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

The return of old Stone Hands?

JoeMX1825 wrote:

The return of old Stone Hands?

Ha I was going to say the same thing

JoeMX1825 wrote:

The return of old Stone Hands?

Most goals on the team, yikes!

How about the Freddy defensive effort on the Larkin goal…

JoeMX1825 wrote:

How about the Freddy defensive effort on the Larkin goal…

Ahh, there was no effort at all lol

On what green earth is it ever a good idea to have 4 players in the corner on a PP in the offensive zone? Stupid move by zuccy there this team is beyond broken.

This whole coaching staff needs to be fired!

Why wouldn’t Deano take a timeout at the start of that PP when some players were out there already for 2 mins and they are on the top PP unit? Questionable coaching

I’m done with this team for a while. They are painful to watch.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Why wouldn’t Deano take a timeout at the start of that PP when some players were out there already for 2 mins and they are on the top PP unit? Questionable coaching

Bingo! Terrible coach!

Lol, I said the same-thing when it happened…

https://x.com/minnyhockey/status/1728876668897652987?s=46&t=uoRWUp28rKzoSODmtmr3Lw

I know his choices are very limited, but GMBG has to do SOMETHING to attempt to save this season, if whatever he does DOESN’T work, then you go into full tank/sell who you can mode…

Trade UFA’s Duhaime, Maroon, Bogosian and Flower, entertain ANY trade calls they might get, bring up any Iowa guys they think could make the team next year to get them NHL experience (Hunt & Beckman)

Wonder how many times i’ll hit this “sim lottery” button before the draft in June….

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I know his choices are very limited, but GMBG has to do SOMETHING to attempt to save this season, if whatever he does DOESN’T work, then you go into full tank/sell who you can mode…

Trade UFA’s Duhaime, Maroon, Bogosian and Flower, entertain ANY trade calls they might get, bring up any Iowa guys they think could make the team next year to get them NHL experience (Hunt & Beckman)

I’m afraid this season is beyond saving.
I think they would need to earn points at a 63% rate for the rest of the season. That’s similar to Boston last year.

That was really bad. The whole team looks like all the line combinations got reshuffled the morning of the game. Everyone was dazed and confused.

I feel terrible for Body, he’s trying everything and trying to hard. Deano went the total wrong way with him, this constant BS about reminding him how much money he’s making and how they expected more isn’t going to fix anything. Sure there are a few players that will respond to that but most the time it’s just going to make it worse. Which it did with Boldy

Eveson and the coaching staff are one trick ponies. They have no idea how to get the car out of the ditch. They have failed miserabley to make any progress on the PK and PP effectiveness.

Deano no bueno. Time for a full on coaching staff overhaul.

I don’t care what the market looks like right now. An interim can’t be any worse than what we’ve got now.

Tom schmitt wrote:

I’m afraid this season is beyond saving.
I think they would need to earn points at a 63% rate for the rest of the season. That’s similar to Boston last year.

Check the math… Boston had 82% points percentage last season.

65% of remaining points puts the Wild at 96 points and likely in the playoffs. 68% puts them at 100 points.

22-23 Wild were 63% for the full season and 67% from Nov 27 (today) to the end of the regular season

just “ugggghhhhhhh”

In MY household football is only on when baseball and hockey are not.
I’ll start watching Peaky Blinders and other shows before I keep watching hockey at this rate.

What a cluster……..

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Deano no bueno. Time for a full on coaching staff overhaul.

I don’t care what the market looks like right now. An interim can’t be any worse than what we’ve got now.

Doubt they would toss Mclean in after 20 games of experience in the AHL. And there’s no way they put someone on the current bench in the head coach role. So do they go with an entire new staff brought in off the street? Russo dropped the name John Hynes recently and I’ll probably puke if they bring him in.

I completely agree on Boldy… he’s trying to move mountains right now. The penalties are a perfect example of of trying to make something happen that just isn’t there.

The staff needs to go (maybe they keep Darby for the season as a PR move) they’ve shown they can’t/won’t make changes and judging by the play and post game quotes by the Vets, they’ve lost the confidence of the team. Deano has also gone full flame thrower mode in post game pressers picking on guys like Boldy as mentioned…

GMBG could look to hire somebody like Doug Weight to take over as the interim HC (and take over the PP) and then take his time to find his guy for next season (remember he inherited Deano and staff)

In terms of players changes, I’ve already laid out the limited options GMBG has (self inflicted with handing out NMC’s) so it will be a case of getting whatever he can for (Duhaime, Maroon, Bogosian) and talking to guys with NMC’s to see if they want out for a final playoff run of their career (Goose, Flower)

Wild would need to get into the top 3 of the draft to get a likely impact player (Celebrini, Eiserman, Demidov) Demidov just had a serious knee injury and is also under KHL contract for 2 more years and also falls under the new KHL direction of not letting their younger players go to the NHL until they’ve played X amount of years in the KHL… so that’s some serious baggage to deal with, but he’s talented for sure…

How often does firing the coach in season result in a turn around? I remember when Boudreau was brought into Vancouver that ignited them, but he was fired the next year. It rarely seems to work out.

