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  • How Much Have Injuries Cost the Wild This Season?

    Image courtesy of Matt Blewett-USA Today Sports
    Tony Abbott

    By Tony Abbott -

    The Minnesota Wild were rolling under John Hynes with an 11-3 start that brought them to within two points of a playoff spot. Just as they were about to climb out of their early-season hole, things crashed down around them on Saturday. 

    The Wild were already without Jonas Brodin and Mats Zuccarello, and they just saw captain Jared Spurgeon's return. Then they lost their starting goaltender Filip Gustavsson and superstar Kirill Kaprizov. According to a January 2 report in The Athletic, Gustavsson is week-to-week, and Kaprizov is expected to miss one to two weeks. 

    The plague of injuries befalling Minnesota is staggering. Let's list the team's top eight players in Standings Points Above Replacement (SPAR) from the 2020-21 to 2022-23 seasons. We'll bold everyone who has missed (or is expected to miss) five or more games this year:

    Kirill Kaprizov, 14.5 SPAR
    Jared Spurgeon, 12.0 SPAR
    Joel Eriksson Ek, 10.5 SPAR
    Matt Boldy, 8.2 SPAR
    Mats Zuccarello, 6.7 SPAR
    Marcus Foligno, 6.5 SPAR
    Ryan Hartman, 6.3 SPAR
    Jonas Brodin, 6.1 SPAR

    Folks, is it bad to lose 75% of your most important players?

    Unfortunately, yes, and it's about to get worse. Anytime without Kaprizov will be a blow. Zuccarello is still out, and The Athletic's January 2 update included the tidbit that Brodin hasn't skated in almost a month. After dropping both sides of a back-to-back with the Winnipeg Jets, Minnesota is now four points behind the Arizona Coyotes (40 points) for the final Wild Card spot. They'll need to leap-frog the Seattle Kraken (39), St. Louis Blues (37), and Edmonton Oilers (37) to get into the playoff picture.

    The Wild are back in the hole, but how much is their current situation due to injuries? Whatever the number is now, it's gonna go up with at least three impact players still out of the lineup. Still, we can take stock of how many points the Wild missed out on with so many players missing time this year. Is it the difference between a playoff spot and sitting where they are now?

    To do that, we're gonna have to estimate each player's impact over the games they missed. We'll return to their SPAR for the last three years, then get a per-game figure for each.

    Kaprizov: .071 SPAR/game
    Boldy: 0.064 SPAR/game
    Spurgeon: 0.061 SPAR/game
    Zuccarello: 0.035 SPAR/game
    Hartman: 0.033 SPAR/game
    Brodin: 0.033 SPAR/game

    Now that we have that information, we will multiply these numbers by the games they've missed for a total estimated impact.

    Spurgeon (20 games): 1.22 SPAR lost
    Boldy (7 games): 0.45 SPAR lost
    Brodin (10 games): 0.33 SPAR lost
    Zuccarello (7 games): 0.25 SPAR lost
    Hartman (5 games): 0.17 SPAR lost3
    Kaprizov (1 game): 0.07 SPAR lost
    Total: 2.49 SPAR lost

    All in, we're looking at about 2.5 points in the standings being directly attributable to injury in the team's first 35 games. While a Wild team being healthy at the top of the roster is probably still not in the playoffs, a 1-2 point deficit is much better than what they face now.

    Again, this figures to get worse before it gets better. Each game Kaprizov, Zuccarello, and Brodin sit out adds another 0.131 lost points in the standings to the pile. If everyone hits a January 19 return date, we're talking about another full point in the standings lost.

    Especially since the Wild have no depth for reinforcements. Vinni Lettieri was Minnesota's go-to answer as a forward call-up, but he's been the definition of a replacement-level player at best. And now, even he's hurt. Enter Nic Petan and Jacob Lucchini. Brodin's injury means the Wild are much more likely to play either Dakota Mermis or Daemon Hunt, who've statistically been the two worst players on the team this season. There isn't another Boldy or Marco Rossi walking through the door.

    All this means that Minnesota is a top-heavy team suffering heavy losses to their top players. That's bad, bad news. The good news is the Wild stayed afloat until this weekend, even with losing Spurgeon, Zuccarello, Brodin, and even some games from Hartman in recent weeks. They'll need to put themselves back together and move on, but it will require resolve from the top-level players still standing.

    Can Spurgeon carry the team from the blue line? Will Boldy respond by going on a heater like he did while Kaprizov was injured last season? How much further can super-rookies Rossi and Brock Faber drag the Wild? We're about to find out.

    By Tony Abbott  

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    MrCheatachu

    Wait, in the Dumba reunion article you had Goose at -0.8 SPAR, which means by him being out on LTIR gained us like +0.17 SPAR?

    Am I doing this right?  Or does SPAR not tell the whole story? 

    Like what kind of impact has the line blender, or playing a man down to get an emergency callup impact players?  What kind of impact are we going to see later in the season by having Faber skating 30+ minutes?

    What about our aging guys?  Bogosian, Maroon, a 50 year old Fleury?  What kind of impact are we going to see later this season asking them to play elevated minutes and roles this early in the season?

    What's the scariest part of this season, is that we are in for the same crap next season as there's not much room in cap relief until 25-26 season...but then again, if we're expecting to keep Rossi and Faber a significant chunk of that $14M dead cap that rolls off is going to be spoken for.

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    Tony Abbott
    1 hour ago, MrCheatachu said:

    Wait, in the Dumba reunion article you had Goose at -0.8 SPAR, which means by him being out on LTIR gained us like +0.17 SPAR?

    Am I doing this right?  Or does SPAR not tell the whole story? 

