ST. PAUL, Minn. — Remember when this was going to be the season the Minnesota Wild’s youth finally made a splash?
Touted prospects Zeev Buium, Danila Yurov, David Jiricek, Liam Ohgren, Jesper Wallstedt — even Hunter Haight — entered camp with not only roster spots available but also shots at key roles.
Yet a month into the season, their impact has been somewhat understated. Ohgren, despite being given a long chance in camp and five games in the regular season, is in AHL Iowa, where he has scored three goals in nine games. Same with Haight, who has two goals in 10.
Jiricek likely would be there, too, had Zach Bogosian not gotten hurt, and now Daemon Hunt — coincidentally, since Jiricek was acquired from the Columbus Blue Jackets for a package that included Hunt — has outplayed him. Yurov, before returning to the lineup Friday and scoring against the New York Islanders, was a healthy scratch for three games behind AHL vets Tyler Pitlick and Ben Jones. Yes, the same Ben Jones who has 0 points in 34 NHL games.
Now, Yurov keeps looking better and better. Buium has shown some exciting promise in a sheltered third-pair role but has been taken off the top power play. And Wallstedt has earned the Wild points in all five of his starts (3-0-2) and recorded a 36-save shutout Sunday against the Calgary Flames.
But if you’re the Wild, are you surprised or concerned the prospects aren’t making much of an impact yet?
“We want to push them to try to take a spot, but we can’t force it, either,” president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin told The Athletic. “It doesn’t really matter what I want. Doing the right thing matters because if we try to do it too soon, we’ll damage the player, and that’s the last thing we want.”
The big dynamic here is the fact the Wild are in a win-now mode. They’re not rebuilding.
So it’s not as easy as “just play the kids.”
Owner Craig Leipold wants to be “more than just a playoff team.” The Wild signed Kirill Kaprizov to the largest contract in NHL history, knowing they have a certain window to build a contender. And since the edict is to win, there’s a conflicting interest here as coach John Hynes is going to lean on the guys he trusts to bring victories.
Guerin is on board with that because the objective this season is to win.
“There’s definitely a balance because you want them to pop, that makes such a big difference on your team,” Guerin said. “You know we’re in the business of win now. But if we can’t (play them), we can’t. We can’t force them to be something they’re not. We just have to be patient and use what we can use.”
Hynes feels the team has done a good job of working the young players in and giving them opportunities. And he has a point in terms of training camp, with Ohgren, Yurov and Jiricek playing every preseason game in different roles. Ohgren, who entered camp with a chance to push for the second-line winger spot while Mats Zuccarello was sidelined, underwhelmed and had 0 points in his first five games with the Wild this season. Yurov was a healthy scratch the first couple of games but has played in 12, scoring two goals. He still had some issues in his game, such as faceoffs and adjusting to the all-over-the-ice puck battles, which is why Yurov got a breather last week.
“It’s something you have to constantly monitor,” Hynes told The Athletic. “Are they ready for more? Sometimes you give them more and they’re not ready yet. Take a little step back, maybe they sit, maybe they play a different role, different minutes. They get back in a role and are more prepared. It’s a little bit of a moving target.”
The key is communication. Before Yurov’s recent reset, Hynes said he met with him and went over the “why” and what he needed to work on, and said the Russian rookie understood. Friday, Yurov played a strong game on the fourth line, netting his second goal of the season. With Jiricek, Hynes approached him after last week’s overtime win over Nashville and told him he’d be sitting for Hunt, and the 2022 No. 6 pick understood.
“He said, ‘I wasn’t great last night, everything has been fair, I get it,’” Hynes said. “When you communicate and give them specific reasons and stuff like that, ‘These are reasons I understand why I’m out tonight,’ that’s what you want. That’s when you know everyone is on the same page.”
David Jiricek’s play has been a work in progress for the Wild this season. (Ellen Schmidt / Getty Images)
Buium is an interesting case. He started the season in the top four playing with captain Jared Spurgeon, as much as 20 minutes a night. But with the team struggling and in an attempt to stabilize the top four, Hynes reunited Spurgeon with his usual partner, Jake Middleton, and Jonas Brodin with Brock Faber. Hynes wanted to get Spurgeon and Faber going, and for the most part, he has. There’s still an argument to be made that Buium should be back on the top power play and given a chance in three-on-three overtime. He did see six-on-five time during Thursday’s loss at Carolina.
With the Wild’s prospect pool typically highly regarded, ranked in the top five of the league as recently as a year ago by The Athletic’s Scott Wheeler, there was an expectation from fans that some of those guys would not only have been in the NHL but also made more of an impact by now.
Do the Wild wish they were further along?