CaptainMusky wrote:

How often does firing the coach in season result in a turn around? I remember when Boudreau was brought into Vancouver that ignited them, but he was fired the next year. It rarely seems to work out.

correct, it’s typically done as a “shake up” move when impactful player moves isn’t really an option and the GM wants a team direction change anyways (maybe the move is made ahead of his timing schedule though)

The buyouts will always hang over a Wild coaching move, maybe rightfully so…but the Playoff losses the last several seasons (when we were up 2-1 in the series) were more a result of a lack of being able to adapt to changes made by the other teams and not able to make any meaningful ones for his team vs not having the players missing due to the buyouts… imo

I don’t see how the buyouts are an excuse for the coach. They had record setting regular seasons the last 3 years with virtually the same roster, this year is actually more talented than last year. The top core players (with the exception of Fiala) have been the same for Dean’s entire tenure. If you look at the roster from when Dean took over compared to where it is now, they are waaaayyyy better on paper. All indicators the current roster is massively underperforming.

Goaltending, finishing, injuries, and stars underperforming has gotten many coaches fired over the years. And now they’re healthy, the goaltending has been better, and Kaprizov looks to be coming around, but they’re still losing.

CaptainMusky wrote:

How often does firing the coach in season result in a turn around? I remember when Boudreau was brought into Vancouver that ignited them, but he was fired the next year. It rarely seems to work out.

It can definitely work, just a few examples off the top of my head:
Oilers have 4 wins in 7 games since firing Woodcroft. They had 3 in 13 games before that.
When Woodcroft took over from Tippet 2 seasons ago they were well out of the playoff picture but then made the conference finals.
Berube replacing Yeo in St. Louis went from last place to cup winners.
Remember when Torch took over for Yeo? Went from under .500 to making the playoffs.

What is the point of trying to try and salvage the season? Does anyone really think this team can win a cup this year? I say ride it out and for once get a great draft pick this team never gets for the next two years and then try to build a good team. The Wilds mantra since day one is overachieve each year just high enough to get a 10th pick at best and do a bad job picking that 1st rounder anyway each and every year. Getting bounced in the first round every year is getting sickening. I had season tickets for more than a decade. I am ready for a few terrible years and hopefully they can build a team that can win a cup.

mojogunter wrote:

What is the point of trying to try and salvage the season?

Do you want Kaprizov to re-sign in 2 years?

mojogunter wrote:

The Wilds mantra since day one is overachieve each year just high enough to get a 10th pick at best and do a bad job picking that 1st rounder anyway each and every year.

You apparently havent been paying attention to their drafts lately because they have one of the best prospect pools. Their last 2 first rounders and many of the mid range picks are playing very well in their respective leagues. Wallstedt, Lambos, Ohgren, Yurov, Strammel maybe a stretch from last year that those are the last 3 years first rounders alone.

CaptainMusky wrote:

How often does firing the coach in season result in a turn around? I remember when Boudreau was brought into Vancouver that ignited them, but he was fired the next year. It rarely seems to work out.

By saying replacing a coach seldom works, I gotta ask is it likely to be any worse than the results that are likely to come by sticking with Deano & Co?

The Eveson coaching staff has had PLENTY of chances and I’m struggling to see where they have been any kind of upgrade over what Bruce was doing. So it’s not like things were bad and Deano & Co made things better and now have just fallen on hard times.

First off, the “one and done” playoff series losses have continued under Eveson.

Probably more importantly, the #1 mandate the Eveson staff had going into this season was to fix the PP after last season’s absolutely horrific failure to produce on the PP when it mattered. They hired a new PP guy to do just that. This has been a complete failure.

In the meantime, the PK has become such a huge problem that many have actually forgotten about the PP. So we’re actually going backward on this one.

In the meantime, player performance has back-slid almost across the board in terms of everything from goal production to defense to goaltending.

At this point in the season, I’d settle for an interim that made SOME progress on any one of the above. Saying that it’s risky to replace Eveson with an interim is hard for me to see because I can’t point to any part of the Wild’s overall performance that has been better. So where’s the risk?

The ONLY argument that makes sense for keeping Deano is that it keeps the heat (at least for now) off of the next question: Is Gurin really getting it done as GM?

