. That strategy manifested in Sunday’s 1-0 win over the Boston Bruins, which was decided by Frederick Gaudreau’s goal off his breezers and a 28-save shutout by Gustavsson. However, the Wild also have to wonder if that brand of hockey is sustainable with this group as it was with the team that made a late-season surge two years ago. If you look at the season stats, you can see similarities. The 2022-23 Wild finished 23rd in goals per game (2.91) but ranked 10th in goals allowed (2.67). This year’s team also ranks 23rd in goals per game (2.80) and 10th in goals allowed (2.85). Still, much of that production has been with Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek, and the Wild’s defense hasn’t been the strength it was two years ago. Minnesota’s blue line took a hit when Jonas Brodin was ruled week-to-week with a lower-body injury on Sunday and is littered with questions elsewhere. Brock Faber hasn’t missed a game but has looked sluggish coming out of the 4 Nations Tournament, and Jacob Middleton’s hot start has become a distant memory. Middleton has logged five points and a minus-9 rating in his last 21 games after a finger injury. These are all negative developments, but not as big as what’s happening in the net. Gustavsson started the season on a mission to avenge last year and posted an 18-6-3 record with a 2.18 goals against average and .926 save percentage in his first 27 starts. However, he hasn't continued that success. In his past 13 games, Gustavsson has posted a 3.30 GAA and .892 save percentage with a 5-7-0 record. The Wild cannot count on Fleury, 40, to be a workhorse goalie. Therefore, Gustavsson must be the best version of himself to finish the season. That included the 2023 stretch, where he and the Wild defense carried them to a playoff berth. With over a month to go, they’ll have to replicate that so they're still in the playoff mix when Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek return.

The boys are back in town The boys are back in town The boys are back in town The boys are back in town Guess who just got back this weekend? Gustav Nyquist, who was part of the Minnesota Wild's trade deadline machinations in the 2022-23 season. It's hard to argue that Nyquist wasn't worth the fifth-round pick the Wild surrendered for him back then, even if he only played nine games. Two goals and nine points is more production than Minnesota's gotten out of 14 of their 18 fifth-rounders from 2000 to 2020, and four of those points came in six playoff games. You can't say that Minnesota doesn't need some offensive punch. Since Kirill Kaprizov went down with an injury before Christmas, the Wild are 28th in the NHL in goals per hour at 5-on-5 (2.01). It's also true that Minnesota doesn't have too much flexibility. It sent Marat Khusnutdinov and Liam Öhgren to the AHL to accommodate Nyquist's $1.6 million cap hit after the Nashville Predators ate 50% of his salary. The Wild operate with a higher degree of difficulty than 31 teams in the NHL, and trading their first-round pick for David Jiricek gives them less draft capital to offer other teams. That's all understandable. Nyquist was available, he could fit into the Wild's cap picture, and there was familiarity. It's not hard to see why the trade got made. Still, the move registers as uninspiring, certainly in the greater context of the Wild's team-building. We know that Bill Guerin is loyal to "his guys." If you have success in a Wild uniform and have a reputation as being good in the locker room, Guerin moves heaven and earth to keep you around. Sometimes, it works well -- look at Marcus Foligno and Mats Zuccarello having strong seasons -- and sometimes, it doesn't, with Ryan Hartman on the suspended list. It's not unusual for a GM to have a core of veteran players they want to keep around. What's more curious is that Guerin's loyalty seems to extend to a player even after they leave the organization. Nyquist is now the second player that Guerin has traded for in two separate deals. The first was Marcus Johansson -- who Guerin acquired in the Eric Staal deal before the 2021 season, then again at the same 2022-23 trade deadline where he obtained Nyquist. Johansson flopped in his first go-round in Minnesota, with just six goals and 14 points in 36 games, while not being able to stick at center like the team had hoped. Still, there was something Guerin and Dean Evason liked in Johansson, and they traded for him again. That move paid early dividends, with Johansson amassing six goals and 18 points in 20 games after the trade deadline, then chipping in two goals in his six playoff games. After that, Guerin doubled down on his trade deadline find, inking him to a two-year, $4 million deal to solidify his top-nine during the worst of his salary cap woes. Since then, Johansson has logged only 16 goals and 49 points in 129 games, necessitating a trade for someone like Nyquist. Johansson hasn't established a high bar to clear offensively this season. He's fourth among Wild forwards in 5-on-5 ice time, yet is tied with Yakov Trenin for ninth in goals (four) and eighth in points (13). It's not hard to think that