The Wild Are Recycling Their Top Line... For Now

This is our first training camp with John Hynes, so we don't quite know yet what this process means for him as coach of the Minnesota Wild. Specifically, the lines that he used to open up training camp. Are these lines just a starting point? A way to get his NHLers back on the ice with players they're comfortable with? Or is it a state of intentions, as it was with his predecessor, Dean Evason?

We can only guess, but the early favorite seems to fall under "a mixture of both." However, Minnesota's decision to reunite the Kirill Kaprizov-Ryan Hartman-Mats Zuccarello line of yesteryears looks like a solid plan.

The Athletic's Joe Smith spoke to Hynes and came away with the feeling, "[Hynes'] goal is to make a deeper forward group -- not just relying on a Matt Boldy, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Kaprizov line to dominate."

Sure enough, that was the top line to open camp. Marcus Johansson took over Kaprizov's spot on Boldy and Eriksson Ek's line, and Marco Rossi is centering grinders Marcus Foligno and Yakov Trenin.

Does that make a deeper, more potent middle-six than what we saw last year? The jury's out.

But for now, let's focus on the guys on top because that feels like the most permanent combination in the early going. And you can understand why. Kaprizov, Hartman, and Zuccarello formed a very good line... in 2021-22. It's a spot that helped Hartman score 34 goals... three years ago. They enjoyed incredible chemistry at 5-on-5... when Zuccarello was 34 instead of 37.

No one's denying what this line could do in a Pre-Chappell Roan world. But there's a reason Minnesota didn't finish last season with this line taking a regular shift: They simply didn't get it done last year.

The Wild got outscored by a margin of 7 to 12 when Kaprizov, Hartman, and Zuccarello were on the ice last season. While there was some bad goaltending luck in there, it's also true that the trio was underwater in any 5-on-5 metric you can think of, which means that they were giving up more scoring chances than they got.

Diminishing returns has been the story of the Wild's top line. They undeniably had chemistry when they outscored opponents 48 to 25 in 2021-22. But hockey chemistry isn't exactly the kind of chemistry that great scientists like Antoine Lavoisier, Marie Curie, and Walter White practiced. For an experiment to be considered scientific proof, it must be repeatable. The laws of hockey chemistry are much squishier and much harder to repeat from year to year.

Some connections stay magical over years and even decades. No one can explain what the Sedins had going on. You can even argue that Kaprizov and Zuccarello still have it. But that trio? I'm sorry, but no. In 2022-23, we saw the Wild's lightning-in-a-bottle line just barely outscore the other team in their 250-plus minutes together (12 to 11). Add it up, and that line has been outscored 19 to 23 since their breakout season. 

It's hard to write about this without coming off as picking on Hartman, and that's not something we want to do here. Hartman is a heck of a player who surpassed anyone's expectations for him when he signed in Minnesota. His contract, when not viewed as part of a pattern of expensive veteran signings from last year, is even a solid one. 

But we have to be real; he has limitations. He's an interesting player in this regard, undoubtedly a gritty player, but not a particularly good defensive player. That doesn't matter to some extent because he tends to get more scoring chances than he allows. Even so, he's somewhat of a defensive liability.

It makes for a formula where the Wild live or die based on their top line's PDO. Last year's top line, with Boldy and Eriksson Ek alongside Kaprizov, got such a high share of the chances that they could win games even when scoring was hard to come by or the goaltending was suspect. Over a long enough time, if you're getting around two-thirds of the scoring chances, you'll come out ahead. But things have to go right when you're at 50/50 or less, or you're not making a difference.

That's why the same winger combination of Kaprizov and Zuccarello fared much better with two-way center Marco Rossi down the middle. The group did a decent job controlling scoring chances last season (52.5% of the expected goal share) and was rewarded for that by outscoring opponents 19 to 13.

If Hynes is going to try splitting up his dominant top line from last season, why not put his 23-year-old center of the future in that spot, especially since he gives a much more complete and disciplined game than Hartman?

Look, anything should be able to go in training camp without consequence or over-critique. You want to give Rossi a look as a third-liner? Why not? Do you, at some point, want to try seeing if Kaprizov, Boldy, and Eriksson Ek can run their own lines the same way Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek, and Fiala did in 2021-22? Sure, go for it. Maybe you want to see Riley Heidt or Liam Öhgren get a crack at centering the top line. Get weird with it.

But as an observer, it's hard to understand chasing after some long-stale chemistry that, even when it was working at its peak three years ago, was only ever able to get Minnesota to a Game 6 in the first round. There's plenty of time before the season for Hynes to get creative and ambitious in training camp. Speaking for a fan base that's sick of the same old thing, we hope he gets there.