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  • Are the Minnesota Wild Regression Proof?

    Image courtesy of Brad Rempel-Imagn Images
    Luke Sims

    By Luke Sims -

    After Thursday’s 7-1 loss to the Edmonton Oilers, the Minnesota Wild are tied for second in the NHL with 42 points and two games in hand over the league-leading Winnipeg Jets. 

    It’s fun to see the Wild find early success, but Wild fans have seen this movie before. Minnesota has been among the league's best during the holiday season, only to plummet to the bottom of the standings and miss the playoffs, as it did in the 2011 season.

    How sustainable is the Wild’s success after the Oilers blew them out last night and with more injuries piling up? 

    The Wild have faced injuries to crucial players. The Wild are missing significant star power with Mats Zuccarello, Joel Eriksson Ek, Jonas Brodin, and Jake Middleton out. 

    Minnesota survived without Brodin. However, without Middleton, the left side of the defense was suddenly barren. That forced guys like Jon Merrill up in the lineup and made Jared Spurgeon play on his offside. 

    “Mids is a big part of shutting down guys, playing big down there, just holding on to pucks and just kind of making a lot of lines get one-and-dones in our zone,” winger Marcus Foligno said. “So, yeah, it’s tough.”

    However, the Wild can’t rush any of these guys back. While Brodin and Zuccarello are close to returning, Erikkson Ek and Middleton could be out for longer. 

    “You have to do what’s right for the player,” Hynes said. “You have to do what’s right for the team. Is he really ready to play? I don’t have that answer tonight. I’ll probably know more (Friday). 

    “Same thing with Zuccy. I don’t know. Ultimately there is a medical procedure they have to go through to make sure that they’re ready to play and not force them in there because you’re banged up and you feel like you have needs.”

    Despite the injuries and the recent setback against Edmonton, the Wild still earn points almost nightly. Sitting at second in the NHL without your top-line winger, top-line center, and two first-pairing defenders is impressive. They don’t appear to be slowing down, either. 

    With the backbone of their superstar Kirill Kaprizov, who has 43 points in 28 games, the Wild have him to fall back on when things get rocky. Throw in winger Matt Boldy as a complimentary star and a sound defensive structure, and the Wild are built to avoid the basement. 

    The stats also back it up on all ends of the ice.

    Starting on the offensive side of the ice, the Wild hold the league’s best xGF% (53.91). That means that the Wild are controlling play and expected to score more goals than they allow at the fifth-best rate in the league. 

    The Wild also are 13th in the league in shooting percentage. While that may not seem positive, the fact that the Wild are not at an incredibly high shooting percentage speaks volumes about their quality of scoring chances. They are not reliant on individual efforts or incredibly high shooting percentages for the success of their offense. 

    Meanwhile, the Wild’s defensive structure has launched them into the best defensive team in the league. Statistically, Minnesota’s 1.64 goals against is tops in the league. All this without Brodin for a good nine-game chunk of the season. 

    The Wild generate shots. However, they allow the ninth least shots in the league at 26.35 but allow the third lowest high danger shots against with only 41 total this season. 

    Filip Gustavsson’s stellar goaltending has also helped. Gus has cleaned up any mistakes the Wild make within their defensive structure. Gustavsson is fourth in the league in Goals Saved Above Expected, at 10.7, and ranks third in the NHL in SV%, at .922. If he keeps this up, he’ll undoubtedly be in the Vezina conversation for the league's best goaltender at the end of the season. 

    Kaprizov and Boldy’s superstar ability and the defensive structure Hynes has established to support Gus’s strengths give the team a solid foundation to continue its success despite the mounting injuries. The Wild will have some tough games, like Edmonton on Thursday, but the foundation is in place for this team to continue its success. 

    All stats and data via Evolving Hockey, The Athletic, and HockeyDB unless otherwise noted.

    By Luke Sims  

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    Amaddeo

    Little premature for an article like this. Maybe looking at the next 5-7 games and then determining what the team is made of would be more accurate. Can’t comment on the likelihood of being regression proof, but if I had to guess, it wouldn’t be good with the amount of injuries to top guys. 

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    Imyourhuckleberry

    No team is regression proof when they are missing several players to injury. Hopefully the Wild can stay afloat near the top of the conference while those guys make their way towards healthy returns. It is sounding like everyone currently missing would likely be back before February, but Middleton may be having surgery on his broken hand, so that timetable is still not certain.

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    Up North Guy
    2 hours ago, Imyourhuckleberry said:

    No team is regression proof when they are missing several players to injury. Hopefully the Wild can stay afloat near the top of the conference while those guys make their way towards healthy returns. It is sounding like everyone currently missing would likely be back before February, but Middleton may be having surgery on his broken hand, so that timetable is still not certain.

    My understanding is that it is a broken finger which could be a "break" for the team. He still has to miss 10 games and 24 days I believe. The next two games are going to be tough. Philly plays an aggressive game and Vegas is just plain big.

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    Sam

    So the injuries for the non-regression proof but injury stricken Wild are as follows:

    1. Mats “Uni-ball” Zuccarello- day to day
    2. Jonas “on ya like white on rice” Brodin- day to day
    3. Joel “gritty definitely not pretty” Eriksson Ek- about a week
    4. Jake “the snake” Middleton- a week to two?
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    Lovehockey

    I have concern that Wild will not be able to hold on. defense will not be as good as it was without Jake. U can overcome this with offense but this is Wild biggest problem. After  Kaprisov, Boldy and Rossi the next scorers are Freddy (1.7 mil per year) and Johansen (whom everybody hate last year, 2 mil guy). And players with around 4 mil per year - Folino, Trenin, Hartman provide almost nothing especially for the money they paid. 

