Dr Jan Itor
Registered User
None of these things have anything to do with being an attractive hockey market or not.
Should Minnesota begin a full rebuild?
- Thread starter Hischier and Hughes
- Start date
None of these things have anything to do with being an attractive hockey market or not.
nstarjim
Registered User
- Jul 5, 2018
- 719
- 184
Minnesota shouldn't go full rebuild IMO. We don't have the population other cities have, and the wild have to compete for sales with a lot more teams than other cities. The NHL wouldn't gift Minnesota multiple #1 OA picks like other teams if we tanked because of those reasons. I'm sure the league would be just fine if the wild folded, just like when the stars left (norm green still sucks). Wild should never be a team that trades away young talent that is performing like our D players.
MN can't be afraid. Choose a course, then follow it. The main thing is that ownership and management has to be on the same page. Leipold has been a good owner, for the most part, but he and Fletcher as a duo were all in to go for a Cup from the moment they signed Parise and Suter. This resulted in them trading some picks, and valuing mature players that would produce right away over young prospects. That's fine, but it didn't work. Suter, Parise, and Koivu will not be part of a Cup winning team in MN. Now it's time for them to step back and amass young talent with potential. I worry that Fenton/Leipold still want to rush things and take short cuts by trading mid career players for mid tier 22-3 yo prospects, rather than go for young picks and prospects that have elite potential.
I wasn't surprised to see Nino traded- he was well liked, but never seemed to get top TOI- but I was surprised to see Coyle traded, and shocked to see Granlund gone, also. Thought Zucker would've gone before them. We'll see about Donato, but another LHS. Winger? Fiala has some skill and speed, but doesn't look to have a brain. We won't mention the other guy.
I have doubts about Fenton's competence.
I wasn't surprised to see Nino traded- he was well liked, but never seemed to get top TOI- but I was surprised to see Coyle traded, and shocked to see Granlund gone, also. Thought Zucker would've gone before them. We'll see about Donato, but another LHS. Winger? Fiala has some skill and speed, but doesn't look to have a brain. We won't mention the other guy.
I have doubts about Fenton's competence.
DANOZ28
Registered User
we probably should have rebuilt back when fletch took over but the owner wanted to sell tickets. even if we should i cant see a burn it down full rebuild. the 5 year plan would really hurt the fan base. i guess we just keep on keepin on. add a FA or 2. hopefully build through the draft the next couple years. the frustrating part is watching teams like Colorado ; dallas & Chicago improve while we basically tread water.
Devilsfan118
Sing us a song, you're the Schiano man
I swear I'm not trolling or trying to bait anyone here when I say this - despite the team I root for. I'd be lying if I said I haven't enjoyed the fact that Parise hasn't made it past the second round.
That said - I simply cannot believe the Wild haven't managed to make a couple deep runs in the playoffs since adding Suter and the aforementioned Parise. It seemed, at the time, that the prospect pool was stacked, the roster was solid, management was fully behind the team..
It's a shame, really. For their fans, not me. But still.
To answer the OP - I think you have to strongly consider fully rebuilding. Look at the Rangers - the sooner you embrace it the better off you are.
That said - I simply cannot believe the Wild haven't managed to make a couple deep runs in the playoffs since adding Suter and the aforementioned Parise. It seemed, at the time, that the prospect pool was stacked, the roster was solid, management was fully behind the team..
It's a shame, really. For their fans, not me. But still.
To answer the OP - I think you have to strongly consider fully rebuilding. Look at the Rangers - the sooner you embrace it the better off you are.
Menzinger
Kessel4LadyByng
They did, they unfortunately kept running into stacked Hawks teams.
Evidence a team can make the all the right moves but without a bit of luck cant guarantee anything
Dr Jan Itor
Registered User
DANOZ28
Registered User
NJ fan i agree with the other poster when we had a decent chance we kept playing the hawks at their best. so our gm trying to keep his job kept trading away our draft picks for bandaids. our team could look way better if a few of those lost picks panned out. i meant if we kept the picks
I was going to say, the path the Rangers are on doesn't strike me as any more reliable than what Fenton's up to. The lottery win makes a big difference, but that's a precarious foundation to build a strategy on. How many cracks has Arizona had at it now?
Bounces R Way
Registered User
They're in kind of a limbo. Have enough depth to still be good but no superstar. They need to make a big move because the status quo is not going to yield different results. That big move could either help them take that next step or set them back and force a rebuild a little like Ottawa's move for Duchene. I think Kaprizov is going to be a hell of a player but they need him in the jersey.
It's definitely shit or get off the pot time for them tho. The worst thing they could do is just hold on to all these semi-valuable 30+ players until they can't get anything for them. This website loves the idea of tanking for a high pick as the proper rebuild approach but I just don't see it being that easy. Just as many if not more examples of that crashing a franchise as there is helping it ascend. Plus the draft lottery means you could easily flush away 2 or 3 seasons just to drop and pick at #8 or #9 a couple times.
