2022 MN WILD/NHL THREAD

Freaking painful having to listen to Gigi and even worse when the Wild are losing.

Greenway, yeah, looked better for one night. Isn’t that the problem though? He’s done that forever, looks good for a couple of games, looks like crap for 10 games, looks good for a game, looks like crap… He needs to get his sh!t together for more than 1-2 games.

Fiala. Ug. Make one too many moves, lose the puck. Make one too many moves, lose the puck. Wash, rinse, repeat. Arrange these words in the correct order to form a sentence: Fiala was a pan in the flash. Typical Wild bad luck, here we have a player who needs to get gone anyway and what a coincidence he’s playing like sh!t and has basically zero value just when we need to deal his buttski outta here.

Hard to get revved up about any moves the Wild can make when the biggest “moves” they need to make involve shedding players and salary fast and hard to be able to afford the dual buyouts. We’re going to lose way more talent after this year than we’re going to gain, the only good move now IMO is players/salary for future picks or drafted players not yet in the league. Good news is Brackett and BG seem to have a much better eye for the developing talent than we’ve ever had, so hopefully the pain will be matched by a gain 3 years down the road.

Gaudreau is a decent player for what he is for sure. He just shouldnt be on the top line which we can all agree on. I dont mind him on the roster, just not there. It was funny his becoming Wild episode aired before the game and he went on and on about how many pucks he shoots every day. Lets see some of that in a game.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Hard to get revved up about any moves the Wild can make when the biggest “moves” they need to make involve shedding players and salary fast and hard to be able to afford the dual buyouts. We’re going to lose way more talent after this year than we’re going to gain

I’m not seeing this…These are the players the Wild could lose next season, the Wild have something like $15 million to spend on them:

Fiala – he’s an enigma, he’s in a contract year and is struggling, but are his struggles due to playing with inferior center talent or is it Fiala? This is GMBG’s toughest call, do you pay his likely $6.5 x 1 year arbitration salary and walk him to FA? or risk signing him for 5+ years and get the Fiala we’ve had the first 15 games this season or does he turn into the “gamebreaker” we’ve seen glimpses of when he finally gets a decent Center to play with?

Greenway – He’s a RFA, so we control what he does. I think GMBG’s just wondering if he’s worth the pay increase he can likely demand due to his age,size,rfa status? Duhaime could be a better replacement for Greenway next year and he’s on a $700k contract.

Sturm – He’s a UFA, so he has complete control of where he wants to go, it will be upto GMBG to not overpay for Sturm knowing the center depth we have coming down the pipeline. If he can’t play higher than 3C is he worth the money? Could Gaudreau or an Iowa guy replace him on the 4th line for 1/2 the price? probably..

Goligoski – GMBG needs to decide if his game is dropping with his age and is he better than Addison still on his rookie contract. If the rumored 1 year x $2.5 extension is real, maybe it’s cheap insurance? You’ll free up some money letting Benn and Merrill go..

Kahkonen – He’s a career backup and you now have stud Jesper Wallstedt who’s 1-2 years from being the backup and 2-3 years away from being the fulltime starter…Backup goalies are easy to find on the open market if needed…

So I really don’t see how we’ll be worse off next year as we have legit replacements for everybody (outside of Fiala, but perhaps Boldy/Beckman make big jumps next year?) if GMBG could swing a trade using Fiala for somebody like JT Miller, that could be an overall improvement of the team because it slots legit centers (Miller, Rossi, Ek, Sturm/Gaudreau into their proper positions.

I really like Sturms game. He will get paid elsewhere I am afraid.

Ripjiggen wrote:

I really like Sturms game. He will get paid elsewhere I am afraid.

Honestly, the only thing that could keep him with the Wild is that his girlfriend/fianace plays for the Whitecaps…GMBG can’t offer him the money and more likely the top 9 slot he wants that others teams can…

IF the Wild wants to keep Ek at 2C then Sturm can take over 3rd line center slot, I think he would be fine with that, but do they want Ek at 2C with Rossi coming next year and perhaps we trade Fiala/Dumba for a legit 2C (like a JT Miller?)

or you play Sturm at the wing and see if he can project higher than 3rd line?

The Podcast Russo did with Sturm was pretty telling to me. Nico knows the situation he is in, says he loves it here and with his girlfriend in town I am sure that will come into play as well. Money talks, but based on his comments it really didnt seem to be overly important to him, but he understands the situation the Wild and he are in for sure.
I’d like to see him stay because early this year he had made a lot of progress and was our best faceoff guy. I think he has slumped a little lately but still significantly better than he was last year.