someone -- heck, almost anyone -- could step into a top-nine role and be an instant improvement. Sadly, there's been little indication that Nyquist is prepared to do that, at least this year. At 5-on-5, Nyquist lags behind Johansson in almost every relevant stat. 5-on-5 Offense, 2024-25 Johansson: 0.33 Goals/60; 1.08 Points/60; 5.65 Shots/60 Nyquist: 0.24 Goals/60; 0.87 Points/60; 3.33 Shots/60 You can't blame Nyquist's role in Nashville, either. He wasn't buried on the depth chart; he was playing alongside the Predators' biggest stars. His top three forward partners are Ryan O'Reilly (60.8% of his 5-on-5 ice time), Filip Forsberg (34.5%), and Steven Stamkos (17.7%). Heck, you can argue that Nyquist had better assignments than Johansson! MoJo/JoJo has skated with Ryan Hartman for 40.1% of his 5-on-5 minutes, 36.9% with Joel Eriksson Ek, and 36.5% with Matt Boldy. Again, Nyquist was cheap and available, that's understandable. The Wild can have the flexibility to acquire someone else if they don't foresee Eriksson Ek and/or Kaprizov returning before the playoffs. Still, why spend any draft capital getting someone who is 35 years old and isn't much of an upgrade, if any, over what's already in-house? How can you look at Guerin's history and conclude anything else but that Nyquist has been here before? There's nothing wrong with recycling someone in itself. If a player was a good fit before and is still productive, then sure, go for it. The problem is that neither of the players Guerin recycled fit that criterion. Johansson wasn't productive in his first stint in Minnesota, and falling for a short-term production boost was unquestionably a mistake. Meanwhile, Nyquist's production seems to be bottoming out at 35, an age at which forwards can expect steep declines. It shows much less imagination than the Wild have been capable of this season. Trading a first-round pick to land a top, post-hype prospect like Jiricek was a strong, creative move with long-term upside. What's the upside in Nyquist? It's repeating the short-term production boost the Wild got back in those nine games during the 2022-23 season. It's not nothing, but also... did we forget the fate of the 2022-23 team? Their season ended in the first round, with Minnesota blowing a 1-0 series lead to lose in six games to the Dallas Stars. Pick whatever trade deadline acquisition you want to throw out in your wildest dreams -- Mikko Rantanen isn't going to guarantee Minnesota a playoff series win, especially not with their limitations. The goal is reasonable: Give the team a puncher's chance at breaking a playoff series drought threatening to reach the decade mark. Still, unless Nyquist's arrival precedes something that moves the needle more, it's hard to get excited about re-creating a team that no one was surprised to see flame out in the first round.

The Minnesota Wild made their first substantial move around the NHL trade deadline, and it was for an aging veteran who has worn the colors before. Announced by the team on Saturday afternoon, the Wild acquired forward Gustav Nyquist from the Nashville Predators and sent their 2026 second-round pick down south. It was a move seemingly out of nowhere, as the Wild have been subtlety connected to a couple of players on trade boards scattered across the internet, but nothing as a cemented rumor. However, it was a trade potentially made out of necessity. With Joel Eriksson Ek and Kirill Kaprizov out of the lineup and some mediocre play from the team overall, the Wild have been losing their grasp of a playoff spot. A 5-5-0 record in their last 10 games and a three-game losing streak -- it's no coincidence that it has been three games since Eriksson Ek suffered his injury -- put the Wild in a position to make a move now before it was too late. Is Nyquist the right candidate for this potentially season-saving move? If he played like he did in his previous stint in Minnesota, potentially. Just two years ago, the Wild traded a fifth-round pick for a then-injured Nyquist, and he was able to play the final three games of Minnesota's regular season and then all six playoff games against the Dallas Stars. Through those nine games, Nyquist scored one goal and 10 points and appeared to find new life in St. Paul. Now two years older and a pending unrestricted free agent at the age of 35, Nyquist is showing his decline. The winger has scored nine goals and 21 points in 57 games with the Nashville Predators, the third-worst team in the West. Not the electric season he hoped for when he was able to be on a team with Steven Stamkos and Ryan O'Reilly, but no one on that team has had anything anyone would call a good season. Nevertheless, Wild general manager Bill Guerin has pulled a familiar move. He knows Nyquist and knows what he looks like in Minnesota, so he went ahead and traded a much higher draft pick for a player who is significantly older than he was when he was last playing for this team. The timing of this trade and the player they acquired just feels like a slight act of desperation and trying to cling onto a top-three spot in the Central Division. Thankfully, the Wild banked enough