ST. PAUL, Minn. — As Bill Guerin was headed down TD Garden’s winding hallway toward the locker rooms following Saturday’s loss, he ran into good friend and peer Cam Neely, the Boston Bruins’ president.
Guerin, the Wild president of hockey operations and GM, gave Neely a handshake and hug and wished him luck in their fight to make the playoffs.
“You’re going to do some damage,” Neely told Guerin about the Wild.
“Thanks,” Guerin replied, “I hope so.”
Guerin has trust in his Wild, who are as close to Stanley Cup contenders as they’ve ever been in franchise history. But no one could blame the fan base — or even the front office — for having some concerns over the latest March slide.
Make no mistake, Guerin is extremely frustrated by his team’s play since the Olympics. The Wild have won four of their past 11 games, only two of those coming in regulation, with a 7-7-2 mark since the Olympic break. Those 16 points heading into Sunday’s NHL action were 23rd in the league. Their five regulation wins in those 16 games is tied for 18th.
While Minnesota hadn’t officially clinched a playoff spot as of Sunday, the Wild have long been in a position where they knew they were going to most likely play the Dallas Stars in the first round. That could lend to a cruise-control mode psychologically compared to other teams fighting for their playoff lives, like the Bruins in Minnesota’s 6-3 loss Saturday.
But what frustrates Guerin is just how many points his team could have if it won more at home and didn’t play, in Guerin’s words, “down to their competition” so often this season. At a minimum, they’d be looking at home-ice advantage in the first round.
With just eight games left, the Wild must get their game — and especially their stars — in order so they’re not just “limping into the playoffs.” That’s also Guerin’s words, by the way, not ours.
Fans have seen this movie before, especially having gone a decade without a first-round playoff series victory. It’s uncanny how often the Wild, no matter the roster, make a habit of not playing with the same kind of juice this time of year that we saw early in the season.
“I’d like to see us start playing better more consistently,” Guerin told The Athletic. “We’ve had some really good games then we lay off. Then we have another good game, then lay off. I’d like to see us with a more complete game more consistently right now. We’ve got (eight) games left. It’s time. Listen, there’s no such thing as perfection in this game, but … what I’d like to see is better execution. A little more desperation.
“I trust this group, I do. We haven’t been horrible. We have to eliminate those (rough games), the lulls have to be put to an end quicker.”
The good news is the Wild will have a fortuitously timed four-day break between games this week, with their next game Thursday at home against the lottery-bound Vancouver Canucks. That could turn into a needed reset and rest for guys who look tired, especially U.S. Olympians Matt Boldy, Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber, none of whom look like their usual selves. It’ll also allow injured Jared Spurgeon to heal up. Same with other guys playing through nicks.
“We’re one of the best teams in the league, we’re one of the more consistent teams in the league,” Faber said. “This is a stretch where things aren’t going our way but we’re not playing quite as good as we’re capable. That’s part of it. We’re just trying to get ‘clinched’ next to our name, and from there build our way up to real playoff-style hockey and ramp up for who knows who we’re playing, most likely Dallas.”
This starts at the top, of course. The team’s best offensive players, Kirill Kaprizov and Boldy, have been in a funk in recent weeks. Boldy has zero goals in the past seven games and hasn’t looked the part of the breakout star he was in the Olympics. Kaprizov scored his first goal in six games on Saturday, but hasn’t been a factor in most of the team’s recent games. At least, not in a good way: Turnovers by Kaprizov led to multiple Bruins goals on Saturday, including the fifth one where he lost the puck deep in his defensive zone.
When Kaprizov is at his best, he’s extremely competitive and a hound in puck battles. He’s playing north-south, driving the net. He’s explosive and powerful. But lately, that has been missing.
Remember how dominant and dynamic Boldy and Kaprizov were in last year’s first-round series against the Vegas Golden Knights? The Wild nearly won the series because of it. This group isn’t going anywhere if those two don’t get back to their usual selves.
“Just need better,” Kaprizov admitted after the loss in Boston. “Can’t score. I just need to be better.”
It’s not just the stars.
Filip Gustavsson, who has been mostly solid for the Wild in his postseason stints, has lost focus in games lately in Tampa Bay and Boston. Ryan Hartman took an undisciplined penalty in the final minutes against the Lightning. Marcus Johansson, in a scoring funk since the calendar turned to 2026, passed up shooting at an open net for what could have been the go-ahead goal in Tampa Bay, then showed no attempt to go for a clean faceoff win by Michael McCarron in the third period against the Bruins.