    Like what kind of impact has the line blender, or playing a man down to get an emergency callup impact players?  What kind of impact are we going to see later in the season by having Faber skating 30+ minutes?

    He's improved to 0.0 SPAR, or exactly replacement level. It's been 18 games for him, so it's a fairly small sample and things can fluctuate quickly.

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    Beast

    Throw whatever hypothetical metrics you want out there.  Actual results show they played some of their worst hockey at their healthiest, and some of their best missing Spurgeon, Brodin, Zuccarello, etc.

    SPAR is a nice tool to use predictively. Maybe not so much to analyze the actual results.

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    Justin Hein
    3 hours ago, MrCheatachu said:

    Wait, in the Dumba reunion article you had Goose at -0.8 SPAR, which means by him being out on LTIR gained us like +0.17 SPAR?

    Am I doing this right?  Or does SPAR not tell the whole story? 

    Like what kind of impact has the line blender, or playing a man down to get an emergency callup impact players?  What kind of impact are we going to see later in the season by having Faber skating 30+ minutes?

    When you lose Goligoski, you have to replace him with a player that the organization considers worse. So, while SPAR assumes you're replacing the injured player with somebody off of waivers or in the AHL who's a "replacement level player," the injuries all coming as a bunch compounds the issue. 

    For example, without Spurgeon and Brodin, the bottom pair has zero NHL players on it (by definition). 

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    Justin Hein
    1 hour ago, Beast said:

    Throw whatever hypothetical metrics you want out there.  Actual results show they played some of their worst hockey at their healthiest, and some of their best missing Spurgeon, Brodin, Zuccarello, etc.

    SPAR is a nice tool to use predictively. Maybe not so much to analyze the actual results.

    You can make this point in a small sample all day, but if it doesn't make intuitive sense it's probably not a strong argument. The coaching change is the single variable that has made the largest difference this year (for whatever underlying reasons). 

    SPAR can't account for who's coaching, so that's where you've got to blend analytics with your own brain. I would assume that's why Tony used their 2022-23 SPAR to project what they've lost due to health. 

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    FredJohnson
    30 minutes ago, B1GKappa97 said:

    Lotto pick here we come! 

    Probably for the best for our blue line's long-term viability anyway. 

    And just in time for a draft that DOESN'T have a generational talent at the top. Perfect.

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    B1GKappa97
    1 hour ago, FredJohnson said:

    And just in time for a draft that DOESN'T have a generational talent at the top. Perfect.

    Meh. Wake me up with Connor McDavid wins the Stanley Cup 😛

    A top-10 pick will either get us a top-6 C/W with size (like Cayden Lindstrom!) or a top-4 defenseman with size (like Carter Yakemchuk!)

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    mnfaninnc
    28 minutes ago, B1GKappa97 said:

    A top-10 pick will either get us a top-6 C/W with size (like Cayden Lindstrom!) or a top-4 defenseman with size (like Carter Yakemchuk!)

    I was under the impression that this draft had a lot of defensive depth and defenders with size. I hope Shooter pays attention and selects a large bodied RHS defender with a blistering shot. We could use one of those! 

    In case anyone wants to keep score, Lambos, Peart, O'Rourke, Hunt are all left handed. Spacek and Masters are righties. I believe in Spacek, but both he and Masters are having a tough transition time in the A. 

    Someone in the Parayko class doesn't exist in our prospect class. And, we could use a guy like that.

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    mnfaninnc

    While this is a fun exercise, I don't think it tells the full story. With the injuries, I think we have had plenty of games where we came up empty. Remember, we're playing with a limited deck, so injuries to us is magnified due to the cap restrictions. 

    In other words, we're already down to decent SPAR players for the whole season, this year and next.

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    B1GKappa97
    25 minutes ago, mnfaninnc said:

    I was under the impression that this draft had a lot of defensive depth and defenders with size. I hope Shooter pays attention and selects a large bodied RHS defender with a blistering shot. We could use one of those! 

    It is for sure. In Pronman's initial prospect ranking, he has an even split between Defensemen and Forwards in the top-16 which is pretty rare. 

    And I get our need for a defenseman.. but if Lindstrom is there, well, we also really need a physical/competitive 6'3'' 215lb C/W who is great at finishing plays in the top-6 too. 

    I mean if he panned out as a top-6 Center, possibly even top-line, we could put Ek back down at 3C and have the sort of center depth this team has lacked since ever. 

    Edited by B1GKappa97
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    MacGyver

    Has Guerin surfaced to impart any words of wisdom about how he plans to deal with all the injuries and poor play? Or is he staying below the surface in radio silence?

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    Pewterschmidt
    13 minutes ago, MacGyver said:

    Or is he staying below the surface in radio silence?

    He’s in circle the wagons damage control mode.  And he should stay there and let this dumpster fire season run its course without any more distractions from off ice staff

     I’ll assume he understands that and doesn’t commit any more unforced errors

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    viper3119
    1 hour ago, Secord Sucks said:

    Will any of these injuries give us cap relief moving forward?

    Only long term IR gives cap relief and some emergency cap relief, so not much.

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    mnfaninnc
    23 hours ago, viper3119 said:

    Only long term IR gives cap relief and some emergency cap relief, so not much.

    Which means Brodin's is. If needed, we can probably put Zuccarello on LTIR retroactively to give us a little more.

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    viper3119
    1 hour ago, mnfaninnc said:

    If needed, we can probably put Zuccarello on LTIR retroactively to give us a little more.

    Except he's now skating and will return soon so we would only get the little extra money for maybe a couple games.

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    mnfaninnc
    18 hours ago, viper3119 said:

    Except he's now skating and will return soon so we would only get the little extra money for maybe a couple games.

    If you did it retroactively, wouldn't you get a little more? Mr. Cheatchu?

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