By Tony Abbott -
It was easy to come away from Monday's 3-1 win over the Los Angeles Kings and think that Matt Boldy was a difference-maker for the Minnesota Wild. The fourth-year winger set up the game-winning goal on the power play by feeding a beautiful cross-ice pass to Mats Zuccarello, who promptly sent it past Darcy Kuemper.
Of course, games are won based on goals, so yes, Boldy did help make the difference last night. But throughout his career, we've been used to seeing Boldy be a difference-maker in many other ways. Now that we're nearly 70 games into the season, it's safe to say that version of him hasn't been on the ice in 2024-25.
You won't see the drop-off in the stat sheet. Historically, Boldy's been good for 25-30 goals and 60-70 points per season, and he's on pace to hit 25 goals and 68 points. Still, entering the year, the hope wasn't that Boldy would duplicate his scoring; it was that he was ready to take The Leap and emerge as a player with 50-goal potential.
Obviously, that didn't happen.
Were we just dealing with unrealistic expectations? Maybe, but under the hood, Boldy looked like someone primed to join the ranks of the top players in the NHL.
During his first three seasons, Boldy's play was worth 14 Standings Points Above Replacement, per Evolving-Hockey. That's a lot to begin with (36th in the NHL over that time), but particularly for someone in his age group. Looking at every player from their ages-20 through -22 seasons since 2007-08, Boldy's SPAR is tied for 26th in the NHL, alongside Auston Matthews and Mitch Marner.
That's absurd company. Matthews put two 60-goal seasons and a Hart Trophy on his resume, while Marner has produced over a point per game in the past seven years. Moreover, Boldy's game was so well-rounded. His offensive impact rated in the top-40 of anyone in his age group, while his defensive impact was in the top-20. Boldy was a two-way monster in the making, with scoring touch, to boot.
Again, Boldy's still getting his numbers, and it says something that even in an underwhelming year, he can still rack up points. But you can see in the eye test that something feels different. He doesn't seem as dominant from shift to shift, and the signature moments -- the ones where he weaves through traffic with impossible puck control -- feel more infrequent.
To confirm, that's not your mind playing tricks on you. Boldy's ability to drive play on both ends of the ice has done a vanishing act, and it reflects itself in his all-around stats. His SPAR for the season is just 0.7. In his first three seasons, he was fourth, fourth, and second on the Wild, respectively. Now? He's 13th on the Wild, sitting between Jake Middleton (0.8 SPAR) and Jon Merrill (0.6 SPAR). As much as folks have buyer's remorse on the Yakov Trenin deal, he's out-SPARred Boldy, delivering the Wild 1.2 points in the standings.
That's not supposed to happen. Moreover, Minnesota can't afford for this to happen. They have the $15 million in dead cap because of the Zach Parise/Ryan Suter buyouts and another $20 million of payroll on injured reserve between Kirill Kaprizov, Jonas Brodin, and Joel Eriksson Ek. They can't also have their return on investment on Boldy's $7 million cap hit be fewer than a point in the standings. Not if they want to hold onto their playoff spot.
It's easy to look at Boldy's season since Kaprizov's initial injury -- a span in which he has scored eight goals and 26 points in 33 games -- and conclude that the former BC Eagle can't be The Guy. While the 2024-25 version of Boldy doesn't look like it, we've seen Boldy carry that torch in Kaprizov's absence before. During the 2022-23 season, Kaprizov missed a month's worth of games, and Boldy responded by going on a tear, scoring 13 goals and 19 points in 13 games.
Minnesota went 7-3-3 during that stretch, largely thanks to Boldy catching fire, and made the playoffs. And remember, Boldy had been having a pretty underwhelming season in terms of scoring, with just 17 goals and 42 points in the 65 games prior.
So, what's different this year? It's hard to say for sure -- maybe it's a blip on the radar, perhaps there's some sort of injury we don't know about, and something else might be happening. But there is an interesting thread to connect between 2022-23, when he struggled offensively, and this year when his all-around game suffered.
During the 2022-23 season, the Wild asked Boldy to carry a line basically on his own for the first half of the season. They'd traded Kevin Fiala and wanted to keep Kaprizov and Mats Zuccarello together. They also wanted to pair Eriksson Ek with Marcus Foligno and Jordan Greenway. Therefore, his linemates became Freddy Gaudreau and a rotating cast of characters, all of whom weren't nearly a difference-maker like Fiala.
Then Minnesota put him with Joel Eriksson Ek and traded for Marcus Johansson, who thrived with the two big, shooting forwards. That coincided with that Kaprizov-less tear Boldy had to end the season.
Last year, the talent around him wasn't a problem. Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek were his two most common linemates, and that trio was dominant. However, with so many injuries, we're seeing Boldy have something similar to his supporting cast from 2022-23. It's not a perfect analogy. His most common linemates are Marco Rossi (43.3% of his 5-on-5 minutes), Zuccarello (35.3%), and Eriksson Ek (33.3%), and those are three talented players. Are they the right match for Boldy, though?
Rossi doesn't seem to have quite the chemistry with Boldy as he shared with Kaprizov. His on-ice goal and expected goal creation numbers are lower with Boldy than without, even as he pulls Boldy's significantly up. Zuccarello's producing well for his age. Still, his 5-on-5 impact isn't quite where it used to be, particularly when Kaprizov's not around. As for Eriksson Ek, he's spent basically the entire season playing hurt, diminishing his offensive ability.
It could be a coincidence that Boldy is struggling now, but we're at least seeing the start of a pattern. Maybe Boldy can't be The Guy... or at least, The Only Guy. We've seen him at his best whenever there's a superstar paired with him to unlock his abilities and see that fade whenever that support disappears.
It feels a bit like Mikko Rantanen struggling with the Carolina Hurricanes: There's a big difference between Nathan MacKinnon and even a good, high-end offensive player like Sebastian Aho. Does that mean Rantanen isn't a great player? No. It doesn't have to mean that for Boldy, either.
But this season might put another layer of urgency onto the Wild to go out and get premium offensive talent in the summer once those buyout hits become much less onerous. This team can't keep being an injury away from collapsing and struggling mightily to produce offense. If Minnesota wants Boldy to emerge as their second star, that's still on the table, but it will have to be with players who can feed off of his high-end offensive game and vice versa.
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