Can the Wild's Top Line Play "Small Ball"?

At about this time last year, Dean Evason was probably finalizing his Opening Night lineup in the lead-up to training camp. The Minnesota Wild coach spoke to The Athletic's Michael Russo on September 15, 2022, where he spelled out the lineup he started the season with. Forget writing stuff down in pen. Evason might have carved his lines somewhere in the concrete of the Xcel Energy Center.

With the Wild going back, Jack, and doing it again with a nearly identical roster to the one they ended the season with, it'll be a surprise to see an Opening Night lineup that deviates radically from last year's playoffs. Yes, the Wild lost Matt Dumba, a key contributor, but most other changes were around the margins, with Pat Maroon being the only newcomer. 

This is all to say: Don't be shocked if Opening Night doesn't give us any new configurations for the lineup. Evason isn't going to touch the combination of Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Marcus Johansson. In fairness, he probably shouldn't. Nor are we likely to see "Dolla Bill" Kirill Kaprizov with any winger besides Mats Zuccarello, or a center other than Ryan Hartman.

Unfortunately, that last part would mean that the State of Hockey will have to wait longer to see 2020 first-rounder Marco Rossi assume a top-line spot. That might suit some just fine, having given up on Rossi after an alarmingly quiet 19 games last season, where he put up no goals and a lone assist.

Those numbers can change, of course. However, not having Rossi with Kaprizov and Zuccarello might be desirable for fans for a number he can't change: 69.

In most cases, the internet would simply say "Nice," and move on. But we're describing the number of inches the 5-foot-9 rookie stands at, which is a bit more complicated. The NHL is opening their minds to smaller players. Or rather, the small players are breaking barriers. The most recent Stanley Cup Playoff MVP was, of course, 5-foot-9 Jonathan Marchessault. 

But size still is a sticking point to some, which would include the Wild. They sacrificed targeting raw skill to get big centers Charlie Stramel and Rasmus Kumpulainen at this most recent draft to address their organizational lack of beefy dudes. And while a Kaprizov-Rossi-Zuccarello line can be a lot of things, "Beefy" will never be one of them.

Kaprizov and Rossi stand at 5-foot-9, with Zuccarello clocking in at 5-foot-8. That's gonna be a small line. But in basketball, we see "Small Ball" employed as a viable strategy. NBA teams use a size disadvantage against opponents by having smaller, quicker players wear down bulkier, less mobile teams. Do we see this in hockey? Can a "Small Ball" line work in the NHL?

Let's look to the last five years to see if we have any examples of successful lines (minimum 400 minutes in a season) where everyone was 5-foot-11 or below.

Turns out, there are only three such successful combinations. It might not surprise any Wild fan who has spent the past decade banging the table for more size that Minnesota had one such trio.

That forward unit was made of Zach Parise (5-foot-11), Mikael Granlund (5-foot-10), and Jason Pominville (5-foot-11). Nowadays, that line isn't remembered. Granlund showed during his career that he was much better suited to the wing, and his individual statistics didn't take off until after he moved off this line.

Because of this main takeaway, we forget just how good this line was in its day. Granlund might not have been the real deal at center, but he was good enough to facilitate Parise and Pominville. The two wingers were firing on all cylinders and from the 2013-14 to 2015-16 seasons, the trio out-scored opponents by a 48-25 margin at 5-on-5. That's 65.9% of the goal share, and it was largely backed up by a stellar 59.0% expected goals for percentage. 

They even did the impossible: Show up in the playoffs while wearing a Wild uniform. This trio out-scored opponents 12-8 in the postseason at 5-on-5 while controlling 61.0% of the expected goals share. The Parise-Granlund-Pominville line didn't get shut down in the Stanley Cup playoffs, where big teams are supposed to thrive. It was the rest of the team that let Minnesota down.

The fact is that this was the Wild's most dangerous line for several years, and their ability to dictate the scoring was matched by only the NHL's most elite units. Small or not, they were dominant, at least until age and injuries started catching up to Pominville and Parise.

The next tiny line we'll look at belongs to the Tampa Bay Lightning, who iced Brayden Point (5-foot-11), Tyler Johnson (5-foot-8), and Nikita Kucherov (5-foot-11) on the same unit 554 minutes during the 2018-19 season. That trio enjoyed plenty of success, out-scoring opponents by a 35-24 margin (59.3% of the goals) at 5-on-5. While their underlying numbers weren't quite as dominant, a 54.2% expected goal advantage meant that more often than not, they were playing in their opponents' side of the ice.

However brief this forward unit lasted, it was doubtlessly successful. But if you're looking for a line with more staying power, look no further than Jake Guentzel (5-foot-11), Sidney Crosby (5-foot-11), and Bryan Rust (5-foot-11).

The trio of pint-sized Penguins has spent the better part of the last half-decade or so huddled in the same igloo, so to speak. With almost 2,400 5-on-5 minutes together since the 2017-18 season, this is one of the most enduring line combinations in the NHL. 

Those 2,400 minutes were pretty close to as many 5-on-5 minutes as entire teams got during the COVID-shortened 2020-21 season. That's a gigantic sample size. During that time, they've out-scored opponents 120 to 84, which is a massive 58.8% share. If we pretended the Crosby-Guentzel-Rust line was a team in that 2020-21 season, their Goals For% at 5-on-5 would've finished second in the league, behind only the Colorado Avalanche.

Hell, despite having 300 or more fewer minutes than those teams on average, their 120 goals would have been good for seventh (!!!) in the entire NHL that year. Their expected goal share is lower, but still quite a respectable 53.6% figure, or the equivalent of a team sitting between fifth and 10th-place in the league most years.

That's a lot of dominance from a trio of short kings, right there.

Now, for every successful line, there's got to be a bad counterpoint. Except in this case. We can't find any lines other than those three who didn't have at least one six-footer on it in the last decade. Not that played over 400 minutes in a single season.

It's hard to tell whether this is survivor bias (that is, smaller lines not working out well enough to stick together for the most part) or coaching bias (coaches being reluctant to use a line that doesn't have at least one average-sized player) or a combination of both. After all, two of these lines that had massive success had an elite player on it (Crosby, Kucherov). Even the Wild's small line had Parise, who was only a step below those players at his peak.

The thing is, if an elite player is necessary for a small line to succeed, the Wild have that already in Kaprizov. He isn't a one-way player, either, and Rossi should join him in providing two-way value. If Rossi can hold up his end of the bargain offensively, this isn't a line that should get steamrolled by bigger teams.

Besides, the Wild are already going to ice a big, dominant line with the Boldy-Eriksson Ek combination. Maybe that should provide enough beef so that the little guys can get a chance, too.