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  • What Would It Mean For the Wild If They End Up With Two Calder Finalists?

    Image courtesy of Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports
    Tony Abbott

    By Tony Abbott -

    It's probably not telling any tales out of school to suggest that the Connor Bedard Calder Trophy Coronation will go off as planned in the coming weeks. Brock Faber and Marco Rossi put up some fight, but Bedard leading all rookies with 22 goals and 60 points in 66 games (with two games remaining) will likely be enough to seal it.

    That leaves Faber and Rossi, who've each had superb rookie seasons, to fight for who gets to be finalists. Faber is a presumptive favorite to finish in second place and perhaps the one player who has the national media hype to overtake Bedard. Rossi is second among rookies with 21 goals and fifth with 40 points (one game remaining), and he might ride his stellar 5-on-5 stats to a finalist spot. 

    There will be decent competition for those finalist spots, with Luke Hughes and Logan Cooley making late pushes for their teams. But if Minnesota can get two rookies into the Calder finalists, what does that mean for the team long-term? Does it portend to greatness? Is that even something that happens?

    You'd think it's hard for two rookies on a team to be among the league's top three, given that there have been at least 30 teams in the NHL for the last 25 years or so. But teams have accomplished the feat during the Salary Cap Era.

    Here are the three times it's happened since 2005-06:

    You might first notice that these teams each won at least one Stanley Cup and went down as one of the defining teams of their decade. Moreover, those teams won their Cups with those specific players. Palat and Johnson won the 2019-20 and 2020-21 Cups with the Lightning. Kane and Toews won three Cups in Chicago, the first in 2009-10. Meanwhile, Malkin and Staal teamed up to bring Lord Stanley to Pittsburgh in 2008-09 before the Penguins traded Staal in the summer of 2012.

    Looking all the way back to the '90s, we can find two more examples. Chris Drury took the trophy in the 1998-99 Calder voting, and Milan Hejduk finished third while playing for the Colorado Avalanche. They won the Stanley Cup in the 2000-01 season. The only time in anything close to recent history where this pattern hasn't worked was in 2001-02 when the Atlanta Thrashers took the top two Calder spots with Dany Heatley (1st) and Ilya Kovalchuk (2nd). Chalk that up to being an expansion team during a time when that was a bad thing.

    But hey, four Cup winners out of five is a strong track record for teams that graduated two Calder finalists in the same season. If Faber and Rossi can accomplish this feat, the Wild would seem to be on the fast track to a Stanley Cup.

    Interestingly enough, three of these four Cup winners didn't even graduate their best player in that season. Kane or Toews (you can pick which) was Chicago's main event. But Pittsburgh? Malkin was a generational player, but he was second fiddle to Sidney Crosby. The Lightning duo ended up being (at least) less important than Victor Hedman, Nikita Kucherov, Andrei Vasilevskiy, Brayden Point, and Steven Stamkos to their team's success. Hejduk and Drury were valuable pieces of Colorado's 2000-01 team, but Joe Sakic drove winning.

    Having that infusion of young talent filling in around an MVP-caliber player seems to be a winning formula, and Kirill Kaprizov appears to be that kind of player. No one can say he didn't carry his weight in the second half of the season, piling up 37 goals and 70 points over his last 45 games. If he can put a full season anywhere in that neighborhood, he'll be that MVP-caliber player.

    Speaking of Kaprizov, he's a former Calder Trophy winner. If Faber can steal that Calder Trophy from under Bedard's golden hands, that would give Minnesota two Calder Trophy winners in four years. Only two teams have had multiple Calder winners in a five-year span during the Salary Cap Era.

    One of them is Colorado, where Gabriel Landeskog (2011-12) and Nathan MacKinnon (2013-14) received the honor. They finally won a Stanley Cup together in the 2020-21 season (with the help of 2019-20 Calder winner Cale Makar). Then there's the Florida Panthers, where Jonathan Huberdeau (2012-13) and Aaron Ekblad (2014-15) took home the trophy. They didn't win a Cup together, but Ekblad was a cornerstone for the Cup Finalist 2022-23 Panthers, while Florida traded Huberdeau for another cornerstone in Matthew Tkachuk.

    It sounds silly to get analytical about a concept as simple as "having young talent is good." But in a season where Wild fans have precious little to get amped up about, the feats of Faber and Rossi are genuinely exciting and something that Minnesota can build upon. With Matt Boldy in tow and more talent on the way, we could be witnessing something special in the State of Hockey.

    By Tony Abbott  

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    mnfaninnc

    It would be nice to have 2 on the finalist list, but even without that, their play makes it look like a bright future for the team. They both were top 5 in their rookie year and that's outstanding. And, we've got some candidates for next year too!

