By Tom Schreier -
The Minnesota Wild were feeling good about themselves as they rolled into Ottawa. They had shut out the Montreal Canadiens, 4-0, giving Marc-André Fleury a heartwarming victory in his final homecoming. The Wild were a league-best 20-5-3 on the road and about to face the 28-20-4 Ottawa Senators, who haven’t made the playoffs since the 2016-17 season.
“We’re just rolling right now,” said Marcus Foligno, “and it’s fun to see.”
John Hynes had called them out after the former Arizona Coyotes clubbed them 4-0 at home, and they didn’t respond when Rasmus Andersson punched Fleury in the Calgary Flames’ 5-4 win in St. Paul. The Utah Hockey Club and Calgary are non-playoff teams, but the Wild are 11-12-1 at the Xcel Energy Center’s unfriendly confines.
They had meaningful conversations on the road, which drove winning in Chicago, Toronto, and Montreal.
“A few things were said,” offered Filip Gustavsson. “We had a meeting before (and after) the Calgary game, and we said some things. … We take it to heart when we get called out, and we just went back into the Chicago game to show the coaching staff that we’re willing to do it.”
However, the Wild were short on words after losing 6-0 in Ottawa.
“It’s unacceptable start to finish,” said Brock Faber. “We’re better than that. We have more pride than that.”
“Embarrassing,” added Mats Zuccarello. “Outworked. Outskilled. Terrible.”
“I don’t want to really comment on it right now,” Hynes said when a reporter asked how they move past the game.
The 2024-25 Wild are a big tree that falls hard.
They only suffered one regulation loss in their first 11 games, then the Los Angeles Kings beat them 5-1. The Kings also beat them 4-1 on the road.
Minnesota has played last year’s Stanley Cup finalists. The Florida Panthers beat them 6-1, and the Edmonton Oilers won one of their matchups 7-1.
The Wild’s Central Division opponents also have blown them out. The Winnipeg Jets have beaten them 4-1 and 5-0. The Colorado Avalanche beat them 6-1 after Minnesota had won six of seven games. The Wild also gift-wrapped the Nashville Predators a 6-2 victory on January 18.
As surprising as Minnesota’s loss in Ottawa was on Saturday, it wasn’t unprecedented. Forty-eight hours after the shorthanded Wild beat the Dallas Stars 3-2 in overtime, the Senators beat them 3-1. Ottawa has improved this year, but they’re still a middle-of-the-pack Eastern Conference team.
Injuries have been a factor in Minnesota’s inconsistency this season. Still, they alone aren’t the reason the Wild have swayed in the wind and occasionally topple. Kirill Kaprizov and Jared Spurgeon were healthy for the 4-0 loss to Utah.
The Wild are a tree with lush leaves, a flimsy trunk, and no roots.
From the forest canopy, we see the fall colors. Kaprizov, Brock Faber, Marco Rossi, Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, Jonas Brodin, and Jared Spurgeon are a strong core. Occasionally, they’ve been missing some leaves this year. Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek, Brodin, and Spurgeon have periodically been out with injuries. Still, the tree looks healthy at the top.
However, the trunk consists of older, lumbering players. Bill Guerin was a 6-foot-2, 220-pound physical forward who played better as he aged. He has built the Wild in his image, complementing his stars with large players on the wrong side of 30. As a result, the trunk is heavy and rotting.
Many of the veterans he signed have regressed. On Saturday, the officials assessed Ryan Hartman with a match penalty, and he’s due for a lengthy suspension. He’s in the first year of a three-year, $12 million extension the Wild signed him to last offseason.
“We’ll see what the league has to do about that,” Foligno said in response. “There’s going to be bigger battles in the playoffs, so I don’t know if that’s too serious.”
If I’m reading that right, Foligno isn’t sure how the league will punish Hartman. However, he feels there will be “bigger battles in the playoffs,” either meaning games against better teams or more violent actions. If it’s the latter, that’s concerning coming from a 33-year-old player on a four-year extension whose reckless play hurt the Wild the last time they were in the postseason.
Minnesota’s trunk may be fraying, but the roots may be more concerning. Rossi has become a No. 1 center despite the Wild’s odd handling of his development. They traded for David Jiříček in December, and he played well in late January. However, he’s spent most of his time in Des Moines. Most concerningly, Jesper Wallstedt has a 0.871 save percentage on an Iowa Wild team that has won 36% of its games.
The question with the Wild shouldn’t be how they fell from competing with Winnipeg for the Central Division title on Thanksgiving to hovering near a negative point differential after getting blown out so many times. Instead, it should be why they haven’t built a better core around a team with star power.
Minnesota’s occasional falls shouldn’t be a surprise. They’re inevitable.
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