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  • Can Marcus Johansson Break the Cycle Of Bad 30-Something Signings?


    Image courtesy of Isaiah J. Downing-USA Today Sports
    Tony Abbott

    For a team that is going to have to rely on young players to get them through the next two years of cap hell, do you ever notice how this is a very old team?

    The Minnesota Wild finished the 2022-23 season at an average age of 28.65, the seventh-oldest team in the NHL. Ahead of them were the usual suspects, either go-for-it-now contenders like the Tampa Bay Lightning and Colorado Avalanche, or the skeletons of dynasties past like the Pittsburgh Penguins and Washington Capitals.

    Minnesota is older than they've ever been, and now they're even older. They have 16 players currently under contract for next year, with an average age of 29.25 (including 21-year-old Brock Faber). That's going to go down a touch if and when they re-sign key RFAs like Filip Gustavsson, Brandon Duhaime, and Calen Addison, and should youngsters like Marco Rossi or Sammy Walker make the team.

    But the starting point for this team is pretty darn old, and they didn't get younger this week.

    On locker room clean-out day, the Wild signed Marcus Johansson to a two-year deal carrying a $2 million cap hit. You can't say he didn't make a case for himself to return. Six goals and 18 points over 20 games is fabulous production, and it's clear he brought a puck-carrying element to the team that they often lacked. His 19 goals, 27 assists, and 80 games played were all his highest totals since the 2016-17 season.

    And that's kind of the problem, right there. That season happened when he was 26. His latest contract is going to take him into his age-33 and 34 seasons. 

    When has that ever gone wrong for the Wild before?

    Whoo boy, where do we start? First, t should be said that we can definitely find instances of this working out in Minnesota. Even on the roster right now, Jared Spurgeon and Mats Zuccarello are still playing at a high-to-elite level at their ages. 

    But even for star players, we've seen how quickly decline can hit a player in even their early 30s. Jason Pominville was a shell of his former self at 33. Dany Heatley was also spent at that age. Thomas Vanek didn't even make it there.

    Historically, the Wild have done better with aging players than most. Eric Staal, Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, and Brian Rolston are some names that come to mind as being productive in their early-to-mid 30s. But that history just doesn't extend to Bill Guerin's deals to older veterans.

    Take a look at all these multi-year deals he's handed out to veterans. How many have worked out?

    The Alex Goligoski one stands out as the Ur example of this kind of contract going wrong. Grabbing Goligoski originally, for a one-year, $5 million deal seemed like a smart, low-risk swing on a 36-year-old. Generally, there's no such thing as a bad one-year deal.

    But Guerin doubled down on Goligoski after a half-season of thriving with Spurgeon, extending him through age-38. Is a $2 million cap hit technically reasonable for what he brings? You can argue that. Would the Wild probably rather have $2 million of flexibility? Probably, and they might just find themselves dumping the contract this summer.

    Between Goligoski and Jon Merrill, who signed a three-year deal carrying him from ages 30 to 32 at around the same time Goligoski inked his latest contract, the Wild got a whopping two playoff games from the duo. Now, Merrill's cap hit is just $1.2 million. In a vacuum, $3.2 million isn't all that much. The problem is that the Wild's situation is far from a vacuum. Having that space free would represent an almost 50% increase in cap flexibility. 

    Think they could use it? Guerin might be able to flip one, or both, to find that extra wiggle room. He can't say the same for Marc-Andre Fleury, who he signed last year for a two-year, $3.5 million AAV pact that covered his age-38 and 39 seasons.

    Gustavsson's emergence wasn't very foreseeable, but it's still another example of a multi-year deal to an aging player that's turned sour quickly. And right now, you can't deny it -- it hurts. Fleury carries a full-move clause and has no inclination to retire. The Wild are stuck with his cap hit, even if they wanted to roll with Gustavsson full-time while breaking 20-year-old Jesper Wallstedt into the NHL as a backup.

