ST. PAUL, Minn. — Let’s be honest, when Bill Guerin says the Wild’s problems are “fixable,” he has no choice but to say that, believe that and pray that to be the case.
And, the way this team is playing, he better be saying a lot of “Hail Mary’s.”
It’s hard to see an impact trade available out there right now for a Wild team that has won three of 12 games and is now winless in four with two more to go on a horrific homestand that saw players get justifiably booed off the ice Thursday night after a 4-1 loss to the Pittsburgh Penguins.
There’s likely no help coming from AHL Iowa, which lacks high-end talent beyond maybe Liam Ohgren, who underwhelmed through training camp and the start of the season.
And the Wild have no interest, as of now, in firing John Hynes. Not many GMs are able to survive firing three coaches, and all indications internally is that the increasingly frustrated coach searching for answers is safe.
The best — perhaps only — trade the Wild can make now is their own players being better.
The Wild, who had the worst October in franchise history, have made their bed here by committing to an aging core that would not only get the club through the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter pain but beyond. And, right now, that group, which hasn’t been able to win a single playoff round, has put the team near the league’s basement.
You are what your record says you are, and the Wild aren’t a good hockey team right now. They look lost. They’re lacking confidence. They’re “disconnected,” playing “mellow and vanilla,” according to alternate captain Marcus Foligno, one of the few leaders who felt up to speaking after Thursday’s loss.
Foligno is not playing well at all this season, but at least he’s accountable. Jonas Brodin didn’t feel the need to talk to reporters despite being requested after his failure to box out Bryan Rust six seconds after a careless Matt Boldy icing and Joel Eriksson Ek lost faceoff led to the winning goal. Kirill Kaprizov, who scored his seventh goal Thursday but continues to turn pucks over left and right, went as far as wiping his No. 97 off the interview request board after the game.
The Wild are a shell of the team that led the NHL in points with an 18-4-4 record last Dec. 6 and pushed Vegas to the edge in the first round of the playoffs. They actually look worse than the group that nearly collapsed in the second half and needed a miracle tying goal by Eriksson Ek in the final 20 seconds of the season finale to make the playoffs.
What’s frightening is Hynes had individual meetings with nearly every player before this homestand. Guerin met specifically with the captains.
They’re winless in four since those conversations.
Whatever happened to last year’s “Choose Your Hard” Wild?
It’s one thing if it were the kids that were messing up every night and going through “growing pains.”
But it’s the veterans, the leaders, the best players who are mostly a mess for the Wild right now.
Boldy has one goal in his past eight games, hasn’t been hard enough in recent games and committed the fatal mistake by icing the puck six minutes into the third period. It’s Eriksson Ek who routinely gets dominated in the faceoff circle. It’s Brodin who continues to not be hard enough in front of the net. It’s captain Jared Spurgeon who is minus-12. It’s Foligno who has zero points. It’s Filip Gustavsson who has given up three goals or more in every start but two this year. It’s Yakov Trenin who continues to bring nothing but hits.
Hynes has been careful not to publicly criticize players this season — heck, he needs them probably to save his job. But Thursday was as pointed as Hynes has been, calling into question the group’s toughness and resolve.
Hynes was asked if this team is “fragile”?
“I think it comes down to consistency in our game,” he bristled. “Like why did we get outskated? Why did we win a lot of faceoffs in the first period and then we didn’t win any faceoffs in the second half?
“It’s not about being fragile, it’s about doing the right things. It’s about having some toughness to you and digging in. Understanding when we’re in those situations that they matter. It’s not about being fragile, it’s about digging in and competing. If there’s a 50-50 puck, you want the puck or you don’t want the puck? You’ve got to outcompete them.”
In a league where it’s so hard to make trades, like it or not, the answers all have to come from the players now. The Wild desperately need underperformers to be better, plain and simple. They need their leaders to grab hold of this team and deliver a kick in the ass. And they can start with their play.
It’s not a good look when Kaprizov — who squeezed every penny out of the Wild during a tense contract negotiation last month — wipes his name off the board. There’s a responsibility that comes with wanting to be the highest paid player in the NHL ($17 million a year starting next season), and one is facing reporters who are the conduit for the fans paying the big bucks to watch the Wild being an unentertaining, losing hockey team for too many nights at home the past two years.
Kaprizov declined to talk to reporters after Thursday night’s loss. (Matt Krohn / Imagn Images)
This feels like a tipping point, with just two games left in what was thought to be a critical homestand.