The Wild, in large part because Kaprizov and Boldy aren’t scoring, have dried up offensively. Their 2.88 goals per game since the Olympics is tied for 19th. Their 28 five-on-five goals are tied for 23rd. Their power play, at 23.5 percent, is tied for 13th. Defensively, they’ve been mostly adequate, tied for 10th best at 2.81 goals against per game with a penalty kill that is third-best (84.1 percent).
Nico Sturm, a two-time Cup champion, said even the teams he won with — the Colorado Avalanche and Florida Panthers — had some struggles down the stretch before the playoffs. He brought up an interesting point of perspective vs. urgency.
“It’s an 82-game season, 84 next year — you will lose games,” Sturm said. “I think the big thing is that those stretches don’t completely let the train go off the rails. It’s like, ‘Okay, there’s a bump in the road and we’ll fix it.’ You put together good stretches of hockey after that. But it’s a fine line between learning from your mistakes and staying level-headed, and being okay with losing. So you’ve got to tread that very lightly there.”
The Wild staff will have two days of practice on Tuesday and Wednesday to sharpen things up before another busy stretch of games, including three in four nights with a back-to-back Saturday and Sunday against the Ottawa Senators and Detroit Red Wings, two playoff bubble teams.
More than results, coach John Hynes is looking under the hood on how his team is playing, and feeling, before the playoffs.
“I think it’s important that guys are feeling good about their game or executing at a high level,” Hynes said. “It’s not always going to be perfect, but I think being tight defensively, responsible in that area, I think the execution level with the PP to set our game up where we can be the team that’s going to be able to control territory. And then I think it comes into individual players too as well. Their skating, their competitiveness, truly understanding their role and what their strengths individually bring to the collective team, and then really putting that same game on the ice night in and night out.”
How many Wild players are truly feeling good about their game right now? It’s probably a short list. It has been a challenge to integrate all the new players from the trade deadline into the lineup. Hynes has wanted to see how McCarron, Nick Foligno and Bobby Brink fit, so there’s been some experimentation with the lineup, which will continue in the final few weeks. You’ve seen Sturm and rookie Danila Yurov get scratched, for example, but they’ll be back in.
“It’s sweet going into the playoffs on a 12-game heater, but the clock resets either way,” Sturm said. “But you don’t want to go into the playoffs having a weird feeling in your stomach because maybe the PK, the power play, hasn’t been good, or the D-zone hasn’t been good. You want everything to be in a good place.”
You also want Hughes, the Wild’s blockbuster addition and playoff X-factor, healthy and on his game. The biggest reason Minnesota has a better chance of beating Dallas or Colorado is having its own stud defenseman in its back pocket.
But Hughes hasn’t been at his best as of late. Hynes ended up switching the defense pairs and having Hughes with Spurgeon, with Faber joining Brodin. The staff will have to decide which pairs to go with for Game 1 of the playoffs.
But it’s fair to ask about Hughes’ ice time and if he’s getting worn down, especially after the heavy load he played in the Olympics for the gold-medal winning Team USA. Saturday marked the eighth time Hughes has logged 30-plus minutes in a game since he joined the Wild in mid-December. The 2024 Norris Trophy winner was also dealing with a lower body injury going into the Olympics.
Some of Hughes’ ice time has been circumstance-related. For example, all the overtime games the Wild have played in added a few more minutes on his sheet. The amount of power plays. And then there’s Hughes’ own decision-making on his shift lengths. Trust us, none of the coaches were in favor of Hughes being on the ice for a marathon 4 minute, 34 second shift Saturday in Boston. The coaching staff has talked with Hughes (and Faber, for that matter) about their ice time, shift lengths, etc.
Still, the four days off come at a much-needed time. Two weeks ago, when the Wild lost three games in a row to non-playoff teams during a homestand, Hynes said the Wild needed to look at their routines and change things up. Two weeks later, the erratic nature of the Wild’s play and the outcomes haven’t changed.
The Wild better find a sense of urgency quickly, or the earned cynicism heading into the playoffs from the outside and even some on the inside will return, and justifiably so.
“I think it’s ideal,” Hynes said of the break. “You get a mental and physical break, which I think is important, particularly this time of year. But we also have a couple days of practice before we play. … It’s a little bit of an opportunity to have some good practices but also have a couple days where you can get away from it a little bit, which I do think this time of year is important.”