    Fleury gave Minnesota a decent .908 save percentage in the regular season, mostly fattening up on lesser teams. The best-case scenario for next year is more of the same, except in a backup role to Gustavsson's starting minutes. But that's a job for an Alex Stalock, league-minimum type, not someone making $3.5 million. Especially on a team that is going to pinch pennies to sign Gustavsson to begin with.

    Guerin has a ton of respect for Fleury; the future Hall of Famer was a former teammate. But that's gotta be cap space he'd rather have back.

    Even the best of this bunch, Marcus Foligno, might find himself to be a luxury Minnesota simply can't afford. He's tough, he's physical, and he stands up for his teammates. But so does Duhaime, who's going to command about half of Foligno's $3.1 million cap hit.

    Granted, that first year of Foligno's deal? Monster home run. The then-30-year-old scored a career-high 23 goals and 42 points while playing alongside Joel Eriksson Ek on the league's best shutdown line.

    The following year, Guerin and Dean Evason broke up the band by trading away Jordan Greenway, who was much younger when he signed his instantly-regrettable contract, and promoting Eriksson Ek, respectively. He ended his season with seven goals and 21 points in a remarkably quiet year.

    Is it bad luck or decline? We might not get to find out if the Wild feel the need to dump the final year of Foligno's contract, when he'll be 32.

    All of that is to say that when Freddy Gaudreau and Johansson both sign multi-year deals taking them through age-34 in the span of a few weeks, there's reason to be skeptical, given Guerin's track record of evaluating these guys' future value.

    You might peg Johansson as carrying the least risk of all these contracts. He had a very good season, the deal is two years rather than three or more, and the cap hit is a manageable $2 million. You've got to give Johansson some props for his season. Evolving Hockey's Standings Points Above Replacement model has him being worth 4.4 points to his teams, including over two in 20 games for Minnesota.

    To put that in perspective, that's right around where Troy Terry (4.5 SPAR) and William Nylander (4.3) ended up this season, and he was tied for 62nd in the NHL. 

    It was also an out-of-nowhere career renaissance for the speedy winger. Over the previous five seasons, Johansson was the definition of a replacement-level player, with a SPAR of exactly 0.0. During that time, his range of outcomes hovered around being worth 1.2 and -1.1 SPAR. Not great!

    But then he explodes. What do we make of his career arc?

    image.png

    Since 2007-08, we can find 32 players who've provided more than 4 SPAR for their teams at age-32. Of that group, 32 of them went on to play at 33 and 34. The good news for Johansson? 26 of them averaged 1.0 or more SPAR per season.

    The bad news? Very few of those players seemed to fluke their way into that kind of season. For the data that we have, just one player, Danny Briere, averaged 1.0 SPAR per season before their big age-32 season. Everyone else averaged more, and often, way more. 

    It's just difficult to find a parallel to Johansson: someone who did essentially nothing for five years, then re-gained peak performance.

    We would use Evolving Hockey's Similarity Scores to see how Johansson's comparables heading into this year fared in their age-33 and 34 seasons... except we can barely find any examples of his comparables playing at that age. 

    Between his three-year (from 2019-22) and six-year (2016-22) comparables, 24 NHL players show up as similar to Johansson. Only three of them (Mark Letestu, Valtteri Filppula, and Derick Brassard) had a season past age-31 with more than 1.0 SPAR. Filppula, Letestu, Brassard, and Bobby Ryan are the only ones to even play in the NHL beyond their age-32 season. Even in those cases, it wasn't pretty.

    That's a lot of players like Bryan Little, Artem Anisimov, Paul Byron, Matt Read, Kris Versteeg, Brandon Sutter, and more who've washed out. Johansson managed to be an outlier this last season. Can he do it again? For the next two seasons?

    It's a tough bet to make. At the most optimistic, you might say that maybe he's been injury-prone for five seasons, but now that he's healthy, he's back on track. Maybe. He missed significant time in four of the five previous seasons. But players tend to get less, not more durable as they enter their mid-30s. It'll be surprising to see Johansson suddenly put together an iron man streak.

