Predicting the rest of the Wild’s season

The Minnesota Wild don’t play until next week so we’re bored. We’re just twiddling our thumbs, watching some other teams play hockey and trying to not overthink how the rest of the season for our favorite hockey team is going to play out.

Will they buy at the trade deadline? Can they score as many goals as they did last season? What young players can step up and prevent this team from sinking down into even further obscurity?

Well, let’s at least calm some of our nerves by thinking just exactly how the rest of the Wild’s regular season is going to pan out.

Going game-by-game, we decided to predict whether the Wild would win or lose the remaining 34 games of the 2022-23 season. This based on pure gut instinct and nothing else — maybe the opponent is just so bad so it’s an easy choice, or we can see how the schedule will play out with not a whole lot of rest days leading up to a certain game. Either way, this is our unscientific way of predicting the rest of the season.

The Wild are currently 27-17-4 and sit third in the Central division, let’s see what their record is after 82 games.

Feb. 6 at Arizona Coyotes: W

Feb. 8 at Dallas Stars: L

Feb. 9 vs. Vegas Golden Knights: W

Feb. 11 vs. New Jersey Devils: W

Feb. 13 vs. Florida Panthers: W

Feb. 15 vs. Colorado Avalanche: L

Feb. 17 vs. Dallas Stars: W

Feb. 19 vs. Nashville Predators: W

Feb. 21 vs. Los Angeles Kings: L

Feb. 23 at Columbus Blue Jackets: W

Feb. 24 at Toronto Maple Leafs: L

Feb. 26 vs. Columbus Blue Jackets: W

Feb. 28 vs. New York Islanders: L

March 2 at Vancouver Canucks: W

March 4 at Calgary Flames: W

March 7 vs. Calgary Flames: L

March 8 at Winnipeg Jets: W

March 11 at San Jose Sharks: W

March 12 at Arizona Coyotes: W

March 15 at St. Louis Blues: L

March 18 vs. Boston Bruins: L

March 19 vs. Washington Capitals: W

March 21 at New Jersey Devils: L

March 23 at Philadelphia Flyers: W

March 25 vs. Chicago Blackhawks: W

March 27 vs. Seattle Kraken: L

March 29 at Colorado Avalanche: W

April 1 at Vegas Golden Knights: L

April 3 vs. Vegas Golden Knights: W

April 6 at Pittsburgh Penguins: W

April 8 vs. St. Louis Blues: L

April 10 at Chicago Blackhawks: W

April 11 vs. Winnipeg Jets: W

April 13 at Nashville Predators: L

For the final 34 games of the season, we’re thinking the Wild win 21 and lose 13 — and plainly, that’s even being a little conservative considering the losses we decided to dish out. If they go ahead and have these results (that are different because we did not take into account overtime losses) the Wild will finish the regular season with a 48-30-4, which adds up to 100 points in the standings, 13 fewer than last year.

And honestly, that kind of sounds right. They still get to compete as one of the best teams in the West, and a tough out in the first round of the playoffs, but aren’t at the same level as they were heading into last postseason.

Maybe this changes with a big acquisition ahead of the NHL trade deadline, or maybe we’re being a little too confident that this team can ride on goaltending and special teams earning them some key points in the standings.

We’ll just have to wait and find out the actual answer together, at the same time.