2021 MN Wild/NHL Thread

JoeMX1825 wrote:

You actually want to be quiet in FA, its a waste of money….

Especially with what the Wild have done so far not impressed.

Jensen wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
You actually want to be quiet in FA, its a waste of money….

Especially with what the Wild have done so far not impressed.

i guess i’d ask what would you have wanted them to do? Who did you want them to get via FA?

It doesn’t matter what I want because I’m not part of the Wild, but ask yourself this. Do you honestly feel we are a better team than last year with our moves? Hope Goligoski has some left in the tank.

Jensen wrote:

Do you honestly feel we are a better team than last year with our moves?

You’re absolutely right on with this question.

My answer is no. But to me the Gurin strategy has finally been revealed.

Clearly Gurin is pursuing a 2-3 year “wait for development” strategy. Rossi, Body, KK, they all need time.. Gurin has said again and again, he won’t push young players.

The buyout of Suter especially fits this strategy. By the time the ylfhe young players are really ready, Suter would be too far past his prime to contribute much.

We are in a 2 year phase of basically keeping the franchise lights lit and nothing more.

By the way I’m not saying I’m against this strategy. I’m sure Gurin is as tired as any other wild fan of backing into the playoffs and then getting hammered in the first round.

I honestly do…

Who/what did we lose that isn’t replaced by a better option?

Soucy replaced by Koulikov – I’d argue Soucy was our biggest loss and it was out of our control, no way was GMBG going to pay the crazy cost to have Seattle take somebody else like Rask. Koulikov is not as offensive as Soucy but we’ll probably gain some better defense..

Parise replaced by Boldy- his game is done, he can’t keep up with top6 forwards anymore and you’re not going to continue to pay him $7.5 to be a slow 4th line guy, plus there’s tons of smoke that he was a locker room problem…I think Boldy makes the team out of camp.

Suter replaced by Gologoski- I think he’ll be decent the first half of this season before he hits the wall Parise ran into last year and he doesnt finish out his Dallas contract, plus there’s the rumored locker room issues… Goligoski is basically a duplicate of Suter but has more gas in his tank…

Regarding Dallas not worried about his locker room issues, they have Jamie Benn as their captain, so Suter’s issues are probably welcomed as a distraction….plus he’s now on a short leash contract at the end of his career, he hardly has a leg to stand on anymore to be demanding anything.

Cole replaced by Addison/Merril- I never saw anything in his game that couldnt be easily replaced.. he’s a 3rd pair D…

Mojo/Bonino/Hunt – all replaced with Gaudreau or minimum contract guys or Iowa/prospects

How will we be better?(obviously this assumes Fiala and Kaprizov are signed)

1) We’re younger and faster
2) Powerplay will be better without Parise and Suter.
3) Rossi and Boldy have potential to become offensive weapons far better than who they will replace (likely back half of the season)
4) Better understanding of how to best utilize Kaprizov and Fiala

What still needs to improve:
1) obviously improving our 1C/2C slots (Rossi could mitigate this one, but we still need another solid center option)
2) need more size on defense (Would need to be a trade)
3) need our top prospects to develop a little faster than normal (to keep the team improving in years 3&4 of the buyouts)

There’s also the thinking that in 2-3 years we’ll have a stockpile of highly ranked prospects (mostly defense) that will need a slot to play in…

Beckman/Khusnidhinov/Kohvanov on offense

O’Rorke/Hunt/Lambos/Peart on defense

Wallstedt in net

Hopefully your right Joe. 2 to 3 years doesn’t help us now. Boldy and Rossi have done nothing in the NHL. We all know about potential in Minnesota in all our sports to know until they prove it potential means nothing. Hopefully we can work out something to help us now, I think we are all sick in Minnesota about hearing wait till next year or 2 to 3 years we will be great.

I remember when Dumba, Grandlund, and Coyle and company were all coming into the system. The talking heads were predicting the Wild to become a dynasty like the Blackhawks or Islanders with multiple Cups under their belt. Potential never seems to live up to the hype. Now it’s Boldy, Rossi etc. perhaps the will fare better.

I’m still not completely sold on Kaprizov to the degree most people including all the analyst are. He had some great games, some good games and some less than good games. His disappearance in the playoffs is a bit of a flag to me.

I don’t remember any Dynasty talk, but I do remember they were talked about being the next new core with some hype, most of that hype was about Granlund due to his WJC and World Championships domination (and lacrosse goal)

They didn’t do much together here, but they’ve all been above average NHL players…

The difference I see with the new core is we have 2 legitimate game changers now (when resigned). We’ve seen them both singlehandedly win games last year…

Kaprizov is the real deal and has superstar potential (I’ve been watching him play since we drafted him 6 years ago). If he had a competent center, he’d score 50 goals…

There’s a few tweets floating around from an interview with Islanders RFA goalie Ilya Sorokin about his ongoing contract negotiations, a reporter asked him if he was going to play the “I could go back to the KHL card” and he said (I’m paraphrasing) people don’t fall for that excuse anymore. It’s never going to happen”. He then specifically mentioned Kaprizov’s camp was saying that and he just laughed at it… never going to happen!

