By Brendan Johnson -
Watching the Dallas Stars face off against the Vegas Golden Knights in the playoffs has brought back one of my favorite memories.
I will always remember that memory fondly, and the Minnesota Wild were a part of it. At 10:00 a.m., my buddy Lucas Leifermann called me and told me he had tickets to the Wild game that night. The Wild were playing the Stars the first time Dallas was coming back to Minnesota, but I had to work at Hy-Vee.
I knew my mom and my sister were going to the game. My mom got tickets, but they could only get one other ticket. My sister loves Mike Modano, so of course, the girls went. My brother and I didn't get to go. But I had a buddy that had my back, so I called Hy-Vee, and I said, “Hey, ‘I can't come to work today,’ and they said, ‘Well, you're going to get fired.’”
I was 17 at the time and said, “Okay, later. I'm not coming in. I'm going to the hockey game. Sorry, Hy-Vee.”
I bought separate tickets from my mom and sister. However, fate intervened, and I spent that day with my family. Of 18,000 seats, Lucas and I sat behind my sister and mother. We watched as the Wild crushed Dallas 6-donut. In my family, growing up playing hockey was life. My sister and mother were bigger fans than me and my brother, who played. Without them, we could never have been successful.
I only bring up that event because I will always be a fan of the Dallas Stars. They remain the North Stars in my heart. Furthermore, I see some similarities in Dallas that resemble things going on with the Wild. I also see some things that the Wild need to do to be as competitive as the Stars have been recently.
The Stars are contenders almost every year. They’ve won three conference championships in the early 2000s. Jake Ottenger is solid and resembles a lot of what I see in Jesper Wallstedt. However, Wallstedt is going to be better in the long run. He's had a few questionable years, but our job is to question these guys. I see them play the position similarly. They are confident and are in an elite class.
Minnesota and Dallas are all in. Whether it's management or the players, the Wild and Stars didn't sign long contracts if they're not in it for the long term. That's what I like about what Bill Guerin has going on. He has a core group of guys who can put the puck in the net and be responsible defensively.
They can also be leaders for the young core, teaching them how to be pros. Ryan Hartman and Mats Zuccarello aren’t going to ask for a trade next season; they are in it for the long term. Minnesota’s players and management are committed to them, creating a core group of guys who can show the young players how to be pros.
The Wild have also shown potential free agents that they can make Minnesota their home professionally and with family in mind. The Twin Cities can be a place where their wives and children can comfortably call home. We occasionally forget about the people in the players’ lives who don’t perform on the ice. If you have a close family member going through a difficult time, do you always perform 100% at your job? Nobody can without taking a hit in another area of your professional life on some level.
The Wild have a young core that they can build upon. They have Matt Boldy, Marco Rossi, Kirill Kaprizov, and the young Russians currently getting used to the U.S. Walstedt is the future in the net. Minnesota has a nice group of young defensemen who are developing. They’re not quite NHL-ready, but they are progressing.
Next season, the Wild will have some money for free agency, especially if the cap goes up $4 or 5 million. Minnesota can use that for a couple of solid players. To take the next step, the Wild must get some players in there to compete. The Stars and Wild are different franchises with identical roots. I will always be a Dallas Stars fan as my 1b, partially because Dallas built its team like Minnesota should.
Look at how many front offices build their teams. Not too often do management and players' outlooks towards the future line up. There are going to be bumps and hiccups down that road. Remember that the night is always darker before dawn. The Wild have a cohesive group looking at the same situation, preparing themselves mentally and physically to produce the best hockey team.
The Wild have been handicapped the last couple of seasons with the Ryan Suter and Zach Parise buyouts, which shows absolute dedication to this team. Guerin had to fill roster spots with almost no money, so it would have been tough to produce winning seasons, but he did. The Wild were a winning team until this season, which is challenging to create in their cap environment.
Albert Einstein said that if you haven't failed at anything, you never tried to do anything difficult. Failure provides new opportunities to succeed through adversity. I would bet that one out of three general managers in the league could have produced winning teams with that financial burden that the Wild endured. The darkness is almost past us.
With the cap restraints ending after this season, plus possibly a $4 to 5 million cap rise, we're talking potentially up to three superstars. It’s the kind of money we can spend adding perhaps even 80 goals to the current roster. It’s not out of the realm to get 80 goals out of three highly skilled players or even mid-level.
If you add three superstars to this team right now, the Wild are a top-four seed every year. If Minnesota adds a goalie or goalies that can keep their goals against average around 2.50 to 2.80, they’d have a damn successful hockey team. A team with a hot goaltender at the right time can be an 8-seed and walk out of June carrying the Stanley Cup.
I am going to make my first prophecy. In the first two to three years of Wallstedt coming of age, we will see him have a Jean-Sébastien Giguere-like playoff run and either get us to the finals or win the whole thing.
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