“You always hope so,” Guerin said. “But just because they’re not ready when I want them ready or I need them ready doesn’t mean they’re never going to be ready. Zeev and David have played well. Danila’s been good. But we also have to understand the adjustments, and these things take time. We can’t just force them.
“The bottom line is, it doesn’t matter if I’m happy or if I’m not happy. I want to do the right thing by the player. That’s the most important thing.”
The Wild have drafted in the top 10 just twice in the last 13 years, a product of Leipold’s not wanting to “stomach” a rebuild and the team’s typically being good enough to make the playoffs but not advance. The mushy middle. As a result, you’re not seeing top-flight prospects such as the Utah Mammoth have with Logan Cooley and Dylan Guenther, such as the Chicago Blackhawks have with Connor Bedard and Frank Nazar. Chicago has picked in the top 10 each of the last four years. The Anaheim Ducks have done the same in each of the last seven, and the Montreal Canadiens in three of the last four.
The Wild hit on their last top-10 pick with Marco Rossi at No. 9 in 2020. Their last two top-15 picks (Matt Boldy and Buium) look pretty darn good. Charlie Stramel, taken at No. 21 in 2023, is likely to sign in the spring and go pro.
But if you watch AHL Iowa, it’s hard to see many — if any — high-end prospects coming. Adam Benak has been dominating in the OHL. Ryder Ritchie has looked good at Boston University.
Still, other than Buium, it’s hard to see a prospect in the organization with true star power.
And as the Wild’s core continues to get older, it’s fair to wonder whether the Wild should be concerned about the lack of big-impact kids in the prospect pool and how they’re going to keep up with so many teams oozing with higher-end youngsters. It puts a lot of pressure on an aging veteran core, and we all know free agency isn’t always the answer.
The Wild have spun their wheels for a while by constantly re-signing aging veterans. This summer, their big target was going to be veteran Brock Nelson until he signed an extension with the Colorado Avalanche. Is potentially going out and pursuing 34-year-old Artemi Panarin, who is clearly on the back nine of his career, next summer really the wisest thing to do?
In The Athletic’s analysis of the top 150 players in the player tier project, 91 of them were drafted and developed, 40 arrived at their teams via trade and 14 were by free agency.
Still, Guerin isn’t yet willing to write off their prospects as guys who can’t become blue-chippers.
“It’s tough to say,” Guerin said. “You know what, I always say Duncan Keith is a prime example. He spent two full years in Norfolk (AHL). He’s going to the Hall of Fame. Did Chicago think he was high-end? So for me to say ‘No, we don’t have anybody high-end coming,’ I don’t know. We could. You just don’t know. We don’t know.”
Nevertheless, there’s a reason why Guerin still hopes to go big-game hunting this season. If he can trade for a top-six forward, he will try. In fact, it’s abundantly clear Guerin has been working the phones pretty furiously lately, and you can bet that even includes Wild killer and three-time 30-goal scorer Jordan Kyrou of the St. Louis Blues.
Two reasons? The lack of high-end skill coming from the prospect pool and the fact the Wild continue to be in win-now mode.
The redwood ‘win’ hat
If you were curious about the Wild’s new player of the game hat, there’s an interesting backstory to it.
Guerin gave one of his preseason talks to the team and used a quote he learned from a “friend of a friend” about redwood trees — how they’re so tall, but the roots aren’t big because they connect with others.
“Kind of the message behind it was to be a good teammate, rely on each other, and you can be however tall you want to be,” Marcus Foligno said. “Or you can go to some great heights. We were thinking, how do we get a redwood tree in here? Then we found a redwood hat made out of a redwood tree. It’s got a little bit of an Indiana Jones look to it. It’s awesome.”
Foligno said Bogosian and Ryan Hartman found the hat. It was Hartman who made the “Choose Your Hard” chain that was last season’s postgame prize.
introducing: THE hat pic.twitter.com/1czavd02Av
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) November 2, 2025
Kaprizov-Zuccarello magic
A few weeks ago, when Kaprizov was asked about his propensity for turnovers, he talked about how sometimes it’s best to have fun playing hockey, and he wanted more “give-and-gos.”
Well, Zuccarello is now back in the lineup, and this is what he meant.
When Mats Zuccarello and Kirill Kaprizov are on the ice, you may just see a highlight reel goal like this 🤩
NHL x @MassMutual pic.twitter.com/AMfU4EY1eI
— NHL (@NHL) November 8, 2025
When it works, it sure works. Kaprizov is so special he can make these kinds of plays, and sometimes you just have to accept the turnovers that come from it, such as late in the second period of the Islanders game when Kaprizov twice tried to force passes to Zuccarello en route to a turnover and J-P Pageau goal against.
But, as Foligno said after the game, Zuccarello got Kaprizov smiling again.