By Tony Abbott -
When you hear the media talking about Matt Boldy, you might not realize they're talking about one of the Minnesota Wild's best players.
Boldy dominated the Vegas Golden Knights with a three-point game that was the difference in Monday's 5-3 win. What was the story of the night? "Some nights, the 31-goal scorer from a year ago isn't noticeable enough," Joe Smith wrote in The Athletic, noting a poor performance in Chicago last week. "This was the kind of engaged and bold play [from] Boldy the Wild are going to need if they want to climb back into the playoff picture."
Smith was far from alone. Dane Mizutani penned an article titled "When will Matt Boldy realize he can be the best player on the ice?" in the Pioneer Press. The tenor of SKOR North host Judd Zulgad's analysis was also wanting more. "Where has this performance been all season long?" Zulgad wondered in a Monday video. "Matt Boldy can play like this every night, so why isn't he?"
Even the team-friendly broadcast was almost backhanded when marveling at Boldy's performance. Bally Sports North color commentator Wes Walz noted on the broadcast, "I think he's naturally a pass-first guy... and I think he's really had to battle the mental side of the game to find this area of his game to be a shoot-first guy."
Then Walz mentions Boldy's salary. "When you're making $7 million, you're paid to score goals, not make passes," Walz concluded.
Nobody is denying that Boldy doesn't have games like he did in Chicago that aren't up to his standards. That's a universal experience among hockey players, though. So, what's up with the hyper-fixation on Boldy's shortcomings? Focusing on the frustrating elements of his game runs the risk of missing the what-we're-pretty-sure-is-a-bear from the trees. In any big-picture sense, Boldy is indisputably a great player.
We can start with the scoring, where Boldy is one of the NHL's premier "dual threats." With 18 points and 20 assists in 45 games, Boldy is on track for a second-straight 30-goal season with 63 points in 75 games. Specifically, his status as a "dual threat" puts him in rarified air. He's one of 33 players this season to average 0.40 goals and assists per game, per Stathead.
The idea that Boldy doesn't score enough goals also doesn't hold up. If Boldy hits the 30-goal mark this season, he'll join another exclusive club. He'll become one of just 20 players since the 2004-05 lockout to score 30 goals multiple times before their age-23 season. Players who did it twice include Phil Kessel, Brayden Point, Jonathan Toews, Anze Kopitar, Eric Staal, and Kyle Connor.
And look at some of the great players that didn't make this list! It's pretty impressive if Boldy can accomplish something Nathan MacKinnon, Matthew Tkachuk, Mikko Rantanen, Tyler Seguin, and John Tavares had ample opportunity to but couldn't crack.
For someone that talented who racks up such strong scoring numbers, you'd forgive them somewhat for not driving play or being solid defensively. The thing is, though, that doesn't describe Boldy at all. Line up Boldy against anyone on the Wild you'd like; he's probably a stronger all-around player. Do we want to start with Kirill Kaprizov? Great, let's start with Kaprizov.
Kaprizov has the offensive advantage, of course. The gap between being in the 95th percentile and the 90th on offense is significant. But so is the gap between being in the 42nd percentile and the 79th on defense. In terms of two-way play, you've got to give the edge to Boldy.
Even Joel Eriksson Ek, the platonic ideal of a two-way hockey player, can't quite reach Boldy's lofty standard this season.
Eriksson Ek's defense is affected by taking it on the chin on the penalty kill, which may or may not be his fault. Still, Boldy has the decided offensive advantage. Look at their even-strength defensive numbers, and they're virtually identical. It's hard not to give the edge to Boldy here.
Perhaps the Wild fans and media are impatient and want Boldy to have a bona fide breakout season. Boldy scored 0.83 points per season as a rookie, then 0.78 last year, leading to the 0.84 clip he has now. If that's the case, we must remember we're talking about a player who's still only 22 years old.
When we looked at the possibility of a monster year from Boldy in September, we highlighted 11 comparables to Boldy entering his age-22 season. Only one (David Pastrnak) made the jump to a 90-plus-point season at 22. Sasha Barkov took until 23 to hit that level, while Elias Pettersson and Matthew Tkachuk didn't accomplish it until they turned 24.
We might be measuring Boldy by the same stick we measure Kaprizov, perhaps one of the rare players in the NHL who makes a superstar impact almost nightly. But is that fair right now? Remember, Kaprizov didn't enter the league until he turned 23. Would we have had the same conversations if we saw his growing pains in the NHL instead of drooling over his KHL games from afar? We'll never know, but it is possible.
Then how should we compare Boldy's progression? Why not with a player who plays a Boldy-type game: A dual-threat with massive two-way impact at a similar age? If we do that, we can see a dead-ringer for Boldy in a 23-year-old Mark Stone.
That's the track Boldy is on. Early in his career, Stone wasn't the borderline Hart Trophy candidate he later became. Instead, he was a reliable 60- to 65-point player with absurd defensive value. Then he enters his age-25 season and scores 379 points in his next 388 games, even after injuries took a toll on him, complete with Selke Trophy-quality defense.
It's understandable why someone would watch a 6-foot-3 player with the skill Boldy possesses put up a clunker in Chicago and think How the hell does that happen? But it's incredibly difficult to be as good as Boldy is in the aggregate without being an impactful player regularly. Let's not have an occasional frustration that he isn't yet in his final form distract us from the fact that Boldy is one of the most exciting young players the State of Hockey has ever seen.
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