By Tony Abbott -
Every year, when the Stanley Cup is awarded, the hockey world looks at the team that just won and asks, How do we do that thing?
For the second year in a row, teams will try to copy the Florida Panthers' formula, and for the first time in a row, the Minnesota Wild will have some flexibility to keep up with the Seth Joneses.
The theme of this Panthers run to the Cup is that they're 1) incredibly talented and 2) very willing to play dirty playoff hockey. It makes sense, then, that the prescriptions to follow in Florida's footsteps amount to swing for elite talent when you can and get big players that can withstand playoff hockey.
Maybe those are the right takeaways in a vacuum, but neither seems to be particularly actionable. The only elite player on the market as of now appears to be Jason Robertson... and the Dallas Stars aren't going to trade him in-division. The Wild have been trying for a long time to move Marco Rossi for a bigger, "playoff-type" center, but to no avail.
Short of waiting until the trade deadline or next summer to see what shakes loose, what can the Wild do to turn their team into one built to go toe-to-toe against the Panthers next year?
Here are three lessons the Wild should absorb for this offseason.
You Can Go Cheap On Defense...
At the top of the Wild's defensive depth chart, they didn't look radically different from the Panthers. Their top three blueliners, Brock Faber, Jared Spurgeon, and Jonas Brodin, combined for a cap hit that goes a hair above $22 million, while Florida's top trio (Aaron Ekblad, Jones, Gustav Forsling) all combined for a $20.4 million AAV. Not a big gap, it seems.
Starting next year, there will be a bigger gap between the two teams' depth. Jake Middleton will start making $4.35 million against the cap, which is much more than Florida pays their depth defensemen. Niko Mikkola ($2.5M), Wild Legend Dmitry Kulikov ($1.15M), and Nate Schmidt ($800K) all combined for a 4.45M cap hit that just barely surpasses what Middleton's about to make.
That's nothing against Middleton, necessarily, but the Wild are paying him like a difference-making top-four player when he's fairly replaceable. Though, with a full no-move clause and a full four years ahead of them, that's not a bell Bill Guerin and company can un-ring.
But... how confident are they in up-and-comers Zeev Buium and David Jiříček? Both players are on their entry-level contracts heading into next year, and if the Wild thinks either (or both) can grab a top-four spot, they can try to learn that Florida lesson.
Spurgeon and Brodin are solid contributors who nonetheless present an opportunity to go cheap on defense next season. Spurgeon has some say over whether he stays or leaves, with a 10-team no-trade clause, but Brodin has no trade protection on his contract. The Panthers are planning to say goodbye to Ekblad, one of their big three high-cap defensemen. Maybe it's time for the Wild to do the same?
...If You Invest In the Power Play
To what end, though? What do you spend that cap on, if you're Minnesota? It's really simple: Power play, power play, power play.
It's not just about having a strong top unit, either. The Wild have spent the last two years loading up their top power play with Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy, and Joel Eriksson Ek, and playing them as much as possible to patch up their scoring depth.
That's how you gotta do it when the league forces a team to be $15 million under the cap. However, that's not the case anymore, and there is a huge power play gap between Minnesota and Florida.
The Panthers had four players in the regular season (Sam Reinhart, Matthew Tkachuk, Sasha Barkov, Sam Bennett) who would have tied or exceeded the seven power play goals that Wild-leader Rossi had. That's their top-unit forwards. Their second-unit forwards included Carter Verhaeghe (5 PPG), Evan Rodrigues (4), Mackie Samoskevich (4), and Anton Lundell (2). Oh, and they picked up Brad Marchand (5 PPG with the Boston Bruins) at the trade deadline.
Thanks to major injuries to Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek, and Mats Zuccarello, the Wild's second-unit forwards got more playing time to score by default. But Freddy Gaudreau, Ryan Hartman, Vinnie Hinostroza, and Marcus Johansson aren't what Minnesota can field on their second unit. It's not Cup-caliber.
Upgrading the power play would likely take a combination of landing a scoring winger (Marchand, Brock Boeser, Nikolaj Ehlers, Andrei Kuzmenko, to name a few free agents) and graduating prospects like Danila Yurov and Liam Öhgren to those roles. Buium's arrival to displace Faber and/or Spurgeon as the second-unit QB may also help.
Whatever is on the table, the Wild must address the gap.
You Can Punch Above Your Weight
It's no secret that Minnesota is looking to upgrade its roster size. Minnesota averaged 196 pounds as the fifth-lightest team in the NHL. Their first-round matchup was against the Vegas Golden Knights, the fifth-heaviest squad in the league. We can point to moments where Vegas' extra nine pounds per person made a difference, such as when Tomas Hertl "set a screen" by tackling Hartman in Game 4 and scored a goal off his butt.
But the big, bad, bullying Panthers? They were just 24th in the NHL in average weight (198 lbs). Maybe that wasn't a significant disadvantage in Round 1 against the Tampa Bay Lightning (199 lbs, 22nd) or the Carolina Hurricanes in the Conference Finals (200 lbs, 21st). But they were out-muscled in the Cup Finals against the Edmonton Oilers (201 lbs, 12th) and were at an even greater disadvantage against the Toronto Maple Leafs (208 lbs, 1st) than the Wild were against Vegas.
At the end of the day, though, who set the tone? It was Florida, playing harder and meaner than any of the bigger, more imposing teams they faced. If you want to argue that there's something the Panthers do that Minnesota doesn't -- well, that thesis has pretty much proven itself on the ice. But that piece doesn't seem to be measured on a height and weight chart.
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