By Tom Schreier -
Mats Zuccarello regrets that the Minnesota Wild didn’t get off to a better start in their 5-1 loss to the Colorado Avalanche on Sunday.
“We showed them a little too much respect, I think,” Zuccarello said. “A good team like that, you gotta be on the front foot. But you gotta give them credit. It’s simple. They were a better team than us today. We didn’t have our best, and then you don’t win games like this.”
Minnesota shouldn’t beat itself up too much about losing to the Avalanche. The Avs are still the better team – not just on Sunday, but in general. Colorado’s 59 points lead the NHL. They score 4.03 points per game and have a +61 point differential. MoneyPuck gives them a 19.3% chance to reach the Stanley Cup Final and a 10.3% chance to win it, higher than any other team in the league.
The Wild might be tempted to highlight its 3-2 shootout win over the Avs in late November as evidence that they can hang with the league’s best team. That was before the Quinn Hughes trade that changed everything. Minnesota went from a .500 team that couldn’t score three goals per night to winning four straight by a combined score of 21-6. That’s 5.25 goals per game for those keeping score at home.
Still, the win in November feels more like an anomaly. Last night’s game better represents how the Wild would fare in a seven-game series. Colorado looked better on special teams, which was Minnesota’s downfall last year. The Avs also looked more skilled than the Wild, even after they acquired Hughes.
Sunday’s game should be a wake-up call for the post-Hughes Wild. Minnesota may be able to smoke mediocre Eastern Conference teams and the Edmonton Oilers, whose goaltenders have combined for an .881 save percentage this year. Still, as currently constructed, they’d lose to the Avalanche if they met in the playoffs.
According to MoneyPuck’s “deserve to win o-meter,” the Avalanche win Sunday’s game 56.5% of the time. There is still a chasm between the Wild and the Avs. Vegas has Colorado’s Stanley Cup odds at +350, meaning you can bet $100 on them and get $350 if they win it all. The oddsmakers have Minnesota at +2500, the ninth-best odds in the league.
Minnesota’s 49 points lead every division other than the Central. Still, they have a difficult path through the playoffs. The Wild meaningfully improved after adding Hughes. Still, the Avs are a meaningfully better team.
By trading for Quinn Hughes, they’ve firmly moved out of the Wild Card bubble. However, they will likely play the Dallas Stars, who have +1100 odds of winning the Cup in the first round. MoneyPuck gives the Wild a 54.2% chance of advancing out of the first round for the first time since 2014-15. Meanwhile, they only give the Stars a 46.2% chance of reaching the second round.
Still, MoneyPuck predicts the Avs have a 62.4% chance of advancing past the first round, meaning the Wild will likely have to beat them in a series to reach the Western Conference Finals for the second time in franchise history.
There, they would likely face the Vegas Golden Knights, who MoneyPuck gives a 16.4% chance of reaching the finals, and an 8.6% of winning it all. Both are higher marks than the Wild. The oddsmakers have the Golden Knights at +900 to win the Cup, behind only Colorado and the Carolina Hurricanes and Tampa Bay Lightning (both +750).
Minnesota’s odds of winning the Cup increased from +4500 to +2800 after the Quinn Hughes trade. However, adding Hughes raised the Wild’s floor more than it increased their odds of reaching the Cup, according to The Athletic.
“The impact on Minnesota’s Stanley Cup odds was a lot smaller than expected,” Dom Luszczyszyn wrote for The Athletic. Technically, Minnesota’s odds doubled, but it was only from 1 percent to 2 percent.”
Luszczyszyn blames the NHL’s playoff structure, which promotes division rivalries by pitting teams from the same division against one another, for creating a difficult pathway for the Wild.
“Things would be tight enough against the Dallas Stars, but the Colorado Avalanche look like an absolute behemoth, likely to give any team a hard time,” he added. “Having to get through that gauntlet limits just how much Hughes’ impact affects the team’s Cup odds.”
The downside to the playoff structure is that the Wild may have added Hughes, only to lose in the first round again. The upside is that everyone will learn whether Minnesota is ready to contend immediately. If Hughes doesn’t believe they can, they might want to flip him in the offseason to recover assets.
The playoffs will be a moment of truth. The Wild only has Hughes under contract for one more year, and they must convince Hughes to stay. Otherwise, they traded Zeev Buium, Marco Rossi, and Liam Öhgren for a 54% chance of advancing past the first round and a season with him on an expiring contract.
Trading for Hughes took meatballs, but it’s what Minnesota had to do to escape the mushy middle. If Bill Guerin adds a scoring forward and potentially another center, the Wild may be contenders throughout Kirill Kaprizov’s prime. However, if they allow Hughes to leave them empty-handed, Kaprizov will waste his best years on a mediocre team.
Such are the stakes after a blockbuster trade. Adding Quinn Hughes changed a lot of things for the Wild, but the Avs still stand in their way. Call Guerin many things, but give him this: He’s not afraid to gamble. Now, we’ll have to wait and see if he has any regrets.
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