It's definitely shit or get off the pot time for them tho. The worst thing they could do is just hold on to all these semi-valuable 30+ players until they can't get anything for them. This website loves the idea of tanking for a high pick as the proper rebuild approach but I just don't see it being that easy. Just as many if not more examples of that crashing a franchise as there is helping it ascend. Plus the draft lottery means you could easily flush away 2 or 3 seasons just to drop and pick at #8 or #9 a couple times.
Spurgeon
Registered User
If this team was going to go through a re-tooling/rebuilding process like they currently are, I would have honestly rather kept Fletcher at the helm because he knew how to properly value our players. The issue with Fenton is that he evaluated our roster for half a season before deciding to blow it up and because he hasn't been here watching these players for the last 6 years, he got fleeced. I'm sure he got scouting reports and watched lots of film on our guys before deciding to move them, but every move he's made has been met with league-wide criticism. Realistically, we probably should have gotten close to two additional 1sts (in value) from our trades.
Now, we're in a very strange place as a team. The age gap between our players is very wide and while our younger players may be improving, they need to improve more than our older, aging vets are diminishing. This is what the current roster would look like, barring any UFA signing. I've included their age and handedness (NOTE: I'm just placing players in their likely positions, I don't care about line accuracy)
FORWARDS:
Zucker (27 L) - Staal (34 L) - Fiala (22 L)
Parise (34 L) - Koivu (35 L) - Donato (22)
Greenway (21 L) - Eriksson Ek (22 L) - Kunin (21 R)
Rask (25 L) - Sturm (23 L) - Foligno (27 L)
DEFENSE:
Suter (34 L) - Spurgeon (29 R)
Brodin (25 L) - Dumba (24 R)
Seeler (25 L) - Pateryn (28 R)
TRADED: Niederreiter (26 L), Coyle (26 R), Granlund (26 L)
As you can see, our forwards are now extremely young and we're relying mainly on 22 year olds to eventually replace our 1C, 2C, and 2LW. We're already relying on two of them to play on their offhands as 1RW and 2RW. There's one right-handed player in our entire forward line-up and there's absolutely nobody significant in our prospect pipeline that is a right-handed player. Speaking of our prospect pipeline, this team has absolutely nobody that is going to be capable of taking over our 1C and 2C roles unless there's drastic internal improvements in the next 2 years. Eriksson Ek looks like he'll be a middle 6 defensive center, but he isn't a player that I see as a Top 6 center. Kunin is more than likely going to be a RW, unless we go the Coyle route with him where he's shifted back and forth between the 2 positions so he can't get familiar with his spot. Rask was a buy-out candidate that we traded Nino for. Sturm is a UDFA that we signed from college and shouldn't be seen as a future Top 6 center. Our prospect pool is pretty much our NHL roster now too, so there's nobody that we should be expecting to come up from the minors.
Overall, the only way we're going to be able to get a competent center is going to be through UFA or trade, so it's a good thing that Fenton was able to shed a lot of cap because we are going to need to utilize that. Unfortunately, we didn't get enough assets in our trades that we could've used for a center acquisition, so UFA seems the most logical route because we can't be trading picks. The issue now, however, is when do you make that move and when do you try to be a competitive team again?
With our defense and our current Top 6 we're probably good enough to be a bubble team, which makes it awfully hard to rebuild since we don't get the opportunity to draft Top 10 players. If we wanted to go the route of a full rebuild, we should be trading Zucker, Staal, Spurgeon, Koivu and Dubnyk. However, we have the best defense in the league. In fact, the Wild have had the best xGA/60 for 3 straight seasons & we didn't even make the playoffs in this last season. Therefore, it makes you wonder if we should have traded away Nino, Coyle, and Granlund for younger players that are going to take a few years to be as productive because by the team they're reaching their prime, our team defense might not be as good and Parise, Koivu, Staal, and Suter definitely won't be.
Something definitely needed to change though because we couldn't just keep making the playoffs and being eliminated in the first round, year after year after year. Getting younger and more inexperienced may not have been the way to go for a team that still has the tools to be a competitive team though. In fact, I'd argue that Fenton did the worse thing he could've done by just half-committing to this rebuild. We became a worse team and we didn't even get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd round pick in any of our trades. Fenton's pretty much forced himself into a position where he has to go out and sign someone like Duchene and hope that everything pans out because there's really not much else this team has to look forward to.
I personally think Staal and Zucker (maybe Dubnyk) should be traded for 2 1sts. With the loss of Staal and Zucker from our Top 6, we'd probably be pushed into the bottom third of the league, so we could tank for a season and hopefully get a Top 5/10 pick. Then, for the 2020-2021 season, we would have Kaprizov coming over and we'd have roughly $20M in cap space to sign (or trade for) Top 6 replacements. Our defense would still be really good (maybe even better if Brodin and Dumba improve more than Suter regresses) and our young forwards would have had a full season to adjust to the NHL.
TL;DR: Fenton's f***ing horrible and any Wild fan with half a brain would have this team in a better position right now.