The problem with Gurin is that the Wild’s past GMs were so bad that the bar was set so low that almost anyone could have looked good as GM. The Wild have never had a GM that ranked as even a C player. And to make Gurin look even better, he came in to replace Fectard Fenton, the absolutely WORST GM the Wild have ever had from both a player and a back office POV. How could he NOT look good?

Now the question has to be asked, is Gurin really anything more than a C player that only looks good because he replaced a string of GMs who ranged from D to F players?

tswoboda wrote:

I don’t see how the buyouts are an excuse for the coach

Any coach would argue $15 million in 2-3 significant player upgrades can go a long ways to scoring goals or preventing them from being scored on you…

I think we need to have some caution always reverting back to the 113 point season two years ago as a realistic measuring stick. That year basically EVERYTHING went right for the Wild, few & minor injuries to deal with all season, career years by like 7 players and how many crazy come from behind last minute wins and OT losses inflated that point total? Last seasons 103 points could be attributed to a crazy couple months of playing great hockey with a unknown goalie playing out of his mind that shot us up standings…

Really the biggest difference between those 2 seasons and this one is that the vast majority of players were playing on or close to contract seasons and thus they were highly motivated to perfrom… now they are all mostly locked up with multi-year deals with NMCs and human nature points to a motivation regression, the lack of playoff success doesn’t help because the players don’t know what their missing out on and what motivates the good teams…This has been a topic Russo and Smith have been bringing up quite often lately…

I think the vast majority of GMBG’s moves have been successful (Reaves trade, JoJo trade last season, Fiala trade return, under market Ek, Brodin and Boldy long term extensions, Kirill’s extension gamble, Talbot trade, Maroon signing) except a few he really rolled the dice on that failed (Klingberg & D-Lo), but the cost paid was very low (D-Lo for a 3rd was pricey)… This season’s extensions are really the first time his decisions kind of went against his public statements about getting faster and more skilled, but really only Foligno’s term was the biggest question mark…Zuccy extended 2 years at $4 was about what everyone expected, it aligns with Kirill’s deal (keeping him happy) and Zuccy has been our most productive player sofar this season. Hartman’s 3 year extension was fine in that he’s a proven Center (on our team at least) and everyone knows Center is not a position of strength in the organization, so we almost had to sign him, he’s also only 29 years old, but he’s had some recent injury history the past few years that adds some worry…

Foligno’s 4 year extension raised alot of eyebrows and is the most confusing, he’s 32 right now and the way he plays the game and nagging injury history the odds of him still being healthy and impactful the last 2 years of that deal are very low…

Johansson’s 2 year extension was a gaurentee based on how well he played with Boldy the last season, but it’s cheap and an easy to buyout deal if it comes to that, so no worries…

You also factor in the next wave of prospects (Marat K, Yurov, Ohgren, Heidt, Haight) and IF they take off in the NHL, you’re likely then pushing Hartman & Foligno’s $4aav to the 4th line and that’s a salary cap management disaster…

so yeah, GMBG deserves some negative press on his most recent moves, but his previous move success also buys him more time than most to let them play out longer…

The last 3 seasons they have the 1st 2nd and 5th best regular season records in franchise history. After 3 years of the same they have 19 games of being real bad and you think this is who the team really is? 3 years vs. 19 games cmon.

So what has Dean accomplished? The 2 best regular seasons in franchise history. Also absolutely nothing in the playoffs. But it’s really hard to argue he hasn’t gotten everything out of his teams in the regular season until now.

Also shouldn’t be lost that Dean took over the year Kaprizov arrived, so that kinda puts on asterisk on everything. Maybe it wasn’t the coach at all.

tswoboda wrote:

The last 3 seasons they have the 1st 2nd and 5th best regular season records in franchise history. After 3 years of the same they have 19 games of being real bad and you think this is who the team really is? 3 years vs. 19 games cmon.

So what has Dean accomplished? The 2 best regular seasons in franchise history. Also absolutely nothing in the playoffs. But it’s really hard to argue he hasn’t gotten everything out of his teams in the regular season until now.

Also shouldn’t be lost that Dean took over the year Kaprizov arrived, so that kinda puts on asterisk on everything. Maybe it wasn’t the coach at all.

You also can’t argue that the team the last few years have been the most skilled of than ANY other year of the franchise…so we should expect them to have the bests seasons…and again, the 113 point year was alot of unexpected successful smoke & mirrors… The Kirill effect is real in that we finally had an superstar who could win games by himself…

I’m not saying this dismal start is who we really are, i’m saying the 113 points team is NOT who we really are and shouldn’t be used as a “but look at how good we were 2 years ago” excuse…

imo this team has been and will continue to be an 85-95 point a season team until the buyouts are over with…