The Wild’s 5-10-4 start had gotten coach Dean Evason fired and now Minnesota was in a 1-7-1 slide that dropped it from being on the verge of a playoff spot to again looking like a team that could begin booking tee times for April.

Guerin, though, claimed he wasn’t giving up hope.

“If you look at our roster like when we are healthy,” he said, “I think it’s a good team. I want to keep the expectations high. … I expect us to compete for a playoff spot.”

Guerin’s competitive nature certainly played a role in his continued confidence, but you had to wonder if his real motivation was making sure the guys in his locker room wouldn’t feel as if he was punting on the season.

That’s exactly what he should do.

The word associated with this is tanking, but that’s such an ugly term. It insinuates an entire team is giving up and, as we know, most coaches and players are too competitive to do this. A more palatable word would be acceptance.

Accepting that even if you sneak into the playoffs, you aren’t getting out of the first round and accepting that an already bright future could get brighter by adding draft picks before the March 8 trade deadline, while also potentially putting yourself in the NHL draft lottery. (Eleven of the 16 teams that miss the playoffs are eligible for the first pick in the draft.)

The two things that should influence Guerin’s thinking are:

1) The depth this team has built up through the draft in recent years. Jesper Wallstedt, the team’s top goalie prospect, has been up a few times this season but is likely to take over as the Wild’s top goalie in 2024-25. Russian Marat Khusnutdinov, a speedy two-way center and forwards Liam Ohgren (Sweden) and Danila Yurov (Russia) are included in a prospect pool that has been replenished in recent years. That doesn’t include rookies Marco Rossi and Brock Faber, the latter of whom is a candidate for the Calder Trophy.

2) Next season will be the final one in which the Wild will carry a combined $14.7 million in dead salary-cap money because of the buyouts of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter. That figure will drop to $1.7 million in 2025-26, meaning that team will have plenty of space to pursue a free agent as well as offer star winger Kirill Kaprizov a long-term extension.

Marco Rossi is part of the Wild’s bright future, and he’s already left a positive mark on the NHL club. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

This plan might not appeal to owner Craig Leipold, who lives and dies with every game and wants his team to be competitive, in part because of the extra cash generated by even a few home playoff games, but Guerin has an opportunity he should embrace.

Wild has plenty no-move, no-trade protection players
The elephant in the room when it comes to the Wild’s potential trade candidates is the fact that in today’s NHL far too many players are afforded either no-move or no-trade protection that gives them a say in whether they want to uproot themselves and their families and go elsewhere to chase a Stanley Cup.

The Wild’s roster has nine players with some type of no-trade protection: Mats Zuccarello, Marcus Foligno, Frederick Gaudreau, Marcus Johansson, Ryan Hartman, Pat Maroon, Jonas Brodin, Alex Goligoski and Zach Bogosian. Foligno, Johansson, Hartman, Brodin and Goligoski have complete protection.

There are some guys who aren’t going to be shopped, even though they don’t have no-trade clauses, including Kaprizov and Joel Eriksson Ek. Perhaps the most interesting chip on whom Guerin could take bids is goalie Filip Gustavsson.

Gustavsson has had an up-and-down season, but the 25-year-old could be very appealing to a contender. He’s in the first season of a three-year, $11.25 million contract he signed in July, meaning his average annual salary is a very reasonable $3.75 million per. Teams that could be in the market for a goaltender include Carolina, Colorado, Edmonton, Los Angeles and New Jersey.

Guerin’s ability to create a bidding war among those teams could make what seems like a difficult decision (trading Gustavsson) too lucrative not to do. If there’s internal confidence that Wallstedt will be ready to take over as the Wild’s top goalie next season, getting a first-round pick and needing to find another goalie for next season could be the prudent plan. And that’s assuming Marc-Andre Fleury does not return.

It was interesting that before the game against the Islanders — one the Wild won 5-0 en route to going on a 4-1 run — Guerin did not close the door on making moves at the deadline, if things were not on the right track.

The fact the Wild then lost back-to-back home games against Western Conference rivals Nashville and Anaheim, the latter of which is a bottom feeder, should have given Guerin a push in the right direction entering a 10-day break for the bye and the All-Star Game.

“I don’t think I can sit here right now and say, ‘If it goes sideways, we’re going to do X, Y and Z,'” Guerin said in mid-January. “But we could.”

Actually, the word “could” needs to be amended to “should” because while there is hope for the future of the Wild, the present isn’t worth preserving.

The post Time To Punt appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

In the words of Wild general manager Bill Guerin: “Something had to change.”

That something came in the form of coaching changes. The Wild fired head coach Dean Evason on Monday before later announcing former Nashville and former New Jersey coach John Hynes as the team’s seventh head coach in franchise history. He’s spent eight seasons as an NHL head coach with a career 284-255-63 record.