Apparently its not such a glamorous life playing in the KHL….

It will probably depend a whole lot on Rossi and Boldy for next year.

But otherwise I’m fine with the 2-3 year strategy.

We were never going to win a cup with Parise and Suter as a focal point of the team. That ship sailed a long time ago.

That’s really refreshing to hear, and Sorokin should know better than anyone. He’s basically from the same city as Kirill, they came up with the same KHL team, played together at CSKA, and came into the NHL at the same time. They’re both in the same contract situation right now as well. No idea if they’re buddies, but they definitely should know each other well.

100% chance the wild will have a worse points percentage this coming season than they did last season. Not sure how else to judge whether they are better now or last year.

tswoboda wrote:

100% chance the wild will have a worse points percentage this coming season than they did last season. Not sure how else to judge whether they are better now or last year.

This will likely be the case for pretty much all teams besides the top 1-2, just due to playing a normal schedule.

lol, so Mennell signs a 1 year 2-way contract with the Leafs…

JoeMX1825 wrote:

lol, so Mennell signs a 1 year 2-way contract with the Leafs…

That had to be the same type deal BG offered. No idea why he wouldnt sign that here. He would have had opportunity for sure. Now if he doesnt play 30 NHL games the Wild will get NOTHING in return for him since its a conditional pick.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
lol, so Mennell signs a 1 year 2-way contract with the Leafs…

That had to be the same type deal BG offered. No idea why he wouldnt sign that here. He would have had opportunity for sure. Now if he doesnt play 30 NHL games the Wild will get NOTHING in return for him since its a conditional pick.

if he doesn’t get 30 games on Toronto’s dumpster fire blueline, maybe he’s just not good enough to worry about anymore?

I’m fine with it, with Spurgeon and Addison likely long term pillars on our blueline, we didn’t need another sub 6′ guy if the goal is to add more size to the blueline…

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
lol, so Mennell signs a 1 year 2-way contract with the Leafs…

That had to be the same type deal BG offered. No idea why he wouldnt sign that here. He would have had opportunity for sure. Now if he doesnt play 30 NHL games the Wild will get NOTHING in return for him since its a conditional pick.

The Wild didn’t offer the $400k minors salary that Toronto gave him. So either Leipold wouldn’t pony up the big AHL salary or Billy G was being petty AF… either way they lost a depth defenseman over $100k.

It’s funny how Billy G is labelled this “tough guy” negotiator with Brennan Menell and other contracts right now but totally caved to Boldy last spring and burned the ELC year for nothing.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>tswoboda wrote:</div>
100% chance the wild will have a worse points percentage this coming season than they did last season. Not sure how else to judge whether they are better now or last year.

This will likely be the case for pretty much all teams besides the top 1-2, just due to playing a normal schedule.

Huh? Did the NHL dish out more points than normal last year?

How else can we tell if the Wild are better next season? Should we just go off your eye test and you can tell us they are better even though they finish worse in the standings?

Maybe this will brighten your day…

I hate that my replies on “Quote” messages never get published for some reason…so i’ll just post them here in a fresh post:

My points percentage reply was based on no longer playing in Covid divisions with 1-3 bad teams you could repeatedly beat up on and take 80% of the possible points from them…with a normal schedule each Team’s losses should be greater which should reduce points percentages across the board right?

Boldy would have been only 2 seasons away at BC from becoming a UFA, burning the 1st year of College studs ELC is pretty common practice and by no means “caving”. The difference is most teams typically get a few games (mostly playoffs in a normal season) use out of that 1st year (like Caufield) For whatever reason GMBG decided Boldy only got to Warmup once in the playoffs…comparing the value of Boldy to Mennell is laughable and I think the Menell decision was more of a principle decision GMBG made (we won’t let a cup of coffee NHL prospect dictate his contract) vs they didn’t see any talent in Mennell… and Toronto is willing to throw money at anybody who has a possible NHL pulse, I would guess they have the highest AHL salaries in the league by a HUGE margin…they just don’t care about the $$…

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I hate that my replies on “Quote” messages never get published for some reason…so i’ll just post them here in a fresh post:

When I have had that happen its when there are multiple quotes like a thread. Usually I just delete the other quotes and only quote the most recent reply and I don’t have issues.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
I hate that my replies on “Quote” messages never get published for some reason…so i’ll just post them here in a fresh post:

When I have had that happen its when there are multiple quotes like a thread. Usually I just delete the other quotes and only quote the most recent reply and I don’t have issues.

good to know!

Russo on KFAN filling in for 2 hours. He had Frank Seravali on who is great.
He isnt going to be able to talk too much about the Wild, but he’s fielding calls and he just said there is no doubt in his mind that BG deciding to buy out Suter was not solely about “on the ice” performance.