points that they shouldn't completely drop out of the postseason. The Colorado Avalanche are banging on the door and most likely will take the Wild's spot. Still, as Minnesota drops into the first Wild Card spot, the Vancouver Canucks are seven points behind them with just one game in hand. It would take two significant streaks -- the Wild continuing to lose and the Canucks re-finding their form -- for Minnesota to be at risk of not making the playoffs. But that is the fear and what might have just caused this trade to be made. Nyquist could be a welcome addition to the Wild's top six, but it is a little bit of a puzzling move until the puck hits the ice and we see it fully fleshed out. For now, it's trading a fairly valuable asset for a 35-year-old winger who isn't having a great season and might not even make more of an impact than anyone in the organization before Saturday.

If you google “quotes about getting paid,” a surprising lack of ballplayers and rock stars appear. In its place is Forbes’s "Top 100 Money Quotes of All Time." I read all 100, looking for an interesting hook before I blast readers with a thousand words of contract analysis. Drowning in quotes from everybody between Henry Ford and Maya Angelou, I came to a disheartening conclusion. None of them really did justice to the thought of re-signing superstar Kirill Kaprizov. So, I’ll publish the 101st Money Quote of All Time here: When Bill Guerin pays Kaprizov, it will fix whatever is wrong with me. So, what will the deal look like if and when that fortunate day arrives? Six months ago, the rumor mill seemed to be closing in on a number between $14 and $15 million. The hockey blog world seemed set for a year of Kaprizov trade rumors, which would serve no purpose except to permanently raise every hockey fan in Minnesota’s blood pressure. In the meantime, all there was to do was identify comparable players and project those into Minnesota’s cap situation. Then, a bombshell salary cap announcement threw that into question. With cap increases like that, an estimate of $14-15 million inflates to something like $15.9-$17.1 million. The cap is expanding around 10% annually for three straight years, so every team will find itself with more cash than they originally planned. Notice the difference between that and more cash than they know what to do with. There’s only one place to spend it: free agents. Salaries will naturally increase with all those dollars chasing a limited player pool. As Yogi Berra said, “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.” That leaves a bit of a mess for those who’d like to estimate Kaprizov’s cap hit. First, combining contract comparables with steep cap inflation creates a complicated math problem. Second, it leaves a lot of intangible factors. Public analysts won’t be able to estimate the exact impacts of those intangibles -- at least, not before seeing what agents will demand under the new cap. That being said, let’s dive into the numbers. David Pastrnak and Artemi Panarin are the two most popular comparables for Kirill Kaprizov. Pastrnak and Panarin are top-line wingers. They have also received a Hart Trophy nomination, an honor that Kaprizov was on track to achieve this season before his injury. Expand that list to other Hart-nominated wingers who signed long-term extensions in the past 15 years, and you add Patrick Kane, Nikita Kucherov, Jamie Benn, Corey Perry, and Claude Giroux. But how do we account for cap inflation? For comparison, it’s important to try to recreate the circumstances under which the deals were signed. Therefore, we should work off salary cap estimates from the time of signing rather than the actual cap. The teams and agents who negotiated these deals were trying to predict the future at the time of signing, just like Guerin and Kaprizov’s agent, Paul Theofanous, will on this deal. One method could be to divide contract AAV by the total salary cap in the first season of the deal. Teams, agents, and even public analysts can usually estimate that cap value within a few million dollars. That will avoid making assumptions about the parties' thinking at the time. On the other hand, that doesn’t capture the market well. Kaprizov’s deal will be negotiated in the middle of a rapidly expanding cap environment for the first two years of the deal. A better metric to capture that would be the AAV divided by the average salary cap over the contract lifetime. The problem with this method is that it’s rare for NHL teams to have three years of clarity on the salary cap. So, how should we assume agents and teams were behaving at the time? Since the 2010-11 season, the salary cap has increased by an average of 4% per year. If the agents and team executives made the same assumption when signing, we can gain some insight into how they may have projected the average salary cap across the contract lifetime. So, that gives two numbers that we can use to adjust those seven contract comparables for cap inflation: Contract AAV as a percentage of salary cap in the first year of the contract (few assumptions, but doesn’t fully capture today’s inflationary cap environment) Contract