“As a team we have to be better,” Guerin told us Wednesday. “We’ve had two many off nights for this early in the season, but then there are some nights where it’s been like right there. We’ve missed opportunities. We’ve hit posts. We’ve missed empty nets. We’ve got plenty of bounces. If we go off the reservation, if we bail, then it’s just going to hurt ourselves more. We got to stay with it, be a little more detailed, be a little better.”
The big issues continue to be depth, which is another reason why it appears as if, at least as of now, Hynes is safe.
Obviously in pro sports that can change in a heartbeat if things continue to go south, especially because most players are locked and loaded when it comes to contracts and Guerin is going nowhere.
But this was not the team Hynes necessarily expected to coach to start the season.
He came into this year and was immediately given an audible when Mats Zuccarello reported to camp injured and free-agent pickup Nico Sturm got hurt the first practice of camp. And after an offseason where the Wild didn’t do much to address the top six beyond acquiring Vladimir Tarasenko for literally nothing, the Wild’s depth was already a question despite the majority of the buyout pain disappearing.
The Wild have gotten mediocre goaltending and rank 30th in goals against at 3.92 a game. There have been some games where Minnesota very well needed at least one or two more big saves, like Tuesday’s 4-3 overtime loss to Winnipeg. The Swede — their clear cut No. 1 signed to a five-year extension in September — hasn’t been the backbone he’s been in previous seasons.
But anyone who pins the Wild’s current plight purely on Gustavsson is grasping at straws for what appears to be a bigger problem.
“I know I’m not doing anything different from (when I’m) used to winning,” Gustavsson said. “And I’m just going to stick to it, and then let the team get some momentum from how I play, hopefully.”
The Wild’s penalty kill, for a third straight season, continues to be an abomination. The only team in the league that has trailed for more minutes this season is Boston, and this Wild team isn’t built on skill where it can survive chasing the game so much. Hynes has talked about the Wild’s identity being hard to play against, a team that plays north and direct, wins both net fronts and is stingy defensively.
How many games have you seen that for two periods, much less 60 minutes?
Hynes was asked if, after a 12-game sample size, what gives him confidence the Wild can still play that style?
“I would say, if you look in tonight’s game, skating and playing with pace is not a style,” Hynes said. “Competitive level on the puck is not a style. Digging in on the faceoff circle is not a style. It’s what is required to win night in and night out. It’s the willingness to do those things regularly.”
Hynes has this year and next left on a contract that pays him roughly $3 million. The year Dean Evason was fired, the Wild won five of their first 19 games (5-10-4) with Hynes taking over Nov. 17 and winning 11 of his first 14 games before the team ultimately missed the playoffs for only the second time since 2012.
“I can see how you can compare it to the year when Dean got let go and the start that we had,” Foligno said of the 2023-24 season. “But it just feels different. It feels we’ve got more to give, more to do, and we’re right there, it’s just breaking through.
“That’s the mentality right now.”
Owner Craig Leipold often says he can’t “stomach” a rebuild. He can’t be happy seeing Grand Casino Arena not at full capacity for some recent home games, a rarity in this market. The building pretty much emptied out with just under three minutes left Thursday, and the remaining Wild fans at the end booed their team off the ice.
Leipold told them before the year he was hoping for “more than just a playoff team” here in Minnesota, and, right now, this group is struggling to find their way there.
They badly need a win.
“That feeling of winning a game and maybe just the pressure valve gets looser and you start playing your game after that,” Foligno said. “You feel more comfortable when you have that win, that aura of just winning makes everyone a little bit happier, not gripping the stick as much. We don’t want to keep looking at it as, ‘We’ve got to win,’ but we’ve got to do the right things that lead us to a victory.”
The Wild will eventually get Zuccarello back in the next week or so. Sturm, too, though he’s not skating on his own yet. That’s the cavalry, so to speak. It’s really hard to make in-season trades, especially with the cap going up and most teams wanting to get better vs. selling. Who really feels out of it, especially with so many teams predicted to be near the bottom of the league at the top in this early going?
Sure, Guerin could trade for a half dozen fourth-line types. Would that really send a jolt through the dressing room? Would a Nick Robertson acquisition do it? The 2026 UFA class, once seen as generational, appears like it’s going to be a dud, with Martin Necas the latest to sign an eight-year deal (with Colorado). The belle of the ball might be 35-year-old Artemi Panarin. It wouldn’t make sense for the Wild to pony up in a trade for Panarin when they could pursue him in free agency — it’s not like they’re a Panarin away from a long Cup run.
Guerin said the standings are so tight, “teams have two or three good games, they’re on top of the world, two or three bad ones and they’re in the pits.”
Right now, the Wild are near the bottom of the standings. And, the way they’ve played, that’s where they deserve to be.