The Wild Are Depending On Bouncebacks To Rescue Their Secondary Scoring

On Tuesday, we got a look inside the Minnesota Wild's mindset post-free agency. The Athletic's Michael Russo sat down with John Hynes to ask, among other things, So what happened to fixing that secondary scoring?

The Wild had long been expected to get a short-term winger to complement their top-six forward group. Whether that was via free agency with someone like David Perron or making a trade for someone like Patrik Laine, putting pucks in the net looked like the priority.

And it looks like it was -- until it wasn't. Here's what Hynes said on how free agency played out:

We needed to get a little bit bigger, a little bit stronger, a little bit faster, more pushback in our lineup. Maybe some guys that can aid in the penalty-killing element. Those were clearly things that needed to get better. We were able to execute that this summer. Would we like a top-six forward, some more secondary scoring? Sometimes those opportunities present themselves in the offseason, sometimes they don’t. But I think the most encouraging thing is that we were at least able to hit on one of the components that we were really looking to get better at.

Reading between the lines a bit: The secondary scoring market didn't work out, so we went after Yakov Trenin to address an area of the team we could upgrade.

It appears true that the secondary scoring market was more than the Wild wanted to, or could (perhaps even should), have paid this offseason.

• Perron signed a two-year $4 million AAV contract with the Ottawa Senators.
• The Buffalo Sabres signed Wild legend Jason Zucker to a one-year, $5 million deal.
• The Edmonton Oilers landed Viktor Arvidsson on a two-year, $4 million AAV contract.
• Vladimir Tarasenko signed for two years at $4.25 million AAV with the Detroit Red Wings. 
• Alex Wennberg went to the San Jose Sharks for two years, $5 million AAV...

And the list goes on.

Not paying an aging scorer for the 2025-26 season makes sense, but now the Wild will have to rely on their aging scorers having bounce-back years to contend. Hynes conceded as much.

"They've got pride. They care. We've addressed it. They've addressed it," said Hynes of underperforming veterans on the team last season. "We're going to continue to work through that and have some conversations with those guys of the importance level of how good their summers are going to be, how we need them."

Hynes declined to enthusiastically hurl anyone under the bus, but every Wild fan knows what's up. Several of these veterans, who will be part of the Wild's future, had down seasons from what Minnesota's brass counted on them to be.

To recap, there's:

• Ryan Hartman: From 34 goals in 2021-22 to 21 goals in 2023-24
• Marcus Foligno: From 23 goals in 2021-22 to 10 goals in 2023-24
• Marcus Johansson: From six goals, 18 points in 20 games in Minnesota in 2022-23 to 11 goals and 30 points in 78 games in 2023-24
• Mats Zuccarello: From 16 5-on-5 goals in 2021-22 to six 5-on-5 goals in 2023-24
• Freddy Gaudreau: From 19 goals in 2022-23 to five goals in 2023-24

Minnesota has all but Johansson signed for the next two seasons, and all have trade protections that make them unmovable. The Wild are stuck here and need these players to return to their former glory.

That's going to be extremely difficult. Not only will all these players be in their 30s by the time the season starts (Happy 30th on September 20 to Hartman, btw), but the seasons the Wild are counting on each to repeat are generally pretty crazy outliers. Forget probable; is it even possible for these players to repeat their peaks?

Let's run down the list, starting with Hartman. That 34-goal season was his first 30-goal season. It was also his first 25-goal season. And it was his first 20-goal season. Before the 2021-22 season, his career-high came as a rookie for the Chicago Blackhawks in 2016-17, with 19 goals and 31 points. He didn't break that mark until his career year.

We don't want to bury Hartman, by the way. You have to give him a lot of credit. He went out in 2021-22 and scored 34 goals and 65 points. That's a fantastic season! So is transforming himself from a player who averaged 13 goals and 31 points per 82 games before his breakout season to one who averaged 22 goals and 51 points per 82 games over his last two seasons. His "down" years still have him as a 20-to-25 goal-scorer and a 50-point player.

What more are you realistically going to get out of him? His 34-goal breakout year took nearly 700 minutes of skating with Kirill Kaprizov and Zuccarello, plus a 14.2 shooting percentage to reach those heights. That's simply the kind of lightning-in-a-bottle that he probably can't reach, even if Hynes force-feeds the Kaprizov-Hartman-Zuccarello connection again.

If we're talking about outliers, Foligno has to stand out as this bunch's most unrepeatable peak performance. Foligno feasted as part of a big, beefy identity line with Joel Eriksson Ek and Jordan Greenway. His 23 goals came on an insane 23.5 shooting percentage... and that was even down from the 27.5% he shot for in the previous season. Insane!

Injuries slowed down Foligno over the last two seasons, and he scored 10 goals and 22 points in 55 games last year. The dirty secret to that is: It was still good production from Foligno. We're talking about a 15-goal, 33-point pace over 82 games, which is identical to his 82-game averages for his first five seasons in a Wild sweater.

Foligno even posted a pretty high 17.9 shooting percentage last season, meaning his numbers weren't even the result of a shooting slump. You probably aren't getting more than 15 goals out of him, unless you force-feed him onto a line with Eriksson Ek and Matt Boldy, or something like that.

We can keep going down the line. Johansson's brilliant 20-game post-trade deadline sample came courtesy of Eriksson Ek, Boldy, and an on-ice shooting percentage of 14% at 5-on-5. Five of Gaudreau's career-high 19 goals in 2022-23 were scored on an empty net, and his 44-point 2021-22 came alongside Kevin Fiala and Boldy. Zuccarello's preparing to enter his age-37 season and failed to crack double-digit 5-on-5 goals in each of his past two seasons.

What can Minnesota realistically count on from this group? Let's look at each player's 82-game averages in a Wild sweater, assume they'll hit that mark and play all 82 games next season, and then compare these goal totals to what Minnesota got from them last season:

Hartman: 21 (+0 from last year)
Foligno: 14 goals (+4)
Johansson: 14 goals (+3)
Gaudreau: 14 goals (+9)
Zuccarello: 21 goals (+9)

In the aggregate, this is probably as optimistic as it gets. Remember, we're assuming no further decline from their Wild averages and that each will play all 82 games. In a close-to-perfect scenario, it'd put Minnesota up 25 goals, bringing it to the fringe of a top-10 goal-scoring team.

Still, that margin for error is pretty tiny. The Wild aren't flipping a coin on whether one player will have a bounce-back. They're flipping five coins. What's the likelihood five 30-plus-year-olds are going to have healthy, productive seasons? Those odds can't be too great, no matter how in shape or cognizant of the expectations they are.

That's not the only place internal improvement can come from, of course. Marco Rossi could continue to take the next step in his sophomore season. Liam Öhgren, Riley Heidt, or Marat Khusnutdinov could make impacts as rookies. A Kaprizov-Eriksson Ek-Boldy top line could get even better. But for now, the Wild are pinning their hopes on their high-priced veterans to pick up the slack. Whether they can or not remains to be seen.