    Of course, this deal could work out. Johansson might be an outlier. But so many things are working against him. There's his age, there's his injury history, and there's the fact that his production in Minnesota was built on a nearly impossible-to-repeat 12.3% shooting by his teammates at 5-on-5. For context, that's even higher than his previous season high of 11.6, when he was on the peak Alex Ovechkin/Nicklas Backstrom/Mike Green Capitals.

    The money isn't bad, and the Wild are a franchise that's going to need to go bargain-hunting. That's understandable. But Guerin's got one of the oldest teams in the league at a time they need to get younger, and locking up Johansson based on a 20-game hot streak through age-34 with a full no-trade clause is basically daring the Hockey Gods to pants you.

    You can appreciate the difficult spot Guerin is in trying to keep this team competitive, and how it forces him to sign players who might have some warts. There's not going to be a perfect free agent target when you have $8 million of cap space. We understand that.

    But the Wild have had just one way of addressing it: giving aging players term to keep their cap hit down. It's one thing to have a band-aid solution. However, if you're going to use a band-aid, use one that's going to be useful. Too many times, these solutions to patch up the team seem to dissolve the second the Wild jump into the pool. Buying the exact same brand of player isn't likely to succeed. But just like the coaches in the playoffs, the front office doesn't seem willing to make any adjustments to an underwhelming strategy.

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    I wouldn't conflate Freddy and Mojo with Goligoski and Merrill.  Actually, Merrill at 1M isn't bad for an insurance policy.

    Goligoski is turning into a facepalm but I don't see a trend here.  We have to use band aids for another 2 years and all things considered I think Freddy and Mojo allow us to give Boldy his due this season and potentially Gus in the offseason.

    Opportunity cost should also be part of the equation with Mojo.  Are we missing something because of it?  

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    I like the deal, but don't like the possibility of an NMC with it. Tony, where did you get that, just checked capfriendly and they don't have any restrictions on him?

    $2m for a guy with speed who can enter the zone. I think that's more than fair. He's another placeholder until someone is ready. I don't think he takes a place for Beckman, Walker, or Rossi. But, he's also insurance in case one of those guys isn't ready.

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    3 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

    I like the deal, but don't like the possibility of an NMC with it. Tony, where did you get that, just checked capfriendly and they don't have any restrictions on him?

    No Trade, they could send him to the AHL. It's on his CapFriendly page. The team pages are still showing this year's contracts. 

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    It’s not like it’s long term. Besides Parise & Suter aren’t Ennis and Vanek the other recent buyouts? I don’t think it will be possible for Johansson to fizzle out that completely going full Rask or Hanzal. 
     

    Man I just wish the Wild would hit on draft picks like other teams do. 
     

    Just think about the unassisted Jarvis goal early against NJ the other night. That is an amazing example of playoffs momentum generation. Just awesome and Carolina goes on to win 5-1. I believe that was the 2nd Carolina goal giving them the lead. That doesn’t inspire the team when the youngest guy does that for your group???

    The Wild need to get something from a draft that shows up. I don’t give two cruds what a bunch of writers say about prospect pools and their pretentious rankings. When is MN gonna have another player from the draft who helps somehow? That is where the cheap talent is supposed to originate. Since 2015 only two 1st rounders are with the Wild, Ek & Boldy. You better have the best prospect pool someday just to get out of the minus category...

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    I'd definitely like it better at $1.5M per season, but there did seem to be some chemistry with Boldy, and Eriksson Ek between them can work. I believe those two need a strong defensive center.

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    1 hour ago, Protec said:

    Since 2015 only two 1st rounders are with the Wild, Ek & Boldy.

    It cannot be overstated how chronically bad Fletcher is at GM’ing.  He kneecaps an organization for a decade

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    If we wanted to rank the worst moves of BG era, Fleury has to take the cake.  If I remember right, trade deadline move where we potentially gave up a 1st and ultimately gave up a 2nd rd pick?

