2022 MN WILD/NHL THREAD

Boys are jumping tonight!

Terrible goal let in by Fluery. Yuk!

Fleury doesn’t look very sharp tonight.

lindyrig79 wrote:

Fleury doesn’t look very sharp tonight.

lots of guys having just terrible games (Zuccarello, Kaprizov, Gologoski, Benn, Bjugstad) thankfully the Fiala line is carrying them…Fluery had 1 bad goal but is getting ZERO help in front of the net

This powerplay is soooo broken…

Not getting any help from the Preds!

Lazy coverage effort by Gaudreau leads to a shorthanded goal, Flower looked lost as well…

Zuccarello and Gologoski should just sit on the bench the rest of the game, Sharks wouldn’t have a chance then…

The Blues are just throttling the Predators tonight… in Nashville. Wow.

Was at the game. Basically one line played tonight.
Fleury was flat out not good.
1st line not good.
I guess getting good practice for track meets with blues.
Will have to get one of the goalies rolling in the playoffs.
Survived any injuries that’s a plus.

So trade Dumba, Goligoski, and Probably someone else and sign Fiala? They pretty much have to find a way to afford him at this point. Leaving our D as spurgeon and Middleton, brodin and Merrill, and Addison and Mermis next year? I have no clue how they do it but it’ll be interesting.

Well BG said Kevin needs to prove it right? Prove he’s worth the money and and he’s certainly done that. So did BG have a plan to sign him or was his plan that he banked on Fiala not being able to prove his worth and ship him off with no explanation needed.

Fiala is putting BG on the spot every passing game. At this point Fiala is going to have to come right out and say he does not want to be here and time to move on for BG to get off the hook.

Goose is full NTC. Doubt he signs just to lift it.
Also would still have to sign Middleton.

Then you still have the issue of trying to sign Boldy in 2 years. Are the fans going to be any happier to have him walk.

Going to be interesting. Not going to worry to much about till the seasons over however.

Its going to be a heckuva conundrum for sure. One we cannot worry about too much now. There were folks speculating on twitter about some team offer sheeting Fiala. I dont really see why they would do that unless just to ensure they get him over someone else. But they know the Wild are in a pickle so why bother?
We certainly have to keep pace with the Blues and win the game in hand to get home ice.
It will be interesting to see who they play in net. It was Binner last night who had been faltering, but it appears he had a good game. Husso did not look good against us at all. The middle period of games has been trouble.

Total bleep show yester. Goaltending sucked, defense sucked, effort level sucked. It was a Tour de Suckdom.

Ice Cap wrote:

Fiala is putting BG on the spot every passing game.

Only if you believe BG really wants to keep Fiala.

I said back at the beginning of the season the way BG and Deano are lukewarm and arms distance with Fiala says to me that the don’t think he’s a fit with the team the want to build.

After scoring the first 2 goals I thought it would be a cake walk for the boys. “Tour de Suckdom” followed. Thanks, Grouse, for a new phrase…

Reality is we just can’t afford Fiala unless he would take a huge team friendly deal and I think everyone can agree he won’t and honestly he shouldn’t…he’s in the prime of his career and has earned his upcomming payday. Now it will obviously suck to lose him, BUT the return for him is getting better and better each week of the season as he continues to rack up goals and points…at a minimum, we’ll get a top prospect who’s likely only a year or 2 away and a 1st and maybe more draft picks…we obvously can’t take back significant salary in retun so he’ll likely need to be traded to a rebuilding team with excess capspace (Ottawa/Arizona/Buffalo/Seattle/Detroit)

I used to be a huge keep Fiala at all costs guy, i’m now at peace that he’ll be traded…obviously then the challenge next season will be finding player(s) to replace his production, obviously some of that will fall on whomever replaces him, but replacing Gaudreau with Rossi should result in improved output from Boldy and the new linemate…

I’ve mentioned this example before, but if you can work out a trade before the draft with Ottawa and get back a Ridley Greig with 3 years of ELC left and a top 5 1st round pick at a minimum wouldn’t you take it? This would allow GMBG to resign Flower, Middleton and have space in the next 3 years to resign Boldy, Dewar, Duhaime, Addison…

There will be pain on either side of the decision, but if the plan is to survive the next 3 seasons before the caphits go away, then I think you take what you can get for Fiala now and move on…

Just love to see all the Fiala love. Was there ever a doubt? It’ll be sad to see him leave but like Joe, I made peace with that shortly after he signed the 1-year deal this summer. There was just no way he was staying here long term after that deal was signed, and at that time I was a lot higher on Fiala than most fans.

If you’re on the keep Fiala at all costs bandwagon, then you should really be on the trade Zuccy bandwagon too. If you want to do the cap gymnastics then look at the 23-24 season. They could probably make it work for next year by moving Dumba plus nickle and diming but it’s the following season when they hit a hard wall. Buyouts go up another $2m and Boldy will need a significant raise. Major salary would need to be moved out, not just trading a couple $2m contracts for $1m contracts. It’ll be very interesting how it plays out, but that can wait until after the playoffs. Hopefully it gets done by the draft, because they will definitely be vulnerable to an offer sheet. Offer sheet return would likely be a 1st, 2nd, and 3rd and that would be undervalue unless it’s a team with a top 5-10 pick.

Holiday weekend games should be outlawed. I barely caught any of the Blues game and watched the replay of Sharks game late last night. Goaltending was bad yesterday.

