Things are not going great for the Minnesota Wild, which feels like the understatement of the season so far. Perhaps the rocky road to getting Kirill Kaprizov under contract was a sign of things to come, as the Wild have gotten out to an absolutely abysmal start.
Minnesota has mustered up just three wins this season, all of which came against bottom-ranked teams. The Wild are trending that way after yet another meltdown against Pittsburgh, one that saw the team get out to a 1-0 start but give up four unanswered goals on their way to another pitiful loss.
It's reached the point where questions are being asked about the future of head coach John Hynes. Earlier in the offseason Bill Guerin gave Hynes his full backing, but 12 games into the season it feels like that's a decision he might have to start walking back.
John Hynes sounds like a coach about to be fired after latest Wild meltdown
If the results on the ice weren't bad enough, the cracks might be starting to show off it as well. After Minnesota's 4-1 loss to Pittsburgh, Hynes was asked about the team's capability of playing to his style, and he gave a pretty uninspired answer.
Here’s the full question from the #mnwild beat reporter that I mentioned along with Hynes’s response. You tell me if you think this is a Coach that still has the locker room or not.
— Brett Marshall (@B_Marsh92) October 31, 2025
Via @PONDcast https://t.co/bW6nFLYm4P pic.twitter.com/PhCvwTuS6j
It's all in the tweet from Brett, as Hynes' grip on the locker room might be slipping amid this atrocious start. Confident locker rooms bounce back from this sort of callout, but Hynes doesn't even sound confident in what he's delivering, which feels like a problem.
There's still time for the Wild to dig out of the hole they're in, but the next few games are going to be very telling. If Minnesota drops its game against a hobbled Vancouver team, that might be the point at which Guerin needs to start asking himself a tough question about his head coach.
It wouldn't just be the optics of the Wild losing to a Canucks team missing over a half dozen players; it would be the lack of response from the team that damns Hynes. He's essentially saying the quiet part out loud and calling the team out, and if the response to that is a dud against Vancouver, then that might be all we need to know.