    Both post-seasons, Fleury was inexcusably played in front of a better goalie based off of fluffy reasoning.

    I think the narrative here isn't BG signing old dudes, but rather BG having a Pittsburgh fetish.

     

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    2 hours ago, Protec said:

    The Wild need to get something from a draft that shows up. I don’t give two cruds what a bunch of writers say about prospect pools and their pretentious rankings. When is MN gonna have another player from the draft who helps somehow? That is where the cheap talent is supposed to originate. Since 2015 only two 1st rounders are with the Wild, Ek & Boldy. You better have the best prospect pool someday just to get out of the minus category...

    Which camp are you in then? Marinate them or toss them into the deep end? It's clear Rossi simply wasn't ready yet, and it is possible he never will be anymore. However, The Wall just finished his 1st season in Iowa, O'Rourke, Hunt, Khus$%^&* are all in lower leagues and not ready yet. Lambos is just leaving jr. Ohgren is still in Sweden. Yurov is in the K one more year. 

    Looking through the years:

    1. 2016 was Kunin who was a wasted pick. But, I advocated for Bellows who has shown less. We could have had Chycrun or Tage Thompson.
    2. 2017 was traded in the disastrous Hanzal deal. Jason Robertson was a 2nd rounder this year, but for those drafted around our spot, it's not been a good draft.
    3. 2018 was Filip Johansson. No explanation needed.
    4. 2019 was Boldy, a good pick. Beckman and Firstov also came from this draft, and the jury is still out on them. I think Beckman likely makes the team next season.
    5. That brings us to 2020. We know about Rossi. Khus is doing well. O'Rourke kind of baffles me, he was supposed to be this really nasty defender, yet, he's still listed at only 179. Is he sandbagging his weight? Hunt is over 200 lbs. now and by the numbers they look pretty much like the same player. I'm not sure what their TOI was, but they finished this season in Iowa with 18 and 14 PIMs. To me, that doesn't read like a nasty game. We've also got Paval Novak from this draft which, who knows what we'll get out of him. It's also a bit interesting, bad luck, that 2 of these draftees had life threatening illnesses.

    Of course, Guerin's guys just aren't here yet, but missing on Kunin, Hanzal and Johansson in 3 straight drafts was very handcuffing when going through 2 monster buyouts.

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    31 minutes ago, Will D. Ness said:

    If we wanted to rank the worst moves of BG era, Fleury has to take the cake.  If I remember right, trade deadline move where we potentially gave up a 1st and ultimately gave up a 2nd rd pick?

    Both post-seasons, Fleury was inexcusably played in front of a better goalie based off of fluffy reasoning.

    I don't think you can claim this year that Fleury was played in front of a better goalie. Yes, Talbot got hosed, but who thought Goose2 was going to be a monster when we traded for him? I'd say Fleury got the majority of the starts, especially early on while Goose2 got acclimated to our system and fixed some things in his game that the goalie coach pointed out. Once that happened, Goose2 was elevated to at least 1b while capturing 1a down the stretch.  

    I was a big supporter of the Gustavsson trade once I read up on him right after the Talbot deal. I thought he would fair way better under our structure than in Ottawa. But those 1st few starts he had were shaky at best. Early on I was the most vocal supporter of Goose2, but never advocated for him to be the full time starter, nor did anyone else until well into the 2023 portion of the season.  

    Also, what needs to probably be acknowledged was the role Fleury played in this. Behind the scenes, my bet is he helped Goose2 with his confidence and mentoring. And, Fleury has this track record with other organizations he's been with. Hopefully, The Wall will have some of this rub off on him too.

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    1 hour ago, Will D. Ness said:

    Fleury has to take the cake.  If I remember right, trade deadline move where we potentially gave up a 1st and ultimately gave up a 2nd rd pick?

    Fair point.  I'm a BG supporter but it's ok (req'd) to be critical when it's necessary.  And yes Fleury has been abysmal when we needed him (playoffs).

