By Justin Wiggins -
The NHL tends to be a copycat league. As the Stanley Cup Final wrapped up this week, and the Florida Panthers secured their back-to-back Cup wins, another round of talks began.
NHL fans are considering how their team can make a blockbuster trade to secure a Matthew Tkachuk-type player. They may also wonder which impact veteran can be traded for at next year’s deadline, similar to what Brad Marchand provided the Panthers this spring.
But everyone in Minnesota should be paying attention to the losing team. Not as an attempt to copy, but as a confirmation that what the Wild are conceivably attempting with their blue line next year can work.
Edmonton is a great team anchored by Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl, two of the best players of their generation. The blue line was a different story. However, it’s a defensive unit with a few similarities to what the Wild will roll out next year, giving Minnesota hope as they look to infuse their back end with young and unproven talent.
It’s all but a given that Zeev Buium will be a mainstay next season. And after the haul of picks and prospects Bill Guerin departed from in a trade with Columbus last year, they will likely give David Jiricek a real chance to play consistently.
Both players are supremely gifted offensively. Still, they remain a work in progress in their own zone. After the Wild scratched Buium from the lineup in the middle of their first-round playoff exit to the Las Vegas Golden Knights, John Hynes and the coaching staff prefer two-way effectiveness on the back end.
Next year, they should lighten up on that preference, because Edmonton just showed us it’s possible to make a deep run with volatile players on defense.
John Klingberg, Jake Walman, and Evan Bouchard played large minutes for the Oilers through the playoffs. Wild fans know the story with Klingberg from his short stint in Minnesota a few years ago. He’s a gifted skater and thrives with the puck on his stick. However, his defense can occasionally be a little hairy.
The same goes for Walman and Bouchard. They provided sparks for their teams offensively while sometimes creating head-scratching defensive moments. Still, all three remained in the lineup (outside of a couple of Klingberg scratches), and the Oilers lived with the defensive mistakes as they benefited from their offensive output.
Walman (10 points), Bouchard (23 points), and Klingberg (4 points) had their ups and downs. With the puck, they filled the scoresheet and contributed by helping the Oilers break the puck out of their own zone. It allowed Edmonton's gifted superstars at forward to spend more time in the offensive zone than in their own.
Even if it came with a few defensive gaffes.
Edmonton knew they had gamebreakers on their blue line who could elevate their dominant forward group. If Buium and Jiricek start next season in the Wild lineup, Minnesota will be signaling a philosophical change to that unit.
For the past decade, the Wild have been known for their smooth-skating defensive core. But that skillset has always been limited to a shutdown-style unit. The likes of Jared Spurgeon, Jonas Brodin, and Brock Faber are elite skaters who use that talent to stifle the opposing team’s scoring chances.
Buium and Jiricek lean more heavily towards the styles of Bouchard and Walman in Edmonton than their Wild teammates. With that, the Wild coaching staff must display the same patience the Oilers just displayed.
Buium and Jiricek will create offense, there is no doubt about that.
They'll also make mistakes. Edmonton just proved that those mistakes don’t have to torpedo your season. It will be incumbent upon the Wild to live with the mistakes and stay patient with their young blue-chip prospects on defense. Even when those rough moments appear, they must not overreact and instead stay the course.
Who knows? Maybe they will be rewarded with a long playoff run themselves.
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