Every team wants to be “Tough To Play Against.”
Everyone knows that hockey comes down to scoring more goals than the other team, but front offices also want their teams to be able to win in the physical aspect of the game. Every year, we see teams target grinders in free agency and at the trade deadline, loading up for the battle of attrition that is a best-of-seven series.
Bill Guerin has made no secret of this. One only has to look at his Team USA squad, which controversially left Cole Caufield and Jason Robertson at home in favor of less offensive players with more “jam,” like J.T. Miller and Brock Nelson.
We’ve also seen him prioritize this with the Minnesota Wild. Marcus Foligno isn’t called “Moose” because of his goal-scoring ability, after all.
Last year, Yakov Trenin looked like the worst excesses of the “Grit First” mentality that Guerin’s Wild adopted. The Wild signed the wrecking ball forward in free agency in 2024, inking a four-year contract worth $3.5 million annually. The players Trenin replaced, such as Brandon Duhaime, played for about half the season and cost less. It was a head-scratching move at the time, and it didn’t help that Trenin didn’t score in his first 25 games and had one assist.
Mistake or not, though, the contract meant the Wild were forced to see if Trenin had a bounce-back year in him. To his credit, Trenin started the season leaning into his Tough To Play Against role, throwing 4.4 hits per game over his first 19 games, leading the league in the category. Still, for all his physicality, it took him 20 games to score a goal again.
We’re not in the ’90s anymore. Players can’t just throw their bodies around and bring little else to the ice. At least, not on Stanley Cup contenders. They have to bring something else to the table, or they’re less “Tough To Play Against” and more “Easy to Outscore.”
But to Trenin’s credit, he has been Tough To Play Against and Tough To Outscore. Trenin still leads the league with 279 hits, and it’s not even close. The gap between him and second-place Kiefer Sherwood (210 hits) is bigger than the gap between Sherwood and 27th-place Ryan Reaves. He’s performed well with several linemates on the Wild’s revolving-door third line, but he may have finally found a home alongside two of his fellow Russians.
Danila Yurov, Vladimir Tarasenko, and Trenin aren’t a typical third line. They’re not going to absorb tough matchups and dictate play the way Joel Eriksson Ek, Jordan Greenway, and Foligno did once upon a time. Yurov has a solid two-way game, but skill is his strength. Tarasenko is a willing defender, but it’s never been his strength, and it’s gotten worse with age and injuries. So it’s up to Trenin to do those third-line jobs: forechecking, defending, and hitting.
He’s done those well, and like The Dude’s rug, it ties all-Russian line together. Trenin doesn’t create his own shot, but he uses his improved speed to crash the net with abandon while Yurov and Tarasenko feed off each other’s skill. Trenin is second on the team at 5-on-5 in averaging expected goals per hour, with his 0.95 trailing only Matt Boldy (1.12).
It creates a dynamic that resembles a Dollar General version of Kirill Kaprizov, Mats Zuccarello, and Ryan Hartman. Or it would, if they weren’t delivering Costco results. In 114 minutes together, the line has out-scored opponents 9-2 at 5-on-5, a big part of the reason why the Wild have out-scored opponents 31-20 with Trenin on the ice this season.
Beyond that, even, Trenin is delivering on the Wild’s finally-improving penalty kill. The past two seasons have seen the Wild finish 30th in the NHL, killing fewer than 75% of their shorthanded chances. Minnesota ranks 24th this year (77.2% kill rate), which is still below average, but “below-average” is much better than “dumpster fire.” Boldy and his three shorthanded goals get credit for stabilizing their kill, but Trenin also deserves props for his contributions.
Among Wild forwards with 20-plus minutes at 4-on-5, Trenin has the third-best goals against rate (7.57 per hour), behind only Foligno and Marcus Johansson. He’s also keeping things relatively locked down when it comes to allowing scoring chances. Only Johansson exceeds his 8.00 expected-goals rate per hour when down a man.
All that leads to where Trenin is now: Truly being Hard To Play Against. He’s been what the Wild hoped when they signed him, a player whose physicality should be able to wear teams down in a playoff series, while being able to contribute in other ways. If he can keep balancing out Minnesota’s skilled third line while being an asset on the penalty kill, Trenin looks like someone who can make a genuine difference for the rest of the season.