    But didn't BG find Gus?  Yes, but this is a two steps backward, then two steps forward argument.  This got us back to treading water.  This org. has to catch lightning in a bottle with every move we make (given the cap hell) so Fleury was a clang off the upright.  

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    1 hour ago, mnfaninnc said:

    Also, what needs to probably be acknowledged was the role Fleury played in this. Behind the scenes, my bet is he helped Goose2 with his confidence and mentoring. And, Fleury has this track record with other organizations he's been with. Hopefully, The Wall will have some of this rub off on him too.

    I think Fleury has been a great mentor and confidence boost for Gus as well as being a pretty good goalie in his own right.  Maybe that makes the trade just a little more palatable.

    My point was mostly that his post season impact though.  It has been negative and he really didn't earn the starts based off of merit.  Both Gus and Talbot outplayed him.

    To me this points to a somewhat egotistical "chasing a bet" type of thing and trying to rely upon some "magical" performance from Fleury.

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    1 hour ago, Pewterschmidt said:

    Fair point.  I'm a BG supporter but it's ok (req'd) to be critical when it's necessary.  And yes Fleury has been abysmal when we needed him (playoffs).

    But didn't BG find Gus?  Yes, but this is a two steps backward, then two steps forward argument.  This got us back to treading water.  This org. has to catch lightning in a bottle with every move we make (given the cap hell) so Fleury was a clang off the upright.  

    BG is ahead of the game IMO.  Couple bad moves mixed in with a lot of good ones.  

    But let's face it... BG just payed Suter 7M to play against us, defeat us,  and crosscheck our true lighting in a bottle in KK97.  (I say this jokingly as I think Suter was a dickhead and needed to get the boot)

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    The Wild have a dilemma at the goalie position. Fleury is the perfect mentor for the two Swedes Gus and Wall, but we don't really have room for three goalies on the main roster. Best case scenario, would be to make Fleury a goalie advisor / mentor for the Wild organization. Fleury doesn't seem interested in retiring yet, so BG will have to decide between the Wall and Gus for next year, with Fleury as the backup. 

    The Wild also need to get a real center for the Kaprizov line during the offseason.

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    31 minutes ago, Quebec1648 said:

    so BG will have to decide between the Wall and Gus for next year, with Fleury as the backup.

    Russo says on his recent podcast that there's zero % chance they throw Wall into NHL next year.  

    If you believe that then we're ride or die with Fleury next year under any scenario.  That leaves open the question of whether or not BG can get a decent return for Gus in open market this summer.  This team goes sideways for next two years regardless IMO.  What's point in signing Gus so we can win 10 more games next regular season.  Why not get a draft pick or a big sturdy prospect who may be able to help the big club in two years.

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    21 hours ago, Pewterschmidt said:

    Russo says on his recent podcast that there's zero % chance they throw Wall into NHL next year.  

    If you believe that then we're ride or die with Fleury next year under any scenario.  That leaves open the question of whether or not BG can get a decent return for Gus in open market this summer.  This team goes sideways for next two years regardless IMO.  What's point in signing Gus so we can win 10 more games next regular season.  Why not get a draft pick or a big sturdy prospect who may be able to help the big club in two years.

    I have thought the same thing and it may happen. Gus may be priced out of the Wild budget. At the same time, i know how hard it is to find good, young goalies and don't want to throw away the chance to have two in 2024-25. The Wall is going to have growing pains in the NHL. They all do.

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    I think a 2 year 2 million for Johansson is fine. We aren't going to be winning a Stanley Cup in the next two seasons (honestly at the beginning of the season I thought we would miss the playoffs or get in at WC2). If he works out he will play well along Boldy and help develop him. If he doesn't, it's not like his signing is throwing away our future or not giving a shot at the Cup.

    I think he earned the deal in his small showing here in Minnesota.

    The only thing I would be concerned about with it is resigning Gus.

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