2023/2024 NHL/WILD Offseason-Season-Postseason Thread

Yeah I looked it up after you said KP figured it out. What a classless tool. She is a smokeshow though. Loved her in that movie Girl Next Door!

Tampa keeps doing Tampa things…. signs Brandon Hagel 8 x $6.5aav!

They sure like to lock their young guys up with the 8 year deals…with the cap projected to go up in the coming years, I guess the aav will start to look pretty good…

This will likely be a deal that Hartman’s agent uses as a comp…he’s 4 years older though…

Wild are ranked #10 in Corey Pronman’s 2023/2024 Under 23 Player Rankings….we were #8 last year…reason for the drop is that we ONLY added Charlie Stramel and Reily Heidt as noteworthy talents this offseason and the other teams ahead of us all added more…I do think its interesting he has Seattle ahead of us at #9, after Beniers, Wright and Sale, the rest of their prospects are pretty average imo…kind of kills his lists credibility imo…

His Wild player rankings were as follows:

1) Boldy
2) Rossi
3) Wallstedt
4) Stramel
5) Yurov
6) Faber
7) Khusnutdinov
8) Bankier
9) Ohgren
10) Lambos
11) Beckman
12) Heidt
13) Peart
14) Haight
15) Hunt
16) Kumpulainen
17) Lorenz
18) Masters
19) Petrovsky
20) Spacek

He ranks some of these players lower than other talent evaluators (Ohgren as an example) and he’s bullish on others (Bankier)

I don’t see how he has Boldy as a prospect when he’s an established nhl player.
To me a prospect should be someone either in the system or jockeying between the nhl and the ahl.

Tom schmitt wrote:

I don’t see how he has Boldy as a prospect when he’s an established nhl player.
To me a prospect should be someone either in the system or jockeying between the nhl and the ahl.

I believe he includes all players under a certain age, 23 I think regardless of whether they are a regular NHLer or not.

Im actually surprised he has Stramel that high. He had a terrible year last year. Was going through the loss of his father, so there is probably a rebound coming especially with Hastings the new coach should unlock him Id think.

Rooting hard for Stramel. Hoping he can continue to develop this year!

AnotherFisherman wrote:

Rooting hard for Stramel. Hoping he can continue to develop this year!

I am too! He’s got something you cant teach and that is size. He does seem to skate well especially for his size.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>Tom schmitt wrote:</div>
I don’t see how he has Boldy as a prospect when he’s an established nhl player.
To me a prospect should be someone either in the system or jockeying between the nhl and the ahl.

I believe he includes all players under a certain age, 23 I think regardless of whether they are a regular NHLer or not.

Exactly. It’s not a prospect ranking and the writer doesn’t claim it to be one. The teams ahead of the Wild will all have u23 impact players in the NHL.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I do think its interesting he has Seattle ahead of us at #9, after Beniers, Wright and Sale, the rest of their prospects are pretty average imo…kind of kills his lists credibility imo…

Wright and Beniers will be their 1/2 centers for 10 years. Beniers just won the Calder. He’s putting more emphasis on the top of the list than the depth, which makes sense. The Wild have a super deep pool but almost all are bottom 6 forwards or bottom pair D… the kind of players readily available in free agency. I would trade the Wild’s entire list for a Jack Hughes or Connor Bedard.

another interesting thing I found is that they are listing Marat Khusnutdinov as 5’11”, if thats true, then he grew 3 inches since last year…really hard to beleive….his KHL profile still says 5’8″

it’s Russia, so we likely won’t know for sure until he gets over here next year…

I fixed my post to “Top Organizational Players under 23 years old”…

5 Young Wild players who I feel need to have a great season to get their development/confidence back on track are:

Marco Rossi – easy pick, difference is he needs to do it in the NHL now…

Rieger Lorenz – former 2nd round pick who’s been UNDER the radar since being drafted. He has the frame of a prototypical NHL Power Forward. Like Boldy, he had a very tough freshman season on a very established NCAA program that prefers to play more experianced players, this is the season he needs to take over as a player and make a name for himself…

Hunter Haight – This is a pivitol season for Hunter, needs to show he’s either the player who took over the OHL after getting traded or he’s the lackluster player who didn’t do much the first 1/2 of the OHL season…The kid has all of the offensive talent in the world..

David Spacek – was last year an aboration or the launching ramp for a late round draft gem? we’ll see…

Kyle Masters – same as Spacek, also how will he look back from his injury?

tswoboda wrote:

Wright and Beniers will be their 1/2 centers for 10 years. Beniers just won the Calder. He’s putting more emphasis on the top of the list than the depth, which makes sense. The Wild have a super deep pool but almost all are bottom 6 forwards or bottom pair D… the kind of players readily available in free agency. I would trade the Wild’s entire list for a Jack Hughes or Connor Bedard.

that makes sense, I don’t see how Buffalo isn’t #1 this year then, they are stacked top to bottom with elite talent…

Thought it was interesting he has Rossi at #2 and talked about Rossi for awhile on his podcast. His take is what I’ve been preaching but absolutely no Wild fans want to hear.