AAV as a percentage of average lifetime salary cap (captures upcoming salary cap inflation but makes assumptions about agents’ and teams’ projections) So, what do those numbers tell us? This method gives numbers far lower than I expected. Using all seven contracts, the first statistic yields an estimated $13.7 million AAV, and the second gives an AAV of $14.35 million. At first, I thought this was because Giroux’s contract pulled down the average, but removing it only pushes the AAV to about $14.57 million. I decided to investigate the comparables more closely. Panarin’s contract implies an AAV between $14.8 million and $15.8, but that was only a seven-year deal. Pastrnak’s deal implies something lower, around $14 or $14.6 million. Kane’s is the richest of these deals, and it only implies an AAV of about $15.3 to $16 million. It’s important to note that age at signing may push Kaprizov’s AAV lower. All of these deals started in younger seasons than Kaprizov’s will, except Panarin’s deal -- which will expire a year younger than Kaprizov’s deal. Leon Draisaitl is another piece of important context. Draisaitl reset the market recently with a $14 million deal starting in 2025-26. He also plays center, which makes him a tough sell if Theofanous wants to use him as a comparable. On the other hand, Draisaitl probably isn’t even the best player on the Edmonton Oilers, and Kaprizov is undoubtedly the best player on the Wild. There’s also the issue of the signing date. Draisaitl signed on September 3, 2024, later than most of these deals. It’s possible that his agent got wind of upcoming salary cap increases. It’s also possible that his agent did not, but the Oilers did. The first scenario implies that Draisatl’s camp was willing to take a smaller percentage of the cap. Meanwhile, the latter implies Kaprizov should try to get as much or more because Draisaitl’s agent couldn't account for massive cap increases. For that reason, I made two comparisons in Draisaitl’s case: a team-friendly estimate that assumes his agent knew of the upcoming cap explosion and an aggressive contract that assumes the opposite. The team-friendly assumptions imply that a player as good as Draisaitl should sign for between $14.7 and $15.25 AAV, and the aggressive assumptions imply $15.76 to $16.45. Draisaitl and McDavid would be ambitious comparables for Kaprizov. Kane, Pastrnak, and Panarin are not. By the numbers, the conversation seems to start around $15 million. After that, it’s all about the intangibles. For example, Connor McDavid is set for a contract extension sometime before the 2026-27 season. If Draisaitl’s $14 million reset the market, McDavid’s could shatter it into a thousand tiny pieces. If McDavid demands his due, the days of the best player in the world making $8.7 million per year will be long forgotten. Not only that, but it seems that McDavid can justify whatever price he wants and still provide positive value for the Oilers. Along with McDavid’s upcoming unprecedented AAV, the influx of cash for every team in the league will drive Kaprizov’s price up in a way cap inflation doesn’t fully capture. Not only is his value higher for every team, but the amount of new liquid cash in the market will make a bidding war far more threatening to Minnesota. In a normal year, players typically re-sign with their previous team because other teams haven’t prepared their books to sign away that superstar. Panarin’s market is the closest example to the market Kaprizov will enter. Other teams were able to prepare for Panarin’s availability because it was evident that the Chicago Blackhawks wouldn’t have the cap to retain him. Panarin’s deal took up a much higher percentage of cap over the lifetime of the deal than the other six comparables, who re-signed with their original teams. Kaprizov’s market will be similar to Panarin’s -- not because teams don’t expect Minnesota to retain Kaprizov, but because many teams will have the liquidity to afford Kaprizov due to massive cap increases in 2025-26 through 2027-28. It’s possible that won’t have much of an impact if every other team in the league blows through that new 2025-26 cap liquidity this summer. However, that seems unlikely since they would still have flexibility from the cap increases of the next two seasons. If he hits the open market, Kaprizov can fit into nearly every NHL team’s budget. So, if the conversation starts at about $15 million AAV and other factors might work in Kaprizov’s favor, an AAV of up to $17 million isn’t out of the question. If the Wild don’t re-sign before the summer of 2026, there will be a true bidding war for one of the best wingers in the NHL. That’s what’s wrong with me. Watching a team for two decades that finally produced a Hart trophy-worthy player, only to see him depart after only six seasons, keeps me up at night. It drives me to spin up 1600-word blog posts about one player’s contract to find some catharsis. So here’s my plea: Open the checkbook, Bill Guerin. If you won’t do it for me, somebody else will do it for their team’s local bloggers. Jealousy is a disease, and it would become a permanent condition for me.