I would prefer to see Dumba involved in a trade rather than Fiala. But either one of those players may not be enough to get Miller from Vancouver. They may want something more if they would even consider a trade in the first place. Russo speculating is all this is so no sense in wasting too many keystrokes on it.

It’s plenty early. 15 games in and we are off to the second best start in the franchise history and that’s without any of our supposed super stars contributing a whole lot. I don’t see BG doing anything too rash now or in the near future. We have enough plug and play talent in Iowa to cover any injuries.

Good new is Pitlick may have put Rask in the press box and locked the door. I have to admit I feel a bit sorry for ol Victor. He took a lot of harsh criticisim over the off season. Right down to he was the reason KK didn’t want to sign. His only real crime may have been he was put in a position that was above his skill level. But looking at how KK played with Rask as his center last year and how he’s playing so far this year who is to say?

So much Fiala slander, I wonder if it will continue when he gets red hot for the second half of the season… like the last 2 seasons. And where is that minimum arbitration award number coming from? You made that number up in your head. There’s no minimum award for arbitration except for 85% of previous salary on team elected arbitration. But the Wild can’t elect arbitration again so it’s only going there Fiala elects it. And the salary would be highly affected by his performance this year.

What could Sturm actually get on the open market? $2m, maybe pushing $3m? He’s a solid bottom 6 center but the only bottom 6 centers that get paid are after they go on a deep playoff run.

Goligoski sounds like he will sign a cheap $2ish extension after Jan 1. If that happens it’s extremely obvious cap circumvention… I love it.

Kahkonen should be retained for another minimum salary contract.

Greenway right now looks like the odd man out. He’ll be moved in the offseason to make room for the next group of prospects.

Bjugstad and Merril are 2 more pending UFAs that could either be retained on <$1m contracts or easily replaced. So far I think they have earned their keep.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I’m not seeing this…These are the players the Wild could lose next season, the Wild have something like $15 million to spend on them:

Fiala – he’s an enigma, he’s in a contract year and is struggling, but are his struggles due to playing with inferior center talent or is it Fiala? This is GMBG’s toughest call, do you pay his likely $6.5 x 1 year arbitration salary and walk him to FA?

It’s going to be tight no matter what they do, unless everybody signs very, very friendly deals (unlikely) somebody’s got to go overboard and they basically have to take future prospects or picks, not salary or there’s no point.

This was THE risk with the buyouts, severe cap constraints for 3 years.

Fiala and Greenway have to be the leading suspects. Everybody talks about Dumba due to frustration with his inability to resist risky plays, but IMO Bill-n-Deano just LIKE the guy and they are willing to go against popular opinion to keep him.

But as I said, just our luck the players we have to move are basically playing like crap.

tswoboda wrote:

So much Fiala slander, I wonder if it will continue when he gets red hot for the second half of the season… like the last 2 seasons.

Too bad Red Hot Fiala’s play ended when the playoffs started last year. 1 goal in 7 games, I think?

I think Sturm could get $3aav on a 3-4 year term, he’s the type of player ALL teams look to add to their team. I compair him with guys like Barclay Goodrow or Puis Suter, both just got paid bigtime..

There’s just ZERO chance we’ll be able to resign Dumba, ZERO, GMBG knows this and has 1 3/4 years to trade him before he leaves for nothing…Greenway can be easily replaced with Duhaime at a fraction of the price…

Every NHL team goes through this in a tight salary cap world, you have an assembly line of players, some are traded away for prostects due to becoming good players and the team simply can’t afford them, some are made a priority to sign and take large chunks of the capspace, the good teams have a steady stream of good prospects to plug into the gaps on their rookie deals, the Wild are now able to do that due to their recent draft success, we’ll see if they can keep Judd on the payroll and continue to build the propsect pool in Iowa, because 4-5 years from now we’ll go through it again with Rossi,Boldy,Addison,Wallstedt and other young players hopefully justifying large pay raises and it will be guys like Hartman, Duhaime and other vets we’ll need to trade away to make room…

Nice writeup on Rossi here and a great video clip of a PP goal recently. 11 pts in 9 games. Is that good?
He is logging a lot of minutes. As much as we’d love for him to be up here its best he plays down there as much as possible.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I think Sturm could get $3aav on a 3-4 year term, he’s the type of player ALL teams look to add to their team. I compair him with guys like Barclay Goodrow or Puis Suter, both just got paid bigtime..