Wild assistant coach Bob Woods, who coached the team’s penalty kill, was also relieved of his coaching duties on Monday. The team announced Tuesday that Patrick Dwyer will be a Wild assistant coach and focus on defense and the PK. Dwyer has been an assistant coach with the Iowa Wild since July 5.

Though the list of problems for the Wild is much longer than simply stopping with the man behind the bench, it was Evason who took the fall for the team’s 5-10-4 start to the season.

“’We can’t trade 23 players,’ is the old saying,” Guerin said Tuesday, during a news conference introducing Hynes. “But I just had that feeling that it wasn’t going to come back.”

Guerin cited confidence, swagger, ability to make plays and the overall feeling that players will accomplish something when they step on the ice as pieces that are missing from the team. He didn’t feel like that list of things was headed in the right direction; it actually got worse.

Rookie defenseman Brock Faber said it’s the players who have underperformed and lost hockey games, but they need to look internally, play for the guy next to them and do what they can to win.

“We have a good hockey team in here,” Faber said. “We have a playoff hockey team in here when we’re playing the right way. I think this is a wake-up call for a lot of us.”

Dean Evason spent parts of five seasons as the Wild’s head coach. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

Players react to in-season change
This is the second time Guerin has made a mid-season coaching change. On Valentine’s Day in 2020, he fired Bruce Boudreau with the Wild three points out of a playoff spot at the time. Evason went from assistant coach to interim head coach that day.

“The one thing I really do like about Dean is his passion, his fire for the game,” Guerin said when he hired Evason as head coach. “I am hoping that that translates to the players. I think these guys really like Dean a lot.”  

A few seasons later, this was a move that seemed to be written on the wall, with the ink becoming more permanent as the losses mounted. It didn’t seem to be a matter of if but a question of when Evason would take the fall for an extremely underperforming Wild team.

Evason was first hired by the Wild as an assistant coach in June 2018 under then-general manager Paul Fenton. Previously, Evason was the head coach for the Milwaukee Admirals in the AHL for six seasons.
Wild players Tuesday mentioned the respect they have for both Evason and Woods. Marcus Foligno used the word “shocked” regarding Evason’s firing while also recognizing the frustrating start to the season turned into a bad snowball effect.

“Losses pile up, this is what happens,” Foligno said. “Unfortunately, there are coaches that have to take that fall on the knife for players like us. It’s not fair, but at the same time, it’s a wake-up call – and we’ve had enough of these this year to understand what’s needed and we need to get out of it.”

Players had a brief meeting with Hynes before Tuesday’s morning skate ahead of the evening’s home game against the St. Louis Blues. Hynes has some familiarity with a few players. He knows goaltender Marc-Andre Fleury from the Pittsburgh days, and coached Jon Merrill in New Jersey and the national development program. He also coached Patrick Maroon and Marcus Johansson in New Jersey.

“I think you have to come in and, first and foremost, get to know the players,” Hynes said. “It’s on the fly, but I believe that when you come into this situation, everybody’s hurting.

“I think it’s important to really come in and connect with those guys, connect with the coaches, get feedback – particularly from the players on some of those things that they’re seeing and feeling.”

With a new voice leading them, perhaps the team will get back to finding its identity.

“I think we’ve had spurts of it,” said captain Jared Spurgeon. “But we haven’t put it together in full games. There’s a period of half periods where I think we’re getting back to it, and then we get away from it and start chasing games. I think that comes with consistency and obviously holding each other accountable.”

John Hynes speaks with the media at his introductory news conference as the Wild head coach. (MHM Photo / Heather Rule)

Hynes, Guerin go way back
Players should expect consistency behind the bench for a while, too. Guerin said Tuesday that he and Hynes settled on contract terms, though he wouldn’t give any specifics to the deal except to say: “This is not a one-year thing.”

Guerin and Hynes have a long relationship, going back to Guerin’s days working in player development and his time as an assistant general manager in the Pittsburgh Penguins organization. Guerin made it clear he believes in Hynes with the detailed and passionate way he has coaching hockey.

Hynes was the Predators head coach starting on Jan. 7, 2020, just a few weeks before Evason took over the Wild. Hynes coached the Devils from 2015-19. He was previously a head coach in the AHL for five seasons, leading the Wilkes-Barre Scranton Penguins to a 231-126-27 record and five consecutive appearances in the Calder Cup Playoffs.

A Boston University player with four Frozen Four trips and a 1995 NCAA championship, Hynes made two stops as an assistant coach with Mass-Lowell (2000-01) and the University of Wisconsin (2002-03) along with his nine seasons behind the bench for USA hockey’s National Team Development Program as an assistant coach from 1998-2000 and 2001-02, and head coach from 2003-09.