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    Burnt Toast
    7 hours ago, Amaddeo said:

    Little premature for an article like this

    Couldn’t have said it better myself. Personally if the Wild can win 50% of their games over the next 4 weeks I’d consider it a success. Any NHL team losing 4 starters is going to have a hard time maintaining dominance. Get healthy, get in the playoffs and hopefully make some noise.

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    mnfaninnc

    BT has said it real good. This was the importance of banking points. Let's look at facts: The Wild are injured heavily at this time. The Wild are down $15m in cap space to make up for the injured losses. 

    The banked points give us a decent cushion to do just like BT said, win 1/2 the games, maybe throw in a couple of loser points. 

    Now for the good news: Russo reported

    1. Wild grabbed Travis Dermott off waivers from Edmonton. He has a very low contract number and it affords the Wild to leave Lambos in the minors to continue his progress which Guerin told Russo was happening. My eye test saw the same thing.
    2. Zuccarello taken off LTIR and expected to play vs. Philly today. Hopefully, the UniBall writes a nice smooth game today and gets our PP back to where it should be. I must say, I was surprised about how much he means to the PP, and while he was out, the PP dipped significantly.
    3. Brodin was activated off of IR to play this afternoon too. This looks like we will have Brodin, Chisholm and Merrill on the left side, with Dermott probably debuting soon like tomorrow. Dermott is 6' 200 lbs., not in the Middleton class, but still solid size. Guerin says he can skate.

    So, reinforcements are coming back, let's hope for a refreshed team to get that loss off their backs. I suspect they will be spirited, especially since Philly was another stinker last time we played them. 

    As for the article, no team is regression proof, that's just silly. There are teams that it takes more of an injury hit to affect, but what would Edmonton look like if it were missing Draisaitl (that is still a fun name to type) and McDavid? Their team would suddenly be below average. I think the main point of the article is/was, though, that can the Wild survive like they didn't in 2011? This I think can be done. 

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    mnfaninnc

    Today's game was very good for this article. A great bounce back game where we have our legs again and the opponent isn't too great. 

    I thought the Wild once again played rather loose, and had it not been for some timely saves by Fleury and Michkov, the game could have gone the other way. 

    I thought Fleury looked sharp and was ready to go. This might be a good time to go every other game through the holidays. The Wild have got to work on their structure again, as these bad habits are happening too often. 

    At least the PK did well. Vegas, as reported by Lapanta/Walz had an afternoon game in Edmonton that ended 2 hours after ours. They should be in a foul mood since Edmonton took care of business 6-3. 

    I did like how Zuccarello played coming back from injury. It was also nice having Brodin back, though, I thought he lacked explosion. I thought Rossi had a nice game. Kaprizov, I believe, was embarrassed by Thursday night's game and took it upon himself to show up. 

    I wasn't aware that we'd lost Trenin too due to an upper body injury. I thought Reese Johnson played pretty well in his absence, and I thought Johnson also made an argument to be the 13th forward. I didn't think Trenin was missed to badly, but it's a small sample size. 

    Now let's make no mistake, this was a well deserved Fleury win, he was most responsible for it. I certainly do like not losing 2 straight in regulation. Keep on banking points, Wild!

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    OldDutchChip
    39 minutes ago, mnfaninnc said:

    Today's game was very good for this article. A great bounce back game where we have our legs again and the opponent isn't too great. 

    I thought the Wild once again played rather loose, and had it not been for some timely saves by Fleury and Michkov, the game could have gone the other way. 

    I thought Fleury looked sharp and was ready to go. This might be a good time to go every other game through the holidays. The Wild have got to work on their structure again, as these bad habits are happening too often. 

    At least the PK did well. Vegas, as reported by Lapanta/Walz had an afternoon game in Edmonton that ended 2 hours after ours. They should be in a foul mood since Edmonton took care of business 6-3. 

    I did like how Zuccarello played coming back from injury. It was also nice having Brodin back, though, I thought he lacked explosion. I thought Rossi had a nice game. Kaprizov, I believe, was embarrassed by Thursday night's game and took it upon himself to show up. 

    I wasn't aware that we'd lost Trenin too due to an upper body injury. I thought Reese Johnson played pretty well in his absence, and I thought Johnson also made an argument to be the 13th forward. I didn't think Trenin was missed to badly, but it's a small sample size. 

    Now let's make no mistake, this was a well deserved Fleury win, he was most responsible for it. I certainly do like not losing 2 straight in regulation. Keep on banking points, Wild!

    Agree - biggest thing for me was seeing zuccy and Brodin the same as they were before injuries - this lessers impact of EK / Midds injury 

    The brodziak wild were bunch of over achieving 3rd / 4th liner whereas wild have some top level O and a good to great D

    and Kaprizov

    my biggest concern now is Boldy 

     

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    mnfaninnc

    We have to still remember how young Boldy really is. This is a growing pain for him as he attempts to get more physical. I believe he's trying too hard and playing outside of his game. The real issue is that when he's getting more physical like he may have been told, he's got to get his stick out of the way. He'll figure it out, and when he does, watch out. 

    As a team, I think that Boldy is better off on line 2 at the moment, and then if we need something in the 3rd, stack that line. What's hard is watching development. We see Boldy as a star, but there's still other levels he can get to. Watching him trying to reach those levels of domination has speed bumps in the way and we've seen a Boldy going over several of them. Now we have to coach him over them and get him to the next level. 

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    Up North Guy
    16 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

    I did like how Zuccarello played coming back from injury. It was also nice having Brodin back, though, I thought he lacked explosion.

    It is going too be interesting to see what they have in the tank after playing yesterday.

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