I’m listening as well, couple of questions I wish Russo would answer or talk about:

1) Talk about the current Shae Weber situation to give an example of a cap recapture possibility for Nashville, this would better explain it to Wild fans..
2) Are GM’s allowed to talk directly to a player regarding a contract negotiation? Why hasn’t he asked GMBG if he has or is planning to do this with Kirill?
3) Does Russo have examples of Parise and/or Suter’s rumored locker room issues?

I was reading up on Frederick Gaudreau and one blogger seems to think that’s a sneaky great signing for the Wild. His analytics are essentially exactly the same as Ek’s defensively. Will this allow Ek to be elevated? I know we’ve debated whether or not Ek playing with more skill would make a difference in his offense, but I dont think it would hurt him.

I think the Wild is actually a bit stronger at Center this year over last, but the other signings on D will remain to be seen if they are any better. Definitely counting on guys like Boldy jumping in and perhaps Rossi right away too. Boldy has to be a favorite to make the lineup right out of camp. Rossi I think will start in Iowa.

Your takes are getting really homerish (is that word??) Joe.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

My points percentage reply was based on no longer playing in Covid divisions with 1-3 bad teams you could repeatedly beat up on and take 80% of the possible points from them…with a normal schedule each Team’s losses should be greater which should reduce points percentages across the board right?

No, that makes no sense. There’s still only 2 or 3 points handed out per game. Point totals can’t magically go up or down league wide, unless every game would go to OT. You can make the argument for MN, COL, STL, and AZ points going down this year based on competition – but that’s a far cry from league wide.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

Boldy would have been only 2 seasons away at BC from becoming a UFA, burning the 1st year of College studs ELC is pretty common practice and by no means “caving”. The difference is most teams typically get a few games (mostly playoffs in a normal season) use out of that 1st year (like Caufield) For whatever reason GMBG decided Boldy only got to Warmup once in the playoffs…comparing the value of Boldy to Mennell is laughable and I think the Menell decision was more of a principle decision GMBG made (we won’t let a cup of coffee NHL prospect dictate his contract) vs they didn’t see any talent in Mennell… and Toronto is willing to throw money at anybody who has a possible NHL pulse, I would guess they have the highest AHL salaries in the league by a HUGE margin…they just don’t care about the $$…

Again the Boldy take is just wrong. Teams absolutely DO NOT EVER burn an ELC year on a DRAFTED prospect without playing a single NHL game. They burn a year on undrafted free agents all the time, but that’s a completely different example. Give me one example of a drafted college prospect that burned an ELC year without playing a single NHL game.

It was well documented that Billy G wanted to start Boldy’s NHL contract for the 21-22 season… they had no plans for him to play NHL games last season, and made that obvious when they never played him. Boldy and his agent strongarmed Billy G into burning the year for nothing and fans don’t understand how unprecedented that is. Someone so plugged in to Wild operations should realize that.

CaptainMusky wrote:

I was reading up on Frederick Gaudreau and one blogger seems to think that’s a sneaky great signing for the Wild. His analytics are essentially exactly the same as Ek’s defensively. Will this allow Ek to be elevated? I know we’ve debated whether or not Ek playing with more skill would make a difference in his offense, but I dont think it would hurt him.

I think the Wild is actually a bit stronger at Center this year over last, but the other signings on D will remain to be seen if they are any better. Definitely counting on guys like Boldy jumping in and perhaps Rossi right away too. Boldy has to be a favorite to make the lineup right out of camp. Rossi I think will start in Iowa.

If we’re just going by acquisitions/departures then they’re worse at center this year. I mean Frederick Gaudreau vs Nick Bonino is a clear loss – at least it is to anyone that’s not a biased Wild fan. Bonino was a very important player for the wild last season. But we also have to hope for more progression out of EEK and Sturm and the possibility of Rossi cracking the lineup. Don’t expect anything different out of Rask and Hartman.

The D corps are going to be worse, no way you can make a valid argument against that. Just based on depth alone.

Goalies are voodoo so who knows there.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>tswoboda wrote:</div>
There’s been rumors for years that Suter/Parise were locker room cancer – and the Suter buyout definitely supports that thought. But personally, I’m withholding judgement until the day something is finally published or said publicly on the issue. No one has done that yet to my knowledge.

The problem with these rumors is they follow the typical Minnesota sports fan pattern. We have a player sign a big contract and then suddenly he becomes the worst underperformer in the history of sports. And generally a locker room cancer besides.

TMSF flow chart: Team didn’t win cup —> expensive guys’ fault —> hate the expensive guys —> expensive guys are cancer —> hope for next year

But at the same time there’s been a lot of smoke around Parise/Suter, and you know what they say about smoke and fire.

Kind of like Joe Mauer didn’t have a killer instinct. Look Suter and Parise did what they could and won a lot of games.
They were not the reason for lack of playoff success when they were here. I so far have not been that impressed with BG. I get it takes time to work a plan. At this point he has his best two players unsigned and created a cap hell scenario for the next several years. Yes he drafted Rossi and Boldy but then again that was exactly a sly GM move.