Minnesota Wild: Zucker Needs to Convert Hard Work into Results

Coming off a very disappointing season Jason Zucker’s need to play better is obvious. The Wild will need his scoring touch to come back, but how can Zucker get his confidence back after such a down season and little momentum to indicate he can?

Last season was hard to figure out. Many around the Minnesota Wild are still using their Captain Hindsight powers and giving out theories about why certain things happened that contributed to a season that fell well below expectations. Perhaps one of the harder issues to figure out was the power outage that Jason Zucker had. After all here’s a player that the season before notched 21 goals in 51 games played, and could have had a lot more had it not been for an injury that kept him out of 31 contests.

All indications were that he was on his way to making 2015-16 a year where he would put up 30 plus goals. As we all know what actually happened was the young Wild forward took a step back and was only able to tally 13 goals in 71 games, and was actually benched for a couple of contests due to perceived lack of effort.

Still the Wild deciding that Zucker possesses the talent and capability for a bounce back decided to re-sign him in the offseason giving him a $1.3 million dollar bump up in pay. With a two-year term it’s not really a risky investment, but after last season can he rebound and meet the expectations set for him before 2015-16?

Sep 21, 2015; Saint Paul, MN, USA; Minnesota Wild forward Jason Zucker (16) against the Buffalo Sabres at Xcel Energy Center. The Sabres defeated the Wild 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Brace Hemmelgarn-USA TODAY Sports /

The first thing to look at is was Zucker’s scoring trending upward at the end of the season. Players like Jason Pominville had similarly down years, but came on at the end of the season and are giving the Wild hopes of a resurgence. In the case of Zucker, his decline was in the second half of the season. After the All-Star Game on January 31st Zucker only posted 4 points (2 goals and 2 assists) in 21 games played to finish out the season.

You could argue that his benchings by John Torchetti would have thrown off his game, but that was only for four games and really didn’t affect his playing time significantly. Furthermore, looking at his playoff performance Zucker once again failed to rise to the occasion only notching 2 assists in 6 games, and finishing a minus four in plus/minus.

“So I think the bar that he set this year is going to be the lowest it’s set for his career. He’s going to be much better than that” -Wild GM Chuck Fletcher from Star Tribune

GM Chuck Fletcher believes that Zucker will rebound telling the crowd at his end of season press conference that he felt Zucker’s year was because he lost confidence in his game and ended up trying too hard. He goes on to say essentially he doesn’t see an issue with Zucker. “He’s a good player who scored 34 goals the last two years in 120 games and I think 31 of them were even strength” said Fletcher. “So considering we’re sitting here talking about how he gets better, he scores an even strength goal every four games, never plays on the power play and he had 34 goals in two years. So I think the bar that he set this year is going to be the lowest it’s set for his career. He’s going to be much better than that. And we’re still talking about a guy with 31 even strength goals in two years. He’s disappointed. But that kid works. He’ll come back better.”

Fletcher’s assessment of Zucker is a bit too generous. To hang your hat on the fact that he scores a goal every four games is first not a very impressive stat for a player who was thought to be a top six possibly a top three forward. Second, if you break it down that stat is HEAVILY weighted in numbers from the 2014-15 season and it you broke down his goals per game last season it would be a goal every five games. Take it even a step further and you’d see in the second half of last season he only scored a goal every 10 games.

So where’s the momentum to be ridden into the next season? How will Zucker get his confidence back?

The answer good old-fashioned work. Zucker needs to put some miles underneath his skates this summer, and put distance from his bad performance that ended last season. Some would say Bruce Bourdreau’s system will help Zucker, and I would agree but that only gives him the structure to excel. The ability to perform will be up to him. He’s got to find a way to taste success without having the game situations to do it.