We Need To Talk About The Brocks

If you buy into the hype, it seems like the Minnesota Wild have uncovered the NHL's latest market inefficiency: Dudes from Minnesota named Brock.

It's easy to see why the Wild would be into that. After all, it's working out amazingly with Brock Faber. The hometown kid stepped right into an NHL lineup and has been lights-out as a top defenseman for the Wild, and the front office has made him a long-term cornerstone of the franchise.

The Wild are about six months away from "Christmas Morning," when the worst of the Zach Parise/Ryan Suter buyouts fade off the books, allowing the team to use an influx of cap space to shore up their team. Given their investment in trading for David Jiricek, along with Zeev Buium's imminent arrival and Faber's presence, Minnesota would obviously look to upgrade at forward.

Mikko Rantanen and Mitch Marner are the big fish of the pending UFA crop. However, all signs from insiders point to the Wild pursuing one or both of two dudes from Minnesota named Brock:

Brock Nelson and Brock Boeser.

From The Athletic's Michael Russo in Tuesday's mailbag with Joe Smith: "[Minnesota's] cap space isn’t infinite, but it would allow for a potential Brock Nelson signing and, truly depending on what happens with [Marco] Rossi, maybe even somebody like Brock Boeser."

At first glance, that sounds awesome. Nelson is off to a slower-than-normal start (13 goals, 28 points in 46 games), but the 6-foot-4 center had 107 goals in the three seasons prior, with no year fewer than 34. Boeser put it all together for the Vancouver Canucks last year, notching his first 40-goal season. Who's turning down their nose at 75 goals?

Should it be the Wild?

The answer is, as always, Depends on money and term.

Obviously, either would be a bargain on a sweetheart Eric Staal deal and not so much on a Leon Draisaitl-type contract. That's not a helpful answer, though, so let's attach some hard numbers to it. Using Evolving-Hockey's contract projections (which are based on last year's stats and ages), let's bump up the cap to $92.5 million and see what outputs we get for these players:

Brock Nelson: three years, $7.81 million AAV
Brock Boeser: seven years, $8.68 million AAV

OK. Evolving-Hockey pegs Nelson as a shorter-term option, similar to that of Joe Pavelski (three years, $7M AAV) with the Dallas Stars in 2019, while Boeser is making top-line winger money for a long-term deal.

Are either worth it? Both?

At first glance, Nelson is the player who has the most red flags. Age is the biggest one; he'll turn 34 around Opening Day of the 2025-26 season. And while his status as a 6-foot-4 center would typecast him as a two-way, Joel Eriksson Ek type who can absorb those hard minutes, that's not exactly Nelson's game. Nelson is decidedly a one-way player and a defensive liability at this stage of his career.

So why risk getting older and worse defensively? Especially since his decline in scoring could be a sign that the years are already catching up to him.

Normally, this would be inadvisable, but Nelson provides two things the Wild need more of. The first is his ability to drive offense, which Minnesota can use, regardless of the age that package comes in. Over the past three seasons, the Wild rank 29th in actual and expected goals per hour at 5-on-5. Both numbers are well below the New York Islanders, who most consider a punchless offensive team.

But the other, more surprising attribute is speed. Nelson can move. And for a 6-foot-4, 33-year-old player, Nelson can really move. His bursts above 20 mph rank him among the NHL's best.

When most people talk about the attributes the Wild lack, the people focus on size. Arguably, their greater weakness is their speed. Minnesota has some quick forwards (Kirill Kaprizov comes to mind) but lack high-end speed. Their team speed has improved due to internal improvements (namely, Marco Rossi) and adding Yakov Trenin. Still, adding Nelson's wheels would add another mobile center to the mix, which is always helpful.

And again, there's Nelson's nose for the net. Over the past four seasons, he's tied with Carter Verhaeghe for the 12th-most 5-on-5 goals in the NHL with 77, one more than Kaprizov. From his age-29-to-32 seasons, he ranks among the most efficient goal-scorers in his age group during the Analytics Era.

