MN Wild 2019-2020 Official Thread

but Edmonton has players who can score goals (from that perspective they’ve picked very well outside of Yakupov)…their problem is they invested hardly any picks into defense and then it came time to pay all of their young goal scorers their RFA contracts and the cap comes into play (Signing the generational talent in McDavid $12.5 million per year after only his 3rd season also is a huge factor)

Our defensive core is locked up for what 5 years now? Time to start getting some goal scorers in here…a few years from now we’ll see if we blew it passing on Caufield… Taking risks on drafting goal scorers has never been this franchises forte, we always went the safe route…hopefully Guerin has a different mindset…

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

My lord, that would have been a disaster. What were you thinking. That would have left The Fletch or even worse, Fecktard Fenton in charge of the rebuild!

I’ll give you that with Fletcher / Fenton. But in my opinion it could hardly be worse than it is now. I’d rather watch a bunch of young guys playing with heart and the desire to win any night, than watching this team.

Thank you dish network & FSN for fighting about money, I can’t watch if i wanted to.

Agree that the gm/coach combo now is way, way better timing for a rebuild. Under the last 2 gm’s, ugh, that could have been disastrous!

Pretty Typical for a New GM to hire a new coach to his liking, I am not confident Bruce B makes it through a bad season.

jeff_huberty wrote:

Pretty Typical for a New GM to hire a new coach to his liking, I am not confident Bruce B makes it through a bad season.

That is definitely true about a new GM and Fenton tried to fire Boudreau twice last year so it certainly could happen. I just wonder if there is honestly anyone better out there? They would have made the playoffs last year without Dumba going down, but now that Fenton shot a howitzer right through the core of the lineup we have a lot more glaring holes. Its hard to blame any of this on Boudreau. Yeah he tends to tinker with the lines a lot, but in the past that has worked. Nothing is working now.

CaptainMusky wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>jeff_huberty wrote:</div>
Pretty Typical for a New GM to hire a new coach to his liking, I am not confident Bruce B makes it through a bad season.

That is definitely true about a new GM and Fenton tried to fire Boudreau twice last year so it certainly could happen. I just wonder if there is honestly anyone better out there? They would have made the playoffs last year without Dumba going down, but now that Fenton shot a howitzer right through the core of the lineup we have a lot more glaring holes. Its hard to blame any of this on Boudreau. Yeah he tends to tinker with the lines a lot, but in the past that has worked. Nothing is working now.

Kind of been his MO,He does well then his teams fade. He has been let go by teams that had much more talent than the Wild have.

Good article from The Hockey News. Guerin, Boudreau, Kaprzov and other things.
Hockey News

Trade Fiala. If I remember correctly he got a contract very favorable for a trade. I don’t think his value goes down even if he doesn’t perform particularly well because he’s so young. I just don’t think he has the pedigree to ever be a top line forward.

Good podcast by Russo was just released interviewing Bill Guerin and towards the end he was asked about Kaprizov and Bill said he’s coming over to the Wild in April when his contract expires and making him comfortable and managing expectations are his top priorities. Russo asked if possibly signing another Russian like his linemate Grigirenko is an option and Bill said thats a possibility he’s already thought about…

The best part of tonight’s game…kunin standing up to a guy twice his size…thats what this team needs is way more heart and leadership someone that will stand up

…or goals.

I do like goals. Or stopping them. Or a combination of the two.

Well I left that part out bc that seems more of a pipe dream at this point

This team is on pace to win about 15 games all season.

Cmon now. They’re only 6 points out of a playoff spot.

we need to play Ottawa more often….

Uh oh. Zucker called out the coach.

mplspug wrote:

Uh oh. Zucker called out the coach.

Yeah, that sure was a social media firestorm, but much ado about nothing. He probably shouldnt have mentioned his name specifically, but he was just saying everyone needed to be better which is 100% spot on.
Anyways, he responded after all the backlash by scoring the first goal of the game.
Honestly I thought they were going to lose again after falling behind, but they found a way to claw back and actually scored a nice end to end goal for the winner.
They are battered with injuries now and have 2 guys from Iowa playing who actually dont look half bad out there.

I really didn’t see much improvement yesterday (even though we got the win) still lots of bad habits out there, lost 1-1 battles for the puck, turn-overs galore that thankfully didn’t cost us more goals. You know there’s a definite funk going on when Spurgeon isn’t looking good…

CaptainMusky wrote:

They are battered with injuries now and have 2 guys from Iowa playing who actually dont look half bad out there.

Less than 10 games in? A good sign of why this team needs to get younger.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

You know there’s a definite funk going on when Spurgeon isn’t looking good…

I said exactly that during the game. He hasnt looked very good thus far.

What do you all think will be Billy G’s first move? (obviously not counting minor league callups/transactions)

My guess is that he somehow moves Rask by December for some late round picks or for another team’s bad contract but in a position we could actually use (Defense) Perhaps Jack Johnson from his former Penguins… not ideal, but it clears out a $4 million guy playing 4th line or in Iowa…

I suspect Koivu, Staal, Patryn to get dealt at the deadline, perhaps even Parise (+ some salary retention) if it’s obvious we’re going the rebuild route and he wants to play for a contender…I recently read that if we did deal Parise or Suter and they retired with a few years left on their contracts, WE would get the cap recapture penalty, not the new team… That’s a HUGE Kill Pill from the Wild’s perspective and might be the reason why they are forced to play out their careers here..

Koivu is going to a contender and then he’s retiring.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I recently read that if we did deal Parise or Suter and they retired with a few years left on their contracts, WE would get the cap recapture penalty, not the new team… That’s a HUGE Kill Pill from the Wild’s perspective and might be the reason why they are forced to play out their careers here..

That is exactly true and a real reason to try and avoid that if at all possible. I ran the scenarios on CapFriendly a while back and he would really need to play at least 3 more seasons for it to not be overly painful. If it were to happen sooner than that, woof.

A win is never a bad thing and great to see Zucker walking the talk by being one of the guys to step up. And this is the guy that douchebag GM Fenton was basically begging to trade for Kessle and only Kessle himself prevented this lopsided deal. Wow did we dodge a bullet on that one.

Lots of talk about trading players but funny thing is nobody’s talking about what Fenton seem desperate to do.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Lots of talk about trading players but funny thing is nobody’s talking about what Fenton seem desperate to do.

That’s cuz I’m actually confident that Guerin will make a positive impact with a trade.

I’m guessing Billy G has a 1/4 season alarm clock in his head and after 20 games he’ll evaluate what he has and start to make moves accordingly…

Oilers on Tuesday will be a good test on where this team is headed as they are a very fast & high scoring team right now, we’ll either turn our game around from Sundays win or get blown out again and exposed…

Rask out again tonight, why do I get the feeling he’s pulling a “Costanza” and left after a few games in a row with a point…

Zuccs is back tonight. Hopefully he is better, he clearly hasnt been skating well?
@joeMX1825 you have an Athletic subscription correct? Or to anyone who has one…
Russo is doing these “From the Source” podcasts and they are very entertaining. Check em out if you havent.
Boudreau, Carter, Guerin, etc have been on thus far.
I think they are free too, so you may be able to find them regardless of whether or not you have a subscription.