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    FredJohnson

    What Would It Mean For the Wild If They End Up With Two Calder Finalists?
    It would mean a lot of articles/comments about trading them for bigger players that are bottom 6 quality.

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    Imyourhuckleberry

    I've offered Daniel Briere as a comp for Rossi in the past and he now looks like he has a chance for a comparable career as an "undersized center". Briere was dominant in the AHL before Phoenix started giving him regular NHL time. Once they gave him a full season, around age 24, Briere tallied 32 NHL goals.

    Rossi is 22, so has a couple of seasons to reach that level. He fell off a tad on scoring in the 2nd half, so may need to continue working on strength and endurance. Briere averaged just over 30 goals per 80 games from ages 24-33, reaching at least 24 goals in each season that he played over 45 games.

    Rossi isn't there yet, but he's far closer than one may have imagined last year.

    And Faber has far exceeded expectations so far. Hopefully Guerin can get both signed to solid extensions in the near future.

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    B1GKappa97
    Quote

    But hey, four Cup winners out of five is a strong track record for teams that graduated two Calder finalists in the same season. If Faber and Rossi can accomplish this feat, the Wild would seem to be on the fast track to a Stanley Cup.

    just a shame we signed Gaudreau/Foligno/Zuccy/Hartman to those terrible contract extensions 😞 now we're locked in as losers for forever

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    Up North Guy
    3 hours ago, Imyourhuckleberry said:

    He fell off a tad on scoring in the 2nd half, so may need to continue working on strength and endurance.

    Rossi also was stuck with "Flittering Freddy" and NoShow NoJo the second half.

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    Willy the poor boy
    7 minutes ago, Up North Guy said:

    Rossi also was stuck with "Flittering Freddy" and NoShow NoJo the second half.

    Yes, the countless times Rossi had to dodge NoJo's stick laying on the ice taking away his momentum surely contributed to the drop off.

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    Protec
    4 minutes ago, Burnt Toast said:

    Yurov & Wallstedt. Calder Combo Platter. 

    Yurov has 9 pts in 19 playoff games. He should end up with a minimum 85 KHL games this year. He led the team in scoring for the regular season and would have a minimum of 58 total points. If Metallurg wins and he adds anything, you couldn't ask for a better season. His last goal was a beauty. The final series starts tomorrow. 

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    Willy the poor boy
    1 hour ago, Backwoodsbob said:

    2.5M for 1yr isn't the worst contract on the books.

    My guess is Gus and Fleury in the net next season, with the Wall getting another year with the IA. Wild.

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    Imyourhuckleberry

    Looks like I was wrong on the tie breakers for regular season when it comes to Philadelphia. I had to look it up when I saw a site listing Philadelphia with pick #12. I had mistakenly thought, in an earlier post, the Flyers beat the Wild twice, so with equal points, Philadelphia should be considered to be ahead of them. The Wild had more regulation wins, however, which is a tie breaker before head-to-head matchup, so the Wild cannot draft #12.

    The Wild will likely have either pick #13, if they lose their regular season finale in regulation, or pick #14 if they win to finish with more points than the Penguins.

    Earning 1 point in the final game would tie them with Pittsburgh for points, and the Wild have more "total wins"(1 extra shootout win), so that would also push them to pick #14. Head to head record doesn't come into play until the 4th tie breaker, followed by point differential and total goals. Total wins is the only tie breaker that the Wild are ahead in versus Pittsburgh currently.

    Of course, they have a chance to move up to either pick 3 or 4 via the lottery, but that chance is only between 3-4.25%.

     

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    B1GKappa97
    On 4/17/2024 at 9:51 PM, Imyourhuckleberry said:

    Looks like I was wrong on the tie breakers for regular season when it comes to Philadelphia. I had to look it up when I saw a site listing Philadelphia with pick #12. I had mistakenly thought, in an earlier post, the Flyers beat the Wild twice, so with equal points, Philadelphia should be considered to be ahead of them. The Wild had more regulation wins, however, which is a tie breaker before head-to-head matchup, so the Wild cannot draft #12.

    The Wild will likely have either pick #13, if they lose their regular season finale in regulation, or pick #14 if they win to finish with more points than the Penguins.

    Earning 1 point in the final game would tie them with Pittsburgh for points, and the Wild have more "total wins"(1 extra shootout win), so that would also push them to pick #14. Head to head record doesn't come into play until the 4th tie breaker, followed by point differential and total goals. Total wins is the only tie breaker that the Wild are ahead in versus Pittsburgh currently.

    Of course, they have a chance to move up to either pick 3 or 4 via the lottery, but that chance is only between 3-4.25%.

     

    And with the 13th pick in the 2024 NHL draft, the Minnesota Wild select.. Konsta Helenius.. 

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