Pronman:

The hype got out of control at times, thinking this is going to be a premier player or legit #1 center. There is this NEED in Minnesota – We NEED centers, we need to draft centers, we need to develop centers … Is it the worst outcome in the world if he becomes a top 6 winger? … I don’t think it’s the end of the world if he ends up on the wing.

Don’t disagree, and it’s the logical move for ALL young center’s that can’t hack it in ANY league. My thing is that the Wild have shown ZERO interest in even trying it yet…so in their minds, they haven’t seen center problems (defenseive zone coverage) with him yet..which leads to my argument of at least giving him an extended try playing with elite skilled players to see if his offense/confidence can be sparked…(they aren’t going to mess with the Boldy-Ek-Jojo line) so that leaves either the 1st, 3rd or 4th, 4th does nothing for him imo, 3rd could work with Freddy and Foligno but those players don’t scream having a Shooters mentality, obviously 1st would be ideal for Rossi) yes he got the cup of coffee with Boldy early last season for 4-5 games, but at that time nobody not named Kaprizov was doing any 5-5 scoring…

I hope Deano gives him a shot at 1C in the preseason when Hartman gets a game off, if he shines, then give him more games…I beleive they did that 1 preseason game last year and the Rossi-Kaprizov-Zuccy line looked really good?

Looks like we have come back full circle from page 3.

Ripjiggen wrote:

Looks like we have come back full circle from page 3.

Well it’s either that or debating whether Addy gets $0.825M or $0.9M… This summer has been so f’n boring for the Wild.

No doubt…

And I’m sure we’ll circle back to it again by page 20

Mathews is the new highest paid player for now, will be interesting to see how much it keeps increasing the next 2-3 years…

McJesus & Kirill just waiting to tell everyone to hold their beers in 2 years (McJesus will abviously gets paid the most, but I think Kirill could pick his number and the Wild would agree to it)….$18 million aav is 20% of a $90 million Salary cap in 3 years (my safe guestimate) that’s the max they could sign for …How close will either get to the 20% max? McKinnon and McDavid’s deals are currently around 15% of the cap….King Leon will set the new max next year (my guess is he’ll go over $14aav)

Anahiem rated #1, can’t argue with that as they basically have a starting 5 of ELITE talent (no elite goalie though)

Blackhawks get upto #2 just based on the Bedard hype…that’s just a joke imo when looking at the other teams ranked 3-8

Sabres #3 (They are just stacked in all positions)
Devils #4 (still have Jack Hughes on the list!)
Blue Jackets #5
Canadiens #6
Senators #7
RedWings #8

The big question mark with all of these teams is that they don’t have Elite young goalie talent (Buffalo’s Devon Levi is debateable, Anahiem’s Dostal is a ?, RedWings Cosa has been really shaky sofar)

Projecting goalie prospects is extremely volatile compared to skater prospects. Vast majority of NHL goalies are unknowns until 24/25/26 years old so they carry less weight as prospects – reason why not many go in the 1st round.

Devils should be #1 based on Jack Hughes alone IMO – kid looks like an almost guaranteed superstar future Hart winner to me and I wouldn’t say that about any other u23 players.

The only worry I have about Jack Hughes is his body holding up… he’s listed at 170 pounds and that might be with his brother stepping one foot on the scale at the same time…his game is all about speed and shiftyness on the ice, it’s hella fun to watch as a fan, but he’s going to get freight trained every now and then and worn down a bit…we saw that last year in the playoffs…

Maybe as one of their spokesman now he’ll start eating 1-2 Chipotle’s everyday and bulk out…

Injuries don’t correlate with size in the NHL. Slight frame built on speed and agility and hands, kinda like McDavid or P Kane? Hughes had 6 goals/11 points/12 games in his first playoffs as a 21 year old and by far best player on his team… he is younger than Matt Boldy.

AnotherFisherman wrote:

Rooting hard for Stramel. Hoping he can continue to develop this year!

Recent article about Stramel by The Rink Live.

https://www.therinklive.com/junior-and-prospects/wisconsins-charlie-stramel-ready-to-put-freshman-year-behind-him-and-get-back-to-his-identity-in-year-two

tswoboda wrote:

Injuries don’t correlate with size in the NHL.

Agreed. The key is not getting blown up by a hit and those guys you rarely see them take hits along the boards because they are elusive.

Some fun new rules in Europe. 2 minute “major” penalties and the opportunity to actually kill a penalty while on the the penalty kill. I love the penalty kill rule and kinda meh on the 2 minute majors. Would add even more importance to special teams when it seems games (and playoff series ) are already being decided by special teams.

That third one is pretty interesting.

Would make my hope of seeing Boldy and Kirill on the PK much more likely

tswoboda wrote:

Would make my hope of seeing Boldy and Kirill on the PK much more likely

Yup! Though we did get a lot of shorthanded goals last year already.

KHL season is now underway, if we needed more proof Marat Khusnidhinov is signing with the Wild after his KHL season is over, his KHL team removed his Captaincy and doesn’t feature him in their marketing anymore… he was -1 and had only 8 toi today…

and it looks like Danila Yurov is playing 4th line again for his team, he had 5 tio