2021 Season Predictions

TaLoN

Red 5 standing by
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May 30, 2010
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Farmington, MN
Ok everyone, with training camp starting on the 3rd and the season the 13th... it's time for your season predictions.

How will the Wild fair in this hodgepodge West division? How many goals, assists, points will our players get in this oddball 56 game season? Playoffs? If so, how far?

Posting this tweet here so you can see the division we're in. All 56 games will be within division.


NHL officially rolls out plan for 56-game 2020-21 season
Teams in the East, Central, and West divisions will face each other eight times. Meanwhile, in the North (all-Canadian) division, the seven teams will face other divisional rivals either nine or 10 times.
 
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grN1g

Registered User
Nov 11, 2009
2,912
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Minnesota
Sigh going to be a dog fight in the west. Everyone has legitimate reasons to be better than us besides ARI or maybe ANA or SJ but even then I feel we lose to them often.

I guess if there was ever a year I hope we just cant cut it... it would be this covid riddled and two 1sts waiting to blow season.
 

BagHead

Registered User
Dec 23, 2010
6,367
3,408
Minneapolis, MN
Sigh going to be a dog fight in the west. Everyone has legitimate reasons to be better than us besides ARI or maybe ANA or SJ but even then I feel we lose to them often.

I guess if there was ever a year I hope we just cant cut it... it would be this covid riddled and two 1sts waiting to blow season.

Silver lining, looking at the Penguins division, they're in for a dog fight, as well. The only team I think is definitely worse than them is New Jersey. The rest are all (or in the case of Baffalo, should be) competitive.

I'm picking the Wild to finish above LA and Anaheim, but after that there are too many variables to say for sure that we're better than Arizona, San Jose, or whichever team falls off suddenly and surprisingly like San Jose just did last year.
 

DemidovSaveUs

Danila Yurov Fan Club Executive Assistant
May 2, 2018
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We’ll finish 4th. Guerin will still trade deadline rentals away for futures when he decides that, even though we’ll make the playoffs, we aren’t a contender.
 
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P10p

Registered User
May 15, 2012
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Well, I traded 1st overall(Barkov) for Kaprizov in my fantasy keeper, so thats my prediction lol :nod:
 

MNRube

Registered User
Oct 20, 2013
5,974
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I think we finish 3rd or 4th. Kaprizov and Fiala are going to add a dimension we have been missing and JEE takes a big step forward. Blueline will remain elite and the goaltending can’t get worse.
 

MuckOG

Registered User
May 18, 2012
15,343
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i was hoping we'd be in the central div , the west looks more difficult. im guessing we finish 5th.

I prefer the Central because of the start times. I'm hoping that the NHL takes mercy on us and we get a few earlier starts/afternoon games on the west coast trips.

I think the Wild finish 4th and lose to Colorado in the 1st round.

Colorado
St Louis
Las Vegas
Minnesota
Phoenix
LA
Anaheim
San Jose
 

DemidovSaveUs

Danila Yurov Fan Club Executive Assistant
May 2, 2018
18,571
11,646
Trying to map out how this season may look based on the seasons everyone had last year. Not without it's flaws, but an interesting exercise. There's a few thing's that I'm going to look at: expected games, expected goals, and expected goals against.

Expected Games (EG): Games Played / Games possible
Expected Goals(G): (Expected Games * Goals/Game -from 2019/2020-
Expected Goals Against: Based on the current roster's GAA from previous year

if Talbot gets 40/56 starts, let's say Kahk and Stalock split the rest at 8 apeice. Talbot had a 2.63 GAA last year, while Stalock had a 2.67 and Kahkonen had a 2.96.

Talbot- 105 GA
Kahkonen- 24 GA
Stalock- 21 GA

Goals Allowed Next season: 150

For this exercise, I will assume Kaprizov is a 30 + 30 player and omit Rossi from the team. I made minor executive decisions such as adding games for Sturm and Mayhew as they will likely get more games as the team lost a lot of man games played in Koivu and Galchenyuk without a replacement.
i.e. lines and games are distributed as:
Parise-Mojo-Fiala
Kaprizov-Ek-Zucc
Greenway-Bonino-Bjugstad
Foligno-Hartman-Sturm
Rask-Mayhew

Returneeeees
Parise- EG:56, G:20
Kaprizov- EG:56, G:20
Fiala- EG:51, G:19
Greenway- EG:54, G:7
Ek- EG: 50, G:7
Zuccarello- EG: 53, G:12
Rask- EG:35, G:6
Sturm- EG:45, G:4 *bumped from 5 and 0
Suter- EG:56, G:6
Spurgeon- EG:50, G:10
Brodin- EG:56, G:2
Foligno- EG: 48, G:9
Dumba- EG: 56, G:5
Hartman- EG:56, G:7
Hunt- EG:47, G:6
Soucy- EG:45, G:6
Pateryn- EG:16. G:0
Mayhew- EG:29, G:4 *Bumped from 10 and 2
Dumont and Johnson- EG:2, G:0

newcomers
Note- in order to make sure we had all the manpower dressing for each game (i.e. 18 skaters), I calculated how many games the above group played (844) and found the number of games available for a full 18 person roster per game (1008) and found that we esentially have 164 spots in the lineup open. I will distribute those evenly based on expected games for the player's previous team. For example, Bjugstad played only 13 of Pittsburgh's 69 possible games, while Bonino played 67 of his 69 possible. So Bonino got a much larger chunk of the games. I also made the decision to prorate Bjugstad's season to 45/69 up the remaining games without putting Bonino and Johansson over the max 56 games

