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Let's talk about the Minnesota Wild for a few minutes because I'm still not quite sure what this team will do in its current construction.
How do you feel about them? Do you think of them? When you hear the name "Minnesota Wild" do you think "it's a team I could see making noise and making a playoff race," or just tell yourself "meh" and do not see them as a threat?
They were, by definition, a very good team.
They finished with 101 points in 2017-18 and are one of only three teams to have made the playoffs in each of the last six seasons, joining the Pittsburgh Penguins and the Anaheim Ducks. . That's also – if you can believe it – tied for the second-longest series of active NHL playoffs (behind only the 12-year-old Penguins and tied with the Ducks)
.
What is about this success, it is that the last years were at the same time a kind of disappointment because their ceiling seems to be that of a team that makes the series playoffs and then disappears quickly without much fighting. During the six-year playoffs mentioned above, they won a grand total of two playoff rounds and have not been outside the second round in any of those years.
They were not out of first round since 2014-15 and managed to win a grand total of four playoff games in the next three years (which come after sweeping the second round in four consecutive games in 2015. That means in their The latest outing in sets resulted in a significant shift in the team's organizational leadership when longtime general manager, Chuck Fletcher, was fired and replaced by Paul Fenton, former badistant director of the Nashville Predators, and even with a team that scored 100 points for the second year in a row, Fletcher had a difficult year as the Wild was one of many NHL teams that paid too much in the process of expansion, abandoning Erik Haula and Alex Tuch at the Vegas Golden Knights
When a team that did not achieve much success in the playoffs change of general manager, a change behind the bench can not be far behind if the results do not change for the better. This means that coach Bruce Boudreau must almost be on the hot seat as the 2018-1919 season approaches
that brings up another big question: Are the Wild, as it is currently built, good enough to keep Boudreau behind the bench? And if not, is good enough to continue drawing from this list more than it should be able to produce?
There are a lot of red flags with this team that give the impression Things may have tipped to the brink of a complete collapse, maybe sooner than later.
In terms of shooting and possession, the Wild was one of the worst teams in the NHL last season. -5 shooting attempts. That was the second worst NHL scoreline and sandwiched them between the fire of the Ottawa Senators dumpsters and a New York Rangers team that was starting to sell half of its lineup .
In their five games against the Jets in the playoffs they were absolutely crushed in this department, trying only 40 percent of the shot attempts in the five games (while getting 16-9 points, including 7 -0 on the last two games of the series).
Teams that are decimated like that in the shootout column do not make the playoffs, and when a team is so bad, that usually does not give a promising picture for the next season. Especially when the only additions to the list are deep players like those added by Minnesota this summer (Matt Hendricks, Brown JT, Eric Fehr, Greg Pateryn).
The field excelled in
While their share of the total number of firing attempts was among the worst in the league, their share of the total odds of scoring was, shockingly, among the best From the league
of success with poor shooting measures the argument in their favor – or that of the team itself – revolves around the quality of the shot, not the quantity. Usually, this argument is good and the success of the team is usually due to the fact that a goalkeeper decided to bail them out, or that some attackers had years of career to commit the offense (which happened in Minnesota last year, at least this concerns Eric Staal and maybe Jason Zucker). Then everything will collapse the next season
. In the case of the Wild, however, there seems to be at least some evidence that this was the case. It's not just about how reproducible it is, but it will also determine whether they will remain competitive or the bottom will fall under their weight.
The other worry here is that it was the second oldest team in the NHL last season and while they have some young players in Jordan Greenway, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Luke Kunin, he is still one of the oldest teams in the league.
At the top of the list, Zach Parise and Ryan Suter will both be 34, but they will also be injured.
Parise has already been mired in a steady decline in all areas for about five years in all major areas (producing goals and points, his ability to generate shots, and his total possession count). Suter is still a workaholic who plays nearly 27 minutes a night (and still at a reasonably high level), but considering the mileage of these tires, you have to badume that he'll also start to see his game start to decline. The Wild still have more than $ 15 million tied up in these two for another seven years.
Their main players are still pretty good, but they are either in decline (Parise), likely to regress (Staal), or might be about to reach a point in their career where they start to s & # 39; Collapse (all of Parise, Suter and Staal). They have some young players agree, but no one really seems to be a game breaker.
Given all of this, it seems like this team has reached its ceiling. They have already made the change in the front office. If things start to go wrong in 18-19, it may be time for him to simply press the reset button for any operation because it's hard to see this group changing things significantly.
Adam Gretz is a writer for Pro Hockey Talk on NBC Sports . Drop him a line [email protected] or follow him on Twitter @AGretz.
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