The Minnesota Wild may want to move Ryan Hartman at the deadline, but he’s a hard sell at the moment. The 30-year-old winger has caused more trouble than his current salary allows. In the 2021-22 season, Hartman had 65 points in 82 games and ended the season +31, a career season for the 2013 first-round pick. However, Hartman had multiple injuries and suspensions in the following two seasons, so he hasn’t played an 82-game season since or had .79 PPG. He had 37 points, a .63 PPG average in 2022-23, and 45 points and a .61 PPG the season after. Before last season, the Wild signed Hartman to a 3-year, $12 million contract starting in 2024-25. However, he has only 17 points this season in 48 games, lowering his PPG average to .35. His growing suspension list has also diminished his value. During Minnesota’s February 1 game against the Ottawa Senators, Hartman got called for roughing Tim Stutzle off the faceoff. After the puck dropped, Stutzle leaned forward, and Hartman raised his elbow and drove Stutzle’s face into the ice. Hartman already had 4 suspensions and 7 fines, so the NHL Department of Player Safety initially suspended him for ten games because he was a repeat offender. The NHLPA filed an appeal for Ryan Hartman, who argued that he was using his hand for balance and the fall was accidental. Player Safety was unconvinced, so Gary Bettman upheld the suspension but reduced it to 8 games. Hartman’s lack of production, recent suspension, and high price tag will be discouraging factors if the Wild try to trade him. He has a full no-trade clause for this season, so he would have to agree to the move, further complicating the situation. However, other teams could be interested in Hartman as a potential enforcer, and he may be interested in more ice time elsewhere. Consider Marcus Foligno. The 33-year-old Minnesota forward has nearly identical stats but with a few key differences. He has 22 points this year and 62 PIM in 61 games (.36 PPG). In the same offseason that the Wild extended Hartman, they signed Foligno to a 4-year, $16 million contract. This season, Foligno has the same cost, similar production, and similar PIM to Hartman. However, the Wild have gotten good value for Foligno. Bill Guerin would not have named Foligno as an assistant captain if he hadn’t demonstrated leadership ability on the team. Foligno is also +8 this season and only has one prior suspension, which was for 2 games and 3 years ago. He makes the Wild frustrating to play against and picks his fights with purpose. He started a fight with Vegas Golden Knights forward Keegan Kolesar on January 12 in retaliation for Kolesar’s hit on David Jiricek. If Hartman can play more disciplined while continuing to be physical, he could be a great enforcer. Minnesota has this role filled with Foligno, and with the second-worst PK in the league at 70.9%, they can’t afford more penalties. However, if the Wild want to trade Hartman, they must find a team looking for an enforcer. Many teams already have one, and not every team necessarily needs one. The New York Islanders rank second to last in penalties with 152, don’t have an enforcer, and need to make a change to clinch a playoff spot. There have been rumors that the Wild want Brock Nelson, but it is unlikely that New York will want to trade him. However, the Islanders might consider trading Anthony Duclair. Anthony Duclair signed a 4-year, $14 million contract with the Islanders, starting in the 2024-25 season. He also has a no-trade clause and must agree to a trade. The 29-year-old sustained a lower-body injury earlier this season and missed 28 games. Despite being healthy again, the Islanders scratched him for their Monday game against the New York Rangers. Islanders’ head coach Patrick Roy said he is “not happy” with Duclair’s play and expected more, but also noted he missed many games and is not conditioned. In the 30 games Duclair has played, he has only 9 points in 30 games and has a -10 plus/minus. Duclair might be coming off a down season, but he had 58 points in 74 during the 2021-22 season for the Florida Panthers before undergoing surgery for his Achilles Tendon. He helped the Panthers make it to the final round of playoffs in 2023, but they sent him to the San Jose Sharks for the 2023-24 season. He was traded again mid-season to the Tampa Bay Lightning, then signed as a free agent by the Islanders for 2024-25. Since his surgery, Duclair has not had an opportunity to settle in and build team chemistry. He doesn’t rack up penalty minutes, with 8 total this season over 30 games. Considering his lack of conditioning, Duclair would likely fill in gaps rather than drive winning in the playoffs, but he wouldn’t gain penalties for the Wild. Hynes also uses the summer to focus on strength and conditioning and could bring Duclair back to prime by next season. Hartman suspensions and fines make him a difficult player to keep on the Wild, but he may be effective as an enforcer elsewhere. Trading Hartman for Duclair would solve problems for both teams. Although Hartman and Duclair are currently on multi-year contracts with no trade clauses, they may be willing to move in hopes of more ice time.