Bjugstad- EG: 35, G:6
Mojo- EG: 49, G:7
Bonino- EG:54, G:15

16 lineup spots remaining that weren't distributed, but could assume you get maybe 3 goals from that. That might be pushing it, though.

Believe it or not, that equates to 178 goals for, or roughly a 3.17 goals/game stat line, which was just better than the 3.16 goals/game we posted last season. Not surprisingly, 150 goals against puts us at a 2.67 GAA, which would've been 6th best last season behind Boston, Dallas, Columbus, Arizona and St. Louis. That would be a huge jump from the 3.14 GAA the tam posted last year. What this all should say, though, is that this is a team that can score goals, we saw it this year. And we saw that when we got capable goaltending, this was a very good team. An example of that is Stalock's 2.67 GAA and 20-11-4 record to go with it (103 point pace). I know some people realize this, but if Talbot provides any sort of stability i.e. plays as he did last season, the depth of this team and high-end defensive core makes it a very good team. Maybe not on that can win a cup, but easily a playoff team. If you enjoyed this post let me know and I will try and dive into other things. In particular, I'd like to try and forecast Pitts season.








 

guitarhunterdude

Registered User
Jan 2, 2017
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'Sota
If you enjoyed this post let me know and I will try and dive into other things. In particular, I'd like to try and forecast Pitts season.




Really enjoyed this, thanks. I'm curious how we think the goalscoring keeps up though, seeing as the team shot like 9% last year which is pretty freakin' crazy. Looks like that was mainly due to Staal, Parise, Zucker and Zuccarello shooting out of their minds as far as I can tell. How are we replacing that? Seems to me like we need more shot generation, which I'm not sure I see. Bonino might be a slight upgrade over current Staal, Ek and/or Greenway might improve some, Kaprizov might be good, and Rossi's a wild card. So there is room for improvement, but I don't know if it'll be enough to offset the likely sh% regression on behalf of Parise and Zucc, and the loss of Zucker. Actually trying to forecast that is more effort than I want to put in on a message board, though.
 

DemidovSaveUs

Danila Yurov Fan Club Executive Assistant
May 2, 2018
18,571
11,646
Really enjoyed this, thanks. I'm curious how we think the goalscoring keeps up though, seeing as the team shot like 9% last year which is pretty freakin' crazy. Looks like that was mainly due to Staal, Parise, Zucker and Zuccarello shooting out of their minds as far as I can tell. How are we replacing that? Seems to me like we need more shot generation, which I'm not sure I see. Bonino might be a slight upgrade over current Staal, Ek and/or Greenway might improve some, Kaprizov might be good, and Rossi's a wild card. So there is room for improvement, but I don't know if it'll be enough to offset the likely sh% regression on behalf of Parise and Zucc, and the loss of Zucker. Actually trying to forecast that is more effort than I want to put in on a message board, though.
It's a good point and I wish I had a good answer for you, and it's one reason's I don't expect us to finish at those exact goal numbers. The hope is that even if some players that shot above career average regress to more of a career norm, players who shot poorly, specifically Dumba, bounce back, as well as Fiala making jump to a 15+% shooter. The regression in shooting percentage is a real thing, that's why high PDO teams are typically a good bet to regress. And, that's why I don't expect us to be a +28 goal-differential team. That would be prorated to +35 this season and would've been good for the 4th best goal differential, virtually assuring us a top 8 finish in the standings. We're not likely to shoot at that level again, and I've noted this in previous posts, but it would have to be an incredibly large swing, in my eyes, to not let us finish as one of the 10-15 best teams in the league.
 

The Enemy Within

Holl at .6 seconds
Feb 25, 2014
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West of the SOH
This is going to be so weird with these divisions, but at least we get hockey. I'm going to go with us finishing on the high end third. Probably end up falling behind a few other teams that we shouldn't, but I really don't see us finishing above Colorado or Vegas for sure.

I'm always a glass half-full-kind-of-guy, though.
 

DANOZ28

Registered User
May 22, 2012
6,842
424
nearest bar MN
im so frustrated that we had the chance to improve goal tending and pick up a solid center and this team could have been off to the races. many non wild fans are saying talbot is a backup on most teams and well besides the draft we didn't address the center issue. i guess in todays nhl who really needs centers anyway???
 

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