The Wild's Patience Paid Off For Playoff Matt Boldy

Everything pointed to Matt Boldy being a big-game performer.

The COVID pandemic didn't leave much room for Boldy to shine in high-stakes games at Boston College, but he was a huge part of Team USA winning a Gold Medal at the 2021 World Junior Championship. When the Minnesota Wild missed the playoffs last season, he went to the World Championships and led the tournament in points -- besting NHL stars like Brady Tkachuk, Kevin Fiala, John Tavares, and the late Johnny Gaudreau. 

But Boldy didn't rise to the moment in his 12 biggest NHL games. In his first playoff series, he only scored one goal (zero assists) in six games against the St. Louis Blues, which narrowed the score from 3-1 to 3-2 in Game 5. The following year, none of his three playoff assists felt particularly impactful, either. 

The lack of production was baffling. Boldy is a 6-foot-2 player with solid skating and the hands to weave through traffic. Teams can't move him off the puck when he's on, and he's seemingly capable of anything. What wasn't clicking?

His GM had an answer ready: He wasn't ready to get dirty.

In consecutive offseasons, Bill Guerin told Boldy to take it to the net, to impose his will instead of settling on the perimeter.

"He's got to change certain things in his game," Guerin told the media in May 2023. "It is a different game in the playoffs. It’s just different. ... You look at the goals that are scored, they’re hard goals. There’s not a lot of pretty goals, and you’ve just got to get your nose dirty. For him, that’s something that he’s got to work on."

Sure, there's an extent to which Boldy's third trip to the postseason -- which saw him rack up three goals and an assist during two road games against the Vegas Golden Knights -- is dining out on the pretty goals. Having Kirill Kaprizov serving you the most delicious opportunities helps with that. 

But Boldy is also heeding Guerin's words. Boldy has 10 unblocked shot attempts through two games, and all but two are from within 30 feet of the net. He's living in the "home plate" area of the net, where he can find space and make pretty plays in the dirty areas. 

The wait for Boldy to get it together and step up in the playoffs has been frustrating. Minnesota held 2-1 series leads against St. Louis and Dallas, and they lost both, arguably, because they didn't get a performance from Boldy like we've seen during Games 1 and 2 against Vegas.

Minnesota could have taken Game 5 in 2022 against the Blues, with the series tied at two and the Wild up 2-1 after the first period. Boldy stepping on the gas could have gotten them over, instead of letting a Vladimir Tarasenko hat trick doom them.

The Wild lost Game 4 by a single goal the following year, preventing them from a dominating 3-1 series lead. In those two decisive games, though, Boldy had one assist and three shots, two of them from way out on the perimeter.

It might have been easy to decide that Boldy didn't have that playoff juice. When you have to tell a player -- even a young player -- in multiple postseasons to get to the net, you have to wonder if the message will ever sink in. Is this a problem for a team whose goal is to win a Stanley Cup in the next three years? Should they trade him for a player with a proven playoff track record?

If Guerin and the Wild entertained these thoughts, we didn't hear about it. They stuck with their guy and believed in Boldy's talent. Now they're rewarded with a de facto home ice advantage heading back to St. Paul. Next to Kaprizov, Boldy looks unstoppable and plays like a series MVP. 

Why the change now? Since Boldy's last playoff experience, he's been able to get tested in some high-stakes games. The World Championship might not have the cache of the World Juniors, but at the same time, it was an audition for making Team USA at the 4 Nations Faceoff and the 2026 Winter Olympics. On that stage, having to put himself on Guerin's map, Boldy shone.

That also happened in the 4 Nations Faceoff. He played down the lineup for Team USA, but when it was time for the Gold Medal Game against Canada, Boldy had earned Mike Sullivan's trust so much that he led all forwards in ice time. He finished the tournament tied for ninth place (alongside Brady and Matthew Tkachuk, Auston Matthews, Mitch Marner, Patrik Laine, Erik Karlsson, and Lucas Raymond) with three points in four games.

Not everyone needs a ton of reps before they can shine in the postseason. Wild fans will remember Nathan MacKinnon dazzling against Minnesota in his first playoff series (two goals, 10 points in seven games), to name one example. That tends to be the exception, and not the rule. Even Kaprizov had difficulty finding any offensive spark in his first playoff series, scoring just two goals and three points in seven games against Vegas in 2021.

These big-game reps come with a level of experience and maturity that is hard to duplicate. It can take a bit to figure out playoff hockey, which seems to have been the case for Boldy. Waiting for that breakout moment can be difficult. Still, after the last two games, it's hard to say that Boldy's play wasn't worth the short-term pain.

With the youth movement finally arriving in Minnesota, we'll see more Boldys: Players that might need a playoff run or two to fully bake into playoff performers. We're seeing Marco Rossi and Zeev Buium get their first tastes of playoff action now.

In the next two years, we'll see Danila Yurov, Liam Öhgren, David Jiricek, and Jesper Wallstedt needing to figure things out. With Kaprizov, Joel Eriksson Ek, and now Boldy, all in their primes, it might be difficult to wait things out. But as Boldy is showing now, keeping that patience and letting players get tested in high-stakes games can lead to big-time rewards down the road.