By Justin Wiggins -
If the Minnesota Wild were a soap opera, they’d take home all the daytime Emmy Awards.
From the jump, this season has been full of drama. Bad starts, mounting injuries, winning streaks, the losing streak, coach firings, internal investigations, and once-heralded prospects getting traded. The storylines haven’t stopped for a team trending closer to the basement of irrelevancy rather than a charge up the standings.
This week has been no different. The Wild have found themselves at the forefront of headlines in the hockey world. In case you missed it, Minnesota entered last weekend facing off in a home-and-home series against the Winnipeg Jets, one of their geographically closest rivals, with a chance to tighten the gap in the Central Division standings.
That didn’t happen. The Wild lost both games, and to make matters worse, they had a few critical injuries. Their star, Kirill Kaprizov, was the biggest loss after he received a few questionable cross-checks on Saturday. Minnesota looked to return the favor on Sunday, but how gritty winger Ryan Hartman responded has been highly scrutinized this week.
There’s no need to go into more detail because nearly everyone here has seen the play, heard the press conferences, and most likely formed their own opinions. If not, you can find more on the controversy here, and here, and here, and here, and here. (Can someone say "blown out of proportion?")
But as much as we’d love to continue the debate here, there was a different Ryan Hartman moment from that game in St. Paul on Sunday that nobody is talking about nearly enough. And Hartman’s probably feeling fortunate his antics with Cole Perfetti have stolen the spotlight away from one of the most egregious highlights to come out of that loss on Sunday.
The play happened in the third period, with an extremely depleted Wild lineup playing a very good Jets squad tough all day. They’d grinded their way to a 2-2 tie with just under 13 minutes remaining in the game. Hartman took an ill-advised tripping minor (more on that later), and what followed was an embarrassing level of effort from Hartman, leading to Winnipeg's game-winning goal.
For a player who just signed a contract extension that left many fans questioning Minnesota's rationale for such a deal, Hartman’s effort in that clip gave them a lot of ammo to work with. It’s simply not a play that should come from a guy his coaches and GM have labeled as a “glue guy” on the roster. For all the talk about Hartman’s supposed words and actions to Perfetti on Sunday, the highlight above should be circulating everywhere within the social media circles.
Does this paint Hartman as a lazy player? No. But it’s that play, mixed with his penchant for taking bad penalties and his “toeing the line” type of dirty plays that have gotten him in trouble over the years. All that came together to raise the question: What kind of hockey player is Hartman trying to be, and (perhaps most importantly) what role will he play on this team moving forward?
Make no mistake, Hartman has been an important player for the Wild almost since the moment he arrived. It was a perfect situation for him, a young, underachieving first-round draft pick who just needed a chance to prove his worth. And to his credit, he did.
Even though almost everyone in hockey knew Hartman wasn’t a true No. 1 center, he was that guy for Minnesota. Lacking anything resembling strong depth down the middle, Hartman thrived between Kirill Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello. Most of us overlooked the questionable hits and occasional lack of detail because he was anchoring the top line and scoring goals in bunches, all while on an extremely affordable contract.
But now the Wild are transitioning to the next three to five years when their true contention window begins to open. Not only because the dead cap hits from the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts are nearing their end, but because some of their top center prospects over the years have either just turned pro (Marco Rossi) or will shortly (Danila Yurov, Marat Khusnutdinov).
Over the past few years, many outside Minnesota had discounted the Wild as true contenders because Hartman was their No. 1 center. And they were right. But even before his most recent extension, many Wild fans hoped their plethora of solid draft picks would develop just as the contention window opened. And sliding Hartman down into a middle-six glue guy is a good recipe for a contending team.
The problem is that Hartman needs to start identifying his transition into his new role. The days of him centering the top line are likely over. His goal totals will probably never return to his time next to Kaprizov and Zuccarello. And that’s fine. But with a new contract that pays him $4 million per year, if Hartman isn’t going to score goals at the rate he used to, then those parts of his game we have often overlooked over the years must be cleaned up.
You can’t pay a supposed leader on your team $4 million per season to not score as many goals and hurt your team with his own personal red carpet rolled out between the Wild bench and the penalty box. It's a player profile flirting with the likes of Matt Cooke.
And Hartman surely can’t ever let that sort of blatant lack of effort show up on tape again.
Hartman’s role has probably changed a year earlier than he imagined with Rossi's emergence this year. It’s time for him and the Wild to realize that and start cleaning up the parts of his game we’ve forgiven for too long.
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