Most 5-on-5 Goals Per Hour, Ages 29 to 32:

Max Pacioretty (2018-22): 1.20
Alex Ovechkin (2015-19): 1.19
Brad Marchand (2017-21): 1.19
Brock Nelson (2021-25): 1.18
Jeff Skinner (2021-25): 1.18
Rick Nash (2013-17): 1.18

At least among those players, when they're scoring at that level in their early 30s, the bigger risk factor is injury, not decline. Ovechkin is a freak, so no one can count on Nelson bumping his goals per hour figure into the 1.41 range, as Ovi did from ages-33-to-35. But in Marchand's next three seasons, he averaged a still-strong 0.89 goals per hour, and even an injury-plagued Nash scored 1.03 goals per hour when he could play.

It's not going to be risk-free, by any means, but you can do a lot worse in signing 34-year-olds than with a big, fast, scoring center in Nelson.

So, what about Boeser? He seems like an ideal grab in free agency: A 40-goal scorer hitting the market at age 28. If you're going to invest seven years and big dollars into free agency, Boeser is the right age to do that.

However, the Burnsville Brock has some red flags of his own, and his might be even brighter than Nelson's. Much like Nelson, Boeser's defensive value is also in the bottom 10th percentile.

Ironically, Boeser's defense might be more alarming because of his age. In his prime, Nelson was about replacement-level defensively. He didn't necessarily add value but also wasn't a liability. When he got into his early 30s, his defense started dropping off. While it's a problem, it doesn't eat away at his overall value too much.

Minnesota would have Boeser at the tail end of his prime to start with, but once he gets to his early 30s, it's a safe bet that his defensive play will start to slip, and there's nowhere to fall from where he is except to bottom-of-the-barrel. 

Boeser also lacks the speed element that Nelson would bring; he's one of the slowest top-six forwards in the NHL. That's also not something that improves as a player transitions from their prime to their early 30s.

Speed is far from the end-all, be-all for a forward, but lacking it does come with inherent limitations. Boeser is all but eliminated as a puck-carrying option for his line, and when a player isn't able to offer much in the defensive or neutral zones, they need a superpower to make it work. Credit to Boeser, his shot is a superpower that makes his overall game work. It's one of the hardest and most accurate in the NHL. 

But when you think of the hardest declines in Wild history, two names come to mind: Dany Heatley and Thomas Vanek, who cratered in value in their early 30s. What did they have in common? Heatley and Vanek were slow skaters and weak defenders who relied on elite shots.

It was game over for Heatley once he lost the zip on his shot. Vanek's hands still made him a viable offensive player in Minnesota. However, his defense dropped off from "bad" to "worst in the league" territory, making him unfit for anything but power play specialist duties late in his career. Boeser might be able to break out of that trend, but 40-goal-scorer or not, that feels like a bad bet to risk a seven-year deal on.

That's especially true when you factor in positional value. Nelson's a natural center, but his speed and goal-scoring should translate to the wing if the need ever arose. With Eriksson Ek and Rossi in-house and prospects like Danila Yurov, Riley Heidt, and Charlie Stramel on the way, a Wild team with Nelson would have the flexibility to put their three best centers in the middle while still having spots for the remaining players on the wing.

Boeser would hamper that kind of flexibility. If Yurov or Heidt can't hold down the pivot, or if Stramel can't make an NHL top-nine, the move would be to shift them to the wing. But if Boeser, Kaprizov, and Matt Boldy are all high-scoring, big-money wingers, that leaves just one top-six winger position available. Should the Wild want to pay top-dollar for a free-agent winger if it means shutting Yurov, Heidt, or Liam Öhgren of an opportunity to make an impact?

Ultimately, neither player comes without major upside and risk. The best move could be to keep building internally or target players from other organizations, similar to how the Wild landed David Jiricek.

It'd also maybe be nice for the Wild to be able to realistically be able to attract a free agent that wasn't born within a six-hour drive of Minnesota. But as counterintuitive as it may sound to go with an older player in free agency, if the Wild end up having to choose between the two Brocks, Nelson seems like the player that makes more sense, and Boeser may be just a bit too risky for the Wild to pursue at all.