ST. PAUL, Minn. — It’s pretty rare for an NHL team to have a “must-win” game on Nov. 1, but the Minnesota Wild are a five-alarm fire right now.
They’ve dropped eight of their past nine, including the first four in this critical six-game homestand. If Minnesota can’t pick up a victory Saturday against the Vancouver Canucks — which is missing seven players, including star defenseman Quinn Hughes — you have to start looking long and hard at your roster.
This is gut-check time for the Wild, who got booed off the ice following Thursday’s 4-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins. They played one really good period and then Pittsburgh took over, dominating them in the final 40 minutes.
Coach John Hynes took exception to the word “fragile” being used about his team after the game, but he was pointed in challenging players to dig in and be harder and more competitive.
“Why don’t we get a little bit tougher?” he asked.
Alternate captain Marcus Foligno, meanwhile, called the team “mellow and vanilla.”
This is a bad look for the veterans in the room and the leadership group. President of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin met with the three captains individually before this homestand. He talked about them being “in this together.” There have been four straight losses since, and by the latest, Guerin was seen in his press box suite with his head in his hands.
Hynes is starting to show his frustration. He can keep preaching the Wild’s identity, how they’re supposed to play consistently to give them a chance to win. But with only one or two complete games played (the win over the New York Rangers on Oct. 20, Tuesday’s 4-3 overtime loss to Winnipeg), if they have what it takes to play the way he wants.
They’re not built to play the speed and skill game, like opponents they’ve seen, from the New Jersey Devils to the Utah Mammoth to the San Jose Sharks. They’re not built to outscore their problems, not with their top stars struggling (Matt Boldy with one goal in his last eight games).
And, right now, they don’t even look equipped to play the heavy, gritty, defensively stingy style of hockey they’ve prided themselves on for years here, whether it was Dean Evason’s “grit first” mentality or last year’s “Choose Your Hard” mantra.
Still, as hard a game as that is to play, Hynes pointed out that every team tries to play a similar style.
“When you look around the league … everyone wants to get to the net front. Everyone wants to hit the high slot. Everyone wants to defend hard. Everyone wants to box out at the net front. Like it’s the same things every night. There’s slight tweaks to different systems. … What we need to find is that commitment to play a highly competitive game night in and night out. Like there’s not a coach in the league that’s not going to say we don’t want to play fast, north, direct.
“We need to get that commitment to where it needs to be. That’s what it takes to win.”
But the coaches can’t do it for the players. It’ll be up to them, and Foligno said, “It’s not even close right now” in terms of what they were last year.
Foligno isn’t comparing this group to a defending Cup champion, a division champion or, heck, even a team that won a round. Last season’s team might have been as close as any in the Wild’s 10-year drought without a playoff series victory.
But from what the Wild have shown this season, they’re moving further toward the bottom of the pack. Owner Craig Leipold insisted before the season that they want to be “more than a playoff team.” It’s a fair question whether they’ll actually make it. The season is far from over, but the league has rarely shown this type of parity, where even some of last year’s non-playoff teams have turned the standings upside down in the early going (Utah, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Seattle).
This is pro sports, and if the players don’t start winning games, Hynes may end up being the scapegoat for all of this. As much as we’ve heard in recent days that the coach is safe, we’ve seen how quickly that can change. How votes of confidence soon lead to coaching searches.
Potentially winless six-game homestands do that to a coach, and Hynes is the easiest change to make – fair or not.
But if Guerin pulls that trigger, all eyes will focus squarely on him. Rare is it that GMs survive after firing three coaches. Guerin bought himself four years with the buyouts of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise. He and his staff had all this time to build and prepare this team to be ready to become a contender once they were in the clear. The roster construction of this team should be scrutinized.
Imagine if the Wild didn’t sign Kirill Kaprizov on the eve of the season? After this kind of wretched start, would Kaprizov have even wanted to hitch the rest of his career to the Wild’s wagon? Would Minnesota have wanted to pony up the NHL-record $17 million AAV? And, would they have been better off?
It wasn’t a good look when not long after Kaprizov signed, Connor McDavid, Jack Eichel and Kyle Connor played ball with their teams and took less than market value so their teams could continue to build a winner.
It’s one thing to say winning is the most important thing to you, and another to squeeze the finally not cap-strapped Wild for every penny, even countering after the Wild upped their offer $1 million to $17 million.
When adversity strikes is when you tell what teams are made of. It’s when leadership groups heed the message from the coaching staff and make sure it resonates with the rest of the team. It’s when veterans show good examples for the kids, not take your name off the board of interview requests like Kaprizov did Thursday night and force your teammates to answer the hard questions.
Jared Spurgeon is trying to help the Wild get out of the doldrums. Hynes volunteered that after Thursday’s game the Wild captain initiated a late-night text exchange with the coach sharing different perspectives of what he is seeing and feels and how Hynes can help the team get out of this early-season funk.
“And we had a really good discussion and met with him again this morning,” Hynes said.
Spurgeon didn’t want to divulge private conversations, but he told The Athletic he was just letting Hynes know he planned to have a players-only meeting before Friday’s practice and some thoughts he had going into the meeting.
But it’s one thing to spew a bunch of words. Now it’s on everybody to deliver.
Three wins in 12 games to start the season for this franchise is unacceptable.
These players have pride. They can’t love the fact their fans are booing them off the ice. No competitor would.
The Wild can’t change the tenor of their season overnight, but it has to start somewhere. This is where we see what this group is really made of. This is where Guerin has to seriously look at who actually wants to be here — and who should be here. There may not be many big names available via trade, but it’s not out of the question for a hockey trade to be made where a veteran on this team is moved. That’ll send more of a jolt than picking up a middle-six or fourth-line forward.
The Wild can find their way out of this. It’s not impossible. The Lightning lost six of their first seven games and now have won four straight. The Rangers are showing life after a woeful start. Minnesota, despite the abysmal opening month, is four points out of a playoff spot. There are also four teams in between, and two teams one point behind (Sharks and Blues).
But we’ll find out soon whether this is the first big hurdle a resilient team overcomes. Or whether this is going to be a long, lost season.