Draft picks, prospects are just that until they prove otherwise. Boldy looks promising if he can keep from being injury prone but we are still at a small sample size with him. Rossi has tapered off down in Iowa in fact no one is tearing it up down there. Lots of hope and wishes when you are filling out a roster with elc guys. I get it that that’s just life with the Wild right now and the next several years and we are not going to be able to keep a guy like Fiala around which is regrettable.

When you move a guy like Fiala you need to get proven value in return to keep your team at or near the competitive level it was with him or your team regresses. But if we can’t pay Fiala we can’t pay for equal value in return either so you are hoping on draft picks and prospects are going to pan out in a year or two or more. Hopefully they can get it done this year because it’s going to be hard if not impossible to be this competitive in the next years going forward. Going to be interesting to see what this team looks like in 4 or 5 years when KK comes looking for more $$.

I’m not against a Zuccy trade. He’s what 36 now? KK can make most anyone a hero on that line.

Ice Cap wrote:

When you move a guy like Fiala you need to get proven value in return to keep your team at or near the competitive level it was with him or your team regresses

There in lies our problem, we can’t afford to pay for proven value, otherwise we’d move heaven and earth to resign Fiala if we could, but we just can’t afford it, especially 2 years from now as mentioned earlier…

We’ll need a team’s top prospect and a 1st round pick +, that’s as close to proven value as we can get without the proven player caphit….

Ice Cap wrote:

I’m not against a Zuccy trade. He’s what 36 now? KK can make most anyone a hero on that line.

The ONLY way that works is with Kirill’s blessing and Zuccy is HIS ENTIRE LIFE here in MN all season long, so it’s not going to happen… It’s one of the drawbacks of having a legit superstar from overseas, you need to keep them happy at all costs on/off the ice or they can get burned out/homesick, etc and pack up and leave…When Zuccy’s contract is up in 3 years hopefully Kirill has a steady girlfreind/wife to take up his freetime, cuz right now all he has is a crappy laptop for computer games and Zuccy…

As I stated before.
I am sure Colorado fans are thinking the same about Kadri
Calgary with Johnny hockey
Forsberg in Nashville.
I think you could even argue they are better players than Fiala. More valuable to there team? Again debatable.

Hell Taresenko wanted to be traded only a handful of months ago.

Just the way the NHL works. It’s the tightest salary cap in all the major sports.

cap is going to go up a minimum $1 million each of the next 3 seasons before it explodes $5-7 million in 2025/2026 (possibly earlier as league revenues keep going up and the player escrow debt gets paid off sooner) so that will ease the final 2 year full caphit burden…

Ripjiggen wrote:

As I stated before.
I am sure Colorado fans are thinking the same about Kadri
Calgary with Johnny hockey
Forsberg in Nashville.
I think you could even argue they are better players than Fiala. More valuable to there team? Again debatable.

yeah, it’s the too much of a good thing is bad…You just hope your prospect pool is healthy and hopefully the players leaving are RFA’s so you can at least get some value back if forced to trade them vs losing a UFA for nothing…

Great news. Someone tested positive for Covid so they delayed their flight to MTL. The test is required for return to US. Hopefully it stays at 1 player and they get the heck out of Canada quick enough that no one else tests positive or they have to stay there. Whoever it is will be out 5 days which is 3 games. Fantastic. Watch its someone on the Kaprizov line because they all stunk last night.

Regarding Rossi in Iowa regressing possibly. I think what we are seeing from him is what happens when you have a long season and someone hasnt played meaningful hockey in about 2 years. He is a gym rat, but game conditioning is so much different and no way he can keep it up during the season. He will come out with guns blazing next year.

CaptainMusky wrote:

I think what we are seeing from him is what happens when you have a long season and someone hasnt played meaningful hockey in about 2 years. He is a gym rat, but game conditioning is so much different and no way he can keep it up during the season. He will come out with guns blazing next year.

This exactly, the other thing I found odd is they demoted him when Rask was sent down and he’s never been 1C since… I think they really want to bring him back up for the final homestand, give him a carrot for the offseason…

JoeMX1825 wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Ripjiggen wrote:</div>
As I stated before.
I am sure Colorado fans are thinking the same about Kadri
Calgary with Johnny hockey
Forsberg in Nashville.
I think you could even argue they are better players than Fiala. More valuable to there team? Again debatable.

yeah, it’s the too much of a good thing is bad…You just hope your prospect pool is healthy and hopefully the players leaving are RFA’s so you can at least get some value back if forced to trade them vs losing a UFA for nothing…

Or it’s there to have parity as much as possible which is more than you can say in baseball. Football has the cap but you can always change contracts and have to be a math wizard to figure it out.
Basketball they force their way around the league to try and make super teams.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Whoever it is will be out 5 days which is 3 games. Fantastic. Watch its someone on the Kaprizov line because they all stunk last night.

The good news is that Montreal is so bad that they can still be beaten without a full lineup. They are literally the worst team in the entire eastern conference.

gimruis wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>CaptainMusky wrote:</div>
Whoever it is will be out 5 days which is 3 games. Fantastic. Watch its someone on the Kaprizov line because they all stunk last night.

The good news is that Montreal is so bad that they can still be beaten without a full lineup. They are literally the worst team in the entire eastern conference.

You just locked the Wild into a loss in Montreal!