The Minnesota Wild were light on cap space two years ago and high on ambition. Bill Guerin didn’t want to give up substantial assets, so he traded a 2024 third-rounder for Marcus Johansson and a fifth for Gustav Nyquist. Both players were on expiring deals, making them low-risk deadline pickups. "These two players are what we were missing, what we needed, and that is they're both highly skilled guys," Guerin said. "They're excellent skaters, and I think they're going to provide us with just that natural ability out there. They're both effortless skaters and just high hockey-sense guys [who] can make plays. "I think we could really use that." The Wild finished with 103 points that year, ten points lower than the previous season, and lost in the first round for the fourth year in a row. However, Johansson clicked with Matt Boldy and had six goals and 18 points in 20 games. Meanwhile, Minnesota acquired Nyquist when he was injured, and he had five points in four games. In Minnesota’s six-game series against Dallas, Johansson had two goals, and Nyquist had five assists. However, the Wild signed Johansson to a two-year, $4 million extension, while Nyquist signed a two-year, $6.37 million deal with the Nashville Predators. Johansson had 30 points in 78 games last season and 19 in 51 this year; Nyquist had 23 goals and 75 points in 81 games last season. Minnesota extended the wrong guy. Guerin may be trying to rekindle a spark with an old flame by sending a second-round pick in 2026 to Nashville for Nyquist. However, he’s older now and scoring less. Nyquist had nine goals and 21 assists in 57 games for the Predators, who spent $32 million in free agency but are the third-worst team in the West. “He was a player we were interested [in] from way back,” Guerin said when he traded for Nyquist in 2023. Guerin probably felt a little desperate when he traded for Nyquist again. Kirill Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek are on injured reserve, and the Wild don’t want to miss the playoffs for the second time in a row after competing for first in the Central at Thanksgiving. Still, the Wild will continue to hover around the playoff bubble indefinitely if Guerin ignores player aging curves. Although Guerin played better in his 30s than in his 20s, most forwards’ production declines after age 32. Johansson is still a responsible defensive player, but he’s less productive offensively because he’s 34. Similarly, Nyquist, 35, isn’t the same player he was last year or during his stint with the Wild. Guerin can’t correct a past mistake by trading for Nyquist this season. By giving up a second-round pick for Nyquist, Guerin is mortgaging the future for a team that cannot win now. The Wild are top-heavy, even when fully healthy, and teams have shut Kaprizov down in the playoffs because Minnesota becomes a one-line team. Minnesota’s opponents will also capitalize on situations where Zach Bogosian and Jon Merrill are on the ice. The Wild don’t want to miss the playoffs two years in a row. However, they will be lucky to get out of the first round if they qualify, making it the eighth time since 2015 that they’ve failed to reach the second round. Guerin chose to try to build a competitive team after buying out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter, despite the $14.6 million in dead cap he accrued. Trading for Nyquist feels like a desperate move to correct a past mistake and make the playoffs with a flawed team. Instead, Guerin should have held onto the second-round pick and invested in the Wild’s future. He continues to do the same thing and expects different results. Until Guerin adapts, the Wild will always be a little light on cap space, high on ambition, and a little desperate.