Suter is a good comp, albeit with more offensive upside. He was also a better player than Sturm last year. He got $3.25m. Goodrow is the exact example of a guy getting overpaid because he won the cup. Blake Coleman the same thing. Bonino got his $4m contract after winning 2 cups in Pitt.

I just don’t think there’s a ton of Nico Sturm love outside of Wild fans. Minnesota fans love to overvalue their role players and $hit on their stars.

Boldy activated off IR and assigned to Iowa. Another of our shiny toys back into the mix.

tswoboda wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
I think Sturm could get $3aav on a 3-4 year term, he’s the type of player ALL teams look to add to their team. I compair him with guys like Barclay Goodrow or Puis Suter, both just got paid bigtime..

Suter is a good comp, albeit with more offensive upside. He was also a better player than Sturm last year. He got $3.25m. Goodrow is the exact example of a guy getting overpaid because he won the cup. Blake Coleman the same thing. Bonino got his $4m contract after winning 2 cups in Pitt.

I just don’t think there’s a ton of Nico Sturm love outside of Wild fans. Minnesota fans love to overvalue their role players and $hit on their stars.

I think Sturm is desired around the league, remember Suter also played with Kane and Debrincat, so his stats were inflated because of it… I’m just pointing out that these types of guys (young but with NHL experiance, can play center and is a good penalty killer with a non-stop motor) get paid…

CaptainMusky wrote:

Boldy activated off IR and assigned to Iowa. Another of our shiny toys back into the mix.

yep, he’s likely to play this Friday too…

Montreal is reportedly looking for a puck moving defenseman. Nick Suzuki for Dumba. Discuss… We’d have to give more I think but how much, not sure. Montreal probably not real willing to move him either.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Montreal is reportedly looking for a puck moving defenseman. Nick Suzuki for Dumba. Discuss… We’d have to give more I think but how much, not sure. Montreal probably not real willing to move him either.

That would never happen, he’s their 1C for the next 9 years.. I’d glady take Joel Edmundson (currently on IR) and the extra cap space instead!

I was on the trade Dumba over Fiala bandwagon and now I might be up for trading both. I’ve always been down on Dumba because of the types of dumb plays we’ve seen from him over the past two weeks and the span of his career.

Fiala on the other hand is tougher. He could be a bonafide superstar when he is on track. I’m confident he will find his stride at some point this season. But the problem is how bad he is when he’s bad. It’s not because of his linemates. HE IS THE PROBLEM on whatever line he is on when he’s playing like this. He can’t keep the puck on his stick even on the most simple moves, constantly misses the net and turns pucks over all across the rink. I’m not sure I’m willing to wait to find out if he is the superstar player or the guy that can’t keep a puck on his stick.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Montreal is reportedly looking for a puck moving defenseman. Nick Suzuki for Dumba. Discuss…

Suzuki gets a raise to 7.8 million next season. That’s a 1.8 million increase over Dumba’s cap hit. We’d need to unload more salary than Dumba in the deal and why would Montreal want that?

Would be great, can’t see how we’d make it work after this year.

I agree to a degree Mahto with the exception I don’t see Fiala quite as bad as you describe. He tries to drive the puck to the net and quite often loses the puck on his way there. He did split the defense on a nifty move against the Sharks but got stuffed by the goalie.

He is active with the puck and I think he is pushing right now to get himself going. He puts forth the effort every shift on the ice and frankly I can’t say the same about our new highly paid Calder winner.

Fiala is one of those players that can make you highly regret trading him. But he also might be one of those guys who aren’t going to thrive on a certain team for whatever reason. The Wild as a organization have not always treated him as a valued member of the team. He may need to go somewhere else to unlock that player we know he can be.

Had it been last year I would agree with you. This year he’s fighting the puck more than Rask does. Like I said, I still think he can turn it around, but this has become a thing with him. He did it the beginning of last year and for the majority of the playoffs.

Fiala’s problem is he’s shooting 4% right now. His shot volume, shot quality, and scoring chances are still near best on the team and nothing to be concerned about. If his shooting percentage was his career average, 11%, he’d have 6 goals right now… a 30+ goal pace. He’s going to get hot at some point and the goals will come in bunches. That’s just who he is. Fans get off on calling him terrible when he’s cold and a superstar when he’s hot. The reality is he’s neither. He’s a streaky scorer who averages out to a legit 1st line winger.

tswoboda wrote:

Fiala’s problem is he’s shooting 4% right now. His shot volume, shot quality, and scoring chances are still near best on the team and nothing to be concerned about. If his shooting percentage was his career average, 11%, he’d have 6 goals right now… a 30+ goal pace. He’s going to get hot at some point and the goals will come in bunches. That’s just who he is. Fans get off on calling him terrible when he’s cold and a superstar when he’s hot. The reality is he’s neither. He’s a streaky scorer who averages out to a legit 1st line winger, that coughs up the puck more than Suter

Fixed it for you. For the record I like Fiala. I’m just worried about his puck handling issues this season. I think that’s partly why he’s not scoring as well. The last couple years you couldn’t get him off the puck. Now he can’t stick to it with super glue.

