There was a time, not so long ago, when the Minnesota Wild beat lousy hockey teams.
In the halcyon days of mid-December, the Wild traded for Quinn Hughes and looked like they could compete with the Dallas Stars and Colorado Avalanche in a seven-game series. They crushed the Boston Bruins 6-2, the Washington Capitals 5-0, and the Columbus Blue Jackets 5-2. They exposed the Edmonton Oilers’ porous goaltending in a 5-2 win.
Then, the Avalanche beat them 5-1, and reality set in. Minnesota’s desperate (and exciting!) trade for Hughes can only do so much. Bill Guerin was papering over the flawed roster he had built. Still, remove a piece or two from his Jenga tower, and it starts to sway. The Wild are a month removed from trading for Hughes, and they’re losing to bad teams again.
On Thursday, the Winnipeg Jets routed them 6-2. The New Jersey Devils beat them 5-2. The New York Islanders beat them in overtime; the Seattle Kraken took them there. The Los Angeles Kings beat them in a shootout, then beat them again two days later. The San Jose Sharks beat them in a shootout earlier on that trip.
Winnipeg has the second-worst record in the West. New Jersey has a -19 goal differential and is out of the playoff picture in the East. The Islanders’ +9 goal differential is worse than Boston (+9) and the Buffalo Sabres (+10), the East’s wild-card teams, and the Capitals (+17). Seattle is a 2021 expansion team with a -8 goal differential. The Kings are Western Conference bubble teams.
A month removed from dominating the NHL during the Hughes sugar rush, the Wild have crashed. They’ve resorted to blaming bad bounces again.
“Look at the goals,” Mats Zuccarello said after losing to Winnipeg. “All top, top corners, bouncing off the wall, and that. So, it’s one of those days where it’s really hard to lose like that, but you just have to brush it away.”
Zuccarello is a 38-year-old, 16-year veteran. He knows that’s nonsense. The Wild played undisciplined hockey and left Jesper Wallstedt to fend for himself. John Hynes’ decision to leave him in throughout the second period risks killing his confidence again. Ultimately, the Jets outclassed Minnesota on Thursday.
Joel Eriksson Ek and Jonas Brodin are recovering from injuries. Still, the Wild shouldn’t topple over after losing a middle-six center and a second-pair defenseman. Eriksson Ek’s absence has highlighted Minnesota’s lack of center depth. They don’t have a 1C, which may prevent them from contending altogether, and they had to give up Rossi in the Hughes trade.
More pertinently, the Wild previously had the league’s No. 2 prospect pool. However, their player development staff wasn’t able to translate enough of that talent into productive NHL players. Therefore, they used most of those resources on David Jiricek, who is toiling away in Iowa and has dropped down in their prospect hierarchy below David Spacek. They used the rest on Hughes, who is on an expiring contract.
Turning prospects into NHL assets is a tried-and-true strategy for bona fide contenders. Stanley Cup windows are small, and teams must capitalize on their best players’ prime years. Still, even contenders must rely on their minor leagues to produce depth when impact players suffer injuries. There’s no Eriksson Ek or Brodin in Iowa, but the Wild should be able to create a facsimile of each player. However, they haven’t been able to do that, and as a result, they’ve become a lousy team.
Trading for Hughes wasn’t supposed to get the Wild into the playoffs. They’ve been there before. It was supposed to turn Minnesota into a contender. If it didn’t, Hughes is as good as gone. He’s not going to sit around and hope a team with +2000 odds to win the Stanley Cup, and +4500 before they traded for him, miraculously figures it out.
In trading for Hughes, Guerin removed three bricks from the bottom of Minnesota’s Jenga tower to place a star player on top. Zeev Buium, Marco Rossi, and Liam Ohgren are foundational pieces if developed correctly, which is why the Vancouver Canucks coveted them. But Hughes is good right now [italics], and the Wild need to contend immediately after signing Kirill Kaprizov to a $136 million extension.
Any general manager with good sense trades for Hughes and inherits the risk associated with trading for him. Still, there are consequences to this blockbuster trade. Hughes is only under contract for one more season. If he leaves, the Wild lose him, three players they took with first-round picks, and their first-round selection in the upcoming draft.
In that case, the Wild are back to being the mediocre, backwater team they’ve always been in a hockey-obsessed state. Kaprizov can count his millions backward and forward, toiling away on a one-and-done playoff team until he gets bored with that and demands a trade. Minnesota will probably blame bad bounces. That’s every lousy team’s last resort.