The coaching change didn’t come down to one game, according to Guerin. He added that he thought the team played well during its Global Series games (a shootout and overtime loss) in Sweden recently. But things still just “didn’t feel right,” Guerin said.

“There’s kind of that ‘it’ factor, and you feel that and you know it,” Guerin said.

Any ‘it’ factor for Hynes won’t include, as Guerin put it, reinventing the wheel or making wholesale changes. Instead, both Hynes and Guerin acknowledged it will be some little tweaks.

“It’s important to be able to play a fast game, and come in and have some plans to get out of our zone with speed, get on the attack, get north, be able to hem teams in the offensive zone,” Hynes said.

The post Wild Hire Hynes appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

It was a day before Thanksgiving last year when the Minnesota Wild general manager decided he had seen enough of his swagger-less and lethargic team and acquired winger Ryan Reaves from the New York Rangers for a 2025 fifth-round pick.

Reaves, now with the Toronto Maple Leafs, is known for fighting, but Guerin said the decision to make the move was more about Reaves’ “big personality” than it was about his ability to use his fists.

“He’s got a lot of energy,” Guerin told Michael Russo of The Athletic. “He’s got swagger. We’ve been missing that. The energy he brings is really good. … He’s going to help us get our identity back.”

Reaves provided the Wild with a spark, even before he arrived. On the day the trade was announced, the Wild cruised to a 6-1 victory over Winnipeg to improve to 9-8-2 on the season. Reaves gave the Wild plenty of swagger as the team finished third in the Central Division with 103 points.

The Wild replaced Reaves with a more skilled, big-body presence in winger Patrick Maroon this offseason and a plan to keep their swagger for 82 games. But since shutting out Florida, 2-

Ryan Reaves against Winnipeg in 2022. He helped give the Wild some swagger last season. (MHM file photo)

0, on opening night at Xcel Energy Center, the Wild have gone 2-4-2 and are coming off an East Coast trip in which they lost to Philadelphia, Washington (in a shootout) and New Jersey.

Oh, and the swagger that Reaves brought with him? That’s disappeared. Wild center Ryan Hartman told reporters after Sunday’s loss to the Devils that, “When we’re playing well, we play with that swagger.”

An argument can be made that it’s too early for anyone to panic, but Guerin knows what got his team out of its funk last season and you have to wonder if he is again willing to wait until Thanksgiving before making a move?

Injuries have sidelined defenseman and captain Jared Spurgeon since the start of the season and wingers Matt Boldy and Frederick Gaudreau also are out, although Boldy is expected to return soon.

But the Wild’s early-season issues go beyond injuries.

The power play and penalty kill both struggled in the Wild’s opening-round playoff loss to Dallas last season and not much has changed, even though Minnesota brought in former Vancouver Canucks assistant Jason King to run its power play.

The Wild are 5-for-36 on the power play and their 13.9 percentage is ranked 22nd in the league. The Wild’s penalty kill is worse. Much worse. That unit ranks second-to-last in the NHL, giving up nine goals on 28 chances for a 67.9% kill rate. Last season the Wild surrendered nine goals on 24 chances in six games against the Stars in the playoffs.

The Devils, whose power play is the best in the NHL at 42.4 percent, toyed with the Wild on Sunday in going 2-for-3. The Wild had six power plays and only scored once.

One of the biggest surprises is that newly appointed alternate captain Kirill Kaprizov has yet to show the consistency expected from a superstar. He had no points and was a minus-4 on the road trip and has only two goals in nine games.

The Wild’s first line of Kaprizov, Mats Zuccarello and Hartman each have nine points — tied for second on the team behind Joel Eriksson Ek’s 10 — but they also are a combined minus-10 and their performance in a brutal loss against the Flyers left coach Dean Evason infuriated.

Marco Rossi against the Florida Panthers in this season’s home opener. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

The idea has been floated of replacing Hartman with third-line center Marco Rossi, who is finally delivering on what was expected of him when he was selected with the ninth pick of the 2020 draft.

Rossi spent the offseason getting bigger and stronger and now looks like he belongs in the NHL. He has three goals and four points in nine games and would give the first line a more skilled player than the hard-working Hartman, whose six goals lead the Wild.

Putting Rossi with Kaprizov and Zuccarello could present Evason with an opportunity to inform Zuccarello that his need to overpass the puck to Kaprizov can end. Rossi also could replace Zuccarello on the power play, especially since the veteran has yet to score with the man advantage this season.

Of course, Evason could look to Guerin to shake up things if they don’t improve soon. Spurgeon’s return will help on the blue line, but to think he will give the Wild their swagger back is a stretch.

The Wild’s salary-cap situation makes any type of major move nearly impossible, but obtaining Reaves a year ago did the trick without causing any issues. If the Wild’s play doesn’t pick up soon, it won’t be surprising if Guerin decides a repeat performance is in order.

The post Slow start appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.