He’s taking fewer shots from the perimeter and more shots are coming from closer in. They are going to start to go in here eventually. Even when he leads the team in scoring in the past the Wild staff were always quick to come up with the ya buts… ya but he’s taking too many bad penalties, ya but he’s turning the puck over, ya but he needs to pass instead of taking the low percentage shot.

Now he’s cleaned up most of that imo especially the penalties and the bone headed turnovers. Funny how they have remained silent on Dumba’s glaring turnover gaffes and low percentage shot attempts. It showed me a lot when Fiala cross iced the pass to let KK score the game winning goal in Ottawa. Fiala could have easily taken that shot and probably gotten a much needed goal for himself after a beautiful effort fighting off the defender to break in alone.

Instead he made the unselfish play where I don’t think a lot of other players given his circumstances would have done. Kevin deserves his chance this season and I hope the Wild give him the full measure of taking it.

Its clear with the upcoming dead cap that there are some cap casualties coming. Getting something, anything for these guys to make room for ELC type or vet minimum guys is going to be important. The typical suspects we always come back to are Greenway, Dumba and Fiala. Greenway would fetch a second round pick I am sure. Dumba and Fiala could be exchanged for a decent forward. Could we see something with Vancouver as Russo speculated? We also need to keep in mind that Dumba has a NTC list coming up this summer.
Greenway came out with his hair on fire last game but as we’ve said those games are typically short lived. If we could snag Miller for Fiala or Dumba. I am unsure if they would go after Fiala since he isnt under long term contract. Dumba has a least a little term. We also have a full allotment of draft picks so that would be attractive in a trade but I hesitate on shipping those away since the next two drafts are so stacked.

mahtofire14 wrote:

Fixed it for you. For the record I like Fiala. I’m just worried about his puck handling issues this season. I think that’s partly why he’s not scoring as well. The last couple years you couldn’t get him off the puck. Now he can’t stick to it with super glue.

He’s turning the puck over at the lowest rate of his career… He’s like 5th on the team in turnovers/time on ice whereas he’s lead the team every other season. He’s killing penalties and playing the most responsible D game in his Wild career. He’s got 2 penalties through 15 games. Everything about his game this year is an improvement from the last 2 seasons except for the goal column. He’s shooting 4%… that’s going to change and the goals will come.

CaptainMusky wrote:

We also need to keep in mind that Dumba has a NTC list coming up this summer.

Pretty sure that already kicked in. 10-team no trade list effective summer 2021.

Whomever is the Vegas Golden Knights salary cap guru deserves a raise! Check out their complete mess of a roster balance sheet in Capfriendly…

https://www.capfriendly.com/teams/goldenknights

Anybody see the story about the 24 year old Slovak Hockey player who collapsed on the ice during a game a few weeks ago due to a heart attack and died 4 days later in a hosptial, it turns out he was playing while having Myocarditis! The GM of the team then committed suicide 2 days later and supposedly left a note saying he felt responsible for the player’s death after making him play through it (They didn’t know he had Myocarditis at the time)

Russo tweeted out that the story has really hit Marco Rossi hard…understandibly so…

Sad sad sad….

Saw that story a couple weeks back, but didn’t realize it was myocarditis. I’m sure that definitely hits different for Rossi.

Major, MAJOR line shake up for the Wild today…

Greenway-Eriksson Ek-Foligno
Fiala-Hartman-Zuccarello
Kaprizov-Rask-Gaudreau
Duhaime-Sturm-Pitlick

tswoboda wrote:

Saw that story a couple weeks back, but didn’t realize it was myocarditis. I’m sure that definitely hits different for Rossi.

Major, MAJOR line shake up for the Wild today…

Greenway-Eriksson Ek-Foligno
Fiala-Hartman-Zuccarello
Kaprizov-Rask-Gaudreau
Duhaime-Sturm-Pitlick

I like it. Especially the big guys being reunited like last year. Rask being back is interesting but I think we all know he would be given another chance eventually. Who knows for how long though.