Minnesota Wild: Not Making Rash Decisions

The Minnesota Wild have started the 2018-19 season with 2 losses, and the wheels appear to be falling off the wagon. Is it time to blow up the system, or is it too soon to make assumptions and jump to conclusions?

With only 2 goals through 2 games the Minnesota Wild offense looks to be stuck in the mud and struggling for traction. With a goal from 34-year-old Zach Parise, and one from 24-year-old Mathew Dumba, the rest of the players assumed to be the “future” of this team have been eerily quiet through 2 games.

So, Bruce Boudreau has made some adjustments to the forward lines, but does the team require something more? Fans were surprised that the new general manager did not make a big trade during the offseason, and a slow start has reignited demand for change.

I don’t think we should jump the gun too soon. Making a trade for nothing other than the sake of making a trade rarely works well. I stand behind the thinking of the team and the management to this point, and I will explain my reasoning.

First, this roster contains 8 different players who have recorded at least 50 points in at least one of the past 2 years. That amounts for nearly half of the 18 players dressing in a uniform each night.

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To substantiate that further, the 3 players from 2016-17 who did not repeat that mark in 2017-18 were Nino Niederreiter and Charlie Coyle, who were both injured for large portions of the year, and Mikko Koivu, who played most of the year without Parise on his wing.

With all 8 players healthy, as well as Zach Parise who spent the last 2 years battling injuries and failing to reach 50, there is reason for high expectations. The trouble with this, is the Minnesota Wild have struggled through so many injuries that these players are not used to having the full roster around.

The young stars like Dumba, Jordan Greenway, Joel Eriksson Ek, and Nick Seeler are all getting better each and every time they get on the ice. And the elder veterans, like Parise, Koivu, Eric Staal, and Ryan Suter have not showed any major regression.

Perhaps you would argue that there are signs of regression through these 2 games, to which I argue that it is 2 games at the start of the season. Suter has still been the exact same player we have had for 5 years now, Parise is playing better than anything in recent memory, and Koivu is still able to dish the puck like nobody’s business.

Perhaps Staal is the most likely facing a regression, and perhaps we should look at the long term options with Staal, but we can’t put his lack of points all on Eric. His linemates of Mikael Granlund and Jason Zucker have not looked or been any better than Staal.

A recent feature on wild.com points out how last season started the exact same way, with a 0-1-1 record through 2 games, and we all know how that went. With a healthy lineup over an 82 game season, there is still no reason to believe this team is any different from the one who finished with the 8th best record in the league last year.

On top of that, we can look around the rest of the league this year to point to plenty of examples for why not to overreact to 2 games, or 1 week, in the NHL.

Look no further than the St.Louis Blues. The Blues were a preseason projection to be among the top teams in the Central Division, battling with Nashville and Winnipeg to potentially win the division. Those same Blues are holding the identical 0-1-1 record as our Minnesota Wild.

Perhaps we look at the Vegas Golden Knights, who were projected to repeat as Pacific Division Champions. Those Golden Knights were 90 seconds away in Minnesota from looking at an 0-4 record to start the year.

I could look at the other end of the standings as well, where we will find preseason bottom feeders like the Carolina Hurricanes, Chicago Blackhawks, and New York Islanders among the top 10 teams in the league.

Carolina looked like a playoff long shot, but have been sparked by a quick start from star rookie Andrei Svechnikov as well as the rest of their underestimated offense. Chicago was written off as the only team in the Central Division to not be a contender, but Jonathan Toews appears to have turned the clock backwards 10 years.

The New York Islanders are perhaps the most surprising, after trading away their top player, John Tavares, nobody expected Long Island to be competitive this year. Instead, they have produced 9 goals through 3 games to start the year.

My point being, the start of the year is a feeling out process for the entire league. Teams are working on finding the full speed of regular season action again, teams like Ottawa, Montreal, Vancouver, and Chicago who have spent all season being underestimated have a ton of fight to prove themselves.

The Minnesota Wild have 80 games remaining to produce the same or better results of what they did in 80 last year. If things don’t turn around after a month, if the Wild are consistently only supporting their goalies with one goal through 20 games, then we can look at dropping the hammer and making some moves.

Minnesota will look to avoid that by shuffling lines and looking to find the best combination of the stars they produce every night. With so much talent brimming through this lineup, the key is finding the best way to arrange those pieces to get consistency from all 4 lines.

With an even mix of age, speed, size, and talent, the Minnesota Wild have a ton of combinations to throw on the ice every game. With 8 different players who can play center on any line, there is no limit to how Boudreau can place his pieces on the chess board on any given night, and that should be a mismatch challenge for every team in the league.