A dark cloud has been hovering over the Minnesota Wild for some time now. The storm may have really started to pick up once the team was beaten by the Dallas Stars in the first round of the playoffs, but the early exit didn’t catch many analysts off guard.
Minnesota had backed into the playoffs, allowed to make an appearance there because the Colorado Avalanche couldn’t find a way to win hockey games through the final weeks of the regular season.
Instead of pushing to make the playoffs, the Wild whimpered down the stretch. They went 5-5 in their final 10 contests, but entered the playoffs on a five-game losing streak. Colorado went 2-8 in its final 10 games, opening the door for Minnesota to make what amounted to a cameo.
At least that’s been the common line of thought coming out of the Twin Cities since the Wild were eliminated in Game 6. The reality is that Minnesota hung with the Western Conference’s top team after getting trounced in Game 1, and that was without Zach Parise active. Minnesota’s Game 3 victory was the only contest that was decided by more than one goal, and that was due to an empty netter.
The way scribes in Minnesota are handling the loss, you’d think the Wild had been emulating the Edmonton Oilers over the last four or five years. After locker clean out day, Brian Murphy of The Pioneer Press wrote that general manager Chuck Fletcher had “preached more patience, spun statistical gold out of cubic zirconia, and praised the resiliency of his club.”
To some degree, one can see why folks like Murphy are aggravated. The Wild were an inconsistent team (again) in 2015-16, and couldn’t find a way to maintain their red-hot start. Their 25-game rolling Corsi For percentage isn’t pretty, and graphically tells the story of Minnesota’s season.
Image courtesy of corsica.hockey. Click to enlarge.
There are a few reasons to be at least mildly bullish on next year’s team though. For starters, Mike Yeo won’t have a chance to get his hands on this roster again. He was fired in mid-February and the Wild immediately started playing better hockey. They came back down to Earth eventually and struggled during the closing weeks of the regular season, but having a full year under a new head coach will be a positive for this franchise.
Yeo had his stay in Minnesota elongated by almost a year because of the Devan Dubnyk trade. Before the Wild acquired the goalie — and he subsequently saved their season — Yeo had been on the hottest of hot seats. His body language stunk, his players clearly weren’t happy, and it seemed like a coaching change was right around the corner.
Then Dubnyk arrived, going 27-9-2 in 39 starts for Minnesota. That was enough to convince the organization’s brass to keep Yeo on this season, but he was eventually terminated. It’s unclear at this juncture who the Wild will tap to be their next head coach, but the person will have the chance to install their own brand of hockey during training camp this fall.
That will be a positive for an oddly pieced together group that includes several highly-paid veterans and players who are trying to emerge as high-end regular at the NHL level.
Some folks may also lead you to believe that this roster is in shambles, but that is hardly the case. If you want to see what “in shambles” looks like, take a glance at Detroit or Columbus. That’s what a problematic roster with no real solution looks like. Chad Graff of The Pioneer Press opined that the Wild have “big holes” and “no quick fixes” last week.
That doesn’t seem to be the case though. It’s true that Parise has struggled with a serious back injury recently, but that’s hardly a roster issue and it makes no sense to mention him as one. If he’s healthy, he will play and be effective. If he can’t play, then the Wild will need to address the term of the injury, but he seems confident that he’ll be ready to go in October.
It’s fair to point out that Parise is 31 but he has seen virtually no change in his average points per game since arriving in Minnesota in 2012-13. He’s not part of the problem for the Wild, at least from a production standpoint. It’s dangerous to make assumptions about the “culture” of any given locker room, but a new head coach can do wonders.
A coaching change isn’t some sort of magic elixir, but finding the right coach can be. It’s on Fletcher to find the best fit for his group, but one has to assume the impact will be more positive than negative. Yeo wasn’t the right coach for this group, and John Torchetti’s lack of experience seemed to be a detriment in the postseason.
Fletcher will also need to decide what to do with Thomas Vanek, who scored a career-low 18 goals in 2015-16. This would be a major cause for concern if the veteran forward had a lot of term left on his deal, but he doesn’t. Minnesota can decide to keep him for one more season, or they could buy him out and save $5 million against the cap.
It’s not a perfect solution, but at least it’s not several more years of a player like David Clarkson — an immovable anchor on the ice and financially.
The biggest problem Fletcher has on his plate (as far as current roster players are concerned) seems to be Jason Pominville. The 33-year-old has three years left on his deal and has a $5.6 million cap hit. That’s not a great contract, but it isn’t one that will sink the Wild this offseason. And it’s worth nothing that the veteran played well against the Stars in the first round.
The biggest need for the Wild is acquiring a top-line center.
There are numerous teams looking to add a No. 1 pivot, but most don’t have several young defensemen to use as trade bait. Ryan Suter isn’t going anywhere, but Marco Scandella, Jared Spurgeon, and Matt Dumba could be the starting point of a good trade for Fletcher. Especially if he can shore up his centers.
It’s not the easiest thing to do, but Jim Nill managed to add Tyler Seguin and Jason Spezza — two players the Wild are familiar with — during the early stages of his term in Dallas.
It’s about making smart choices, and there are several teams in the NHL who are looking at cap issues heading into the summer. Fletcher could “help” one of these teams out by picking up one of their older but effective centers. Mikko Koivu’s days as a No. 1 center are numbered, while Mikael Granlund has never quite reached the heights they were hoping from the pivot.
Still, there are several pieces worth liking on this roster. The organization is facing a summer full of questions, but Fletcher has the opportunity to answer them correctly while taking his team to the next level.
Adding a solid coach needs to be the top priority as the right voice could go a long way towards helping this squad improve. Then it’s just a matter of finding a way to ditch maybe one bad forward contract, and that’s a situation a lot of NHL general managers would envy.
The idea that this team has underachieved over the last four seasons comes from the same people who thought adding Parise and Suter would throw the Stanley Cup window wide open. That’s not how team building works, and the Wild still have some work to do up front, but they are far from being a bottom-feeding team that has no chance of making noise in the playoffs last season.
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