Now, we're in a very strange place as a team. The age gap between our players is very wide and while our younger players may be improving, they need to improve more than our older, aging vets are diminishing. This is what the current roster would look like, barring any UFA signing. I've included their age and handedness (NOTE: I'm just placing players in their likely positions, I don't care about line accuracy)
FORWARDS:
Zucker (27 L) - Staal (34 L) - Fiala (22 L)
Parise (34 L) - Koivu (35 L) - Donato (22)
Greenway (21 L) - Eriksson Ek (22 L) - Kunin (21 R)
Rask (25 L) - Sturm (23 L) - Foligno (27 L)
DEFENSE:
Suter (34 L) - Spurgeon (29 R)
Brodin (25 L) - Dumba (24 R)
Seeler (25 L) - Pateryn (28 R)
TRADED: Niederreiter (26 L), Coyle (26 R), Granlund (26 L)
As you can see, our forwards are now extremely young and we're relying mainly on 22 year olds to eventually replace our 1C, 2C, and 2LW. We're already relying on two of them to play on their offhands as 1RW and 2RW. There's one right-handed player in our entire forward line-up and there's absolutely nobody significant in our prospect pipeline that is a right-handed player. Speaking of our prospect pipeline, this team has absolutely nobody that is going to be capable of taking over our 1C and 2C roles unless there's drastic internal improvements in the next 2 years. Eriksson Ek looks like he'll be a middle 6 defensive center, but he isn't a player that I see as a Top 6 center. Kunin is more than likely going to be a RW, unless we go the Coyle route with him where he's shifted back and forth between the 2 positions so he can't get familiar with his spot. Rask was a buy-out candidate that we traded Nino for. Sturm is a UDFA that we signed from college and shouldn't be seen as a future Top 6 center. Our prospect pool is pretty much our NHL roster now too, so there's nobody that we should be expecting to come up from the minors.
Overall, the only way we're going to be able to get a competent center is going to be through UFA or trade, so it's a good thing that Fenton was able to shed a lot of cap because we are going to need to utilize that. Unfortunately, we didn't get enough assets in our trades that we could've used for a center acquisition, so UFA seems the most logical route because we can't be trading picks. The issue now, however, is when do you make that move and when do you try to be a competitive team again?
With our defense and our current Top 6 we're probably good enough to be a bubble team, which makes it awfully hard to rebuild since we don't get the opportunity to draft Top 10 players. If we wanted to go the route of a full rebuild, we should be trading Zucker, Staal, Spurgeon, Koivu and Dubnyk. However, we have the best defense in the league. In fact, the Wild have had the best xGA/60 for 3 straight seasons & we didn't even make the playoffs in this last season. Therefore, it makes you wonder if we should have traded away Nino, Coyle, and Granlund for younger players that are going to take a few years to be as productive because by the team they're reaching their prime, our team defense might not be as good and Parise, Koivu, Staal, and Suter definitely won't be.
Something definitely needed to change though because we couldn't just keep making the playoffs and being eliminated in the first round, year after year after year. Getting younger and more inexperienced may not have been the way to go for a team that still has the tools to be a competitive team though. In fact, I'd argue that Fenton did the worse thing he could've done by just half-committing to this rebuild. We became a worse team and we didn't even get a 1st, 2nd, or 3rd round pick in any of our trades. Fenton's pretty much forced himself into a position where he has to go out and sign someone like Duchene and hope that everything pans out because there's really not much else this team has to look forward to.
I personally think Staal and Zucker (maybe Dubnyk) should be traded for 2 1sts. With the loss of Staal and Zucker from our Top 6, we'd probably be pushed into the bottom third of the league, so we could tank for a season and hopefully get a Top 5/10 pick. Then, for the 2020-2021 season, we would have Kaprizov coming over and we'd have roughly $20M in cap space to sign (or trade for) Top 6 replacements. Our defense would still be really good (maybe even better if Brodin and Dumba improve more than Suter regresses) and our young forwards would have had a full season to adjust to the NHL.
TL;DR: Fenton's f***ing horrible and any Wild fan with half a brain would have this team in a better position right now.
sometimes i wonder if Fenton was on the Preds as a long-game weapon to drop on a division team if the opportunity presented itself. Shit, firing our excellent advanced stats team (effectively--i don't know why they thought Alexandra was going to stay if Andrew was fired...er, not renewed) and those trades and now his friggin kid is running the draft. Very little confidence a complete rebuild would go well right now.
TruePowerSlave
Registered User
- Jun 27, 2015
- 6,982
- 8,394
Hischier and Hughes
“I love to hockey”
- Jan 28, 2018
- 9,408
- 4,357
Proposed deal they were a part of with Pittsburgh didnt exactly scream rebuild to me
Jack Johnson and Phil Kessel for Zucker+??
Jack Johnson and Phil Kessel for Zucker+??
SHANNYPLAN
Registered User
- Nov 24, 2016
- 5,215
- 2,603
Zucker + Rask.
We've been saying for weeks that Minnesota's not rebuilding, or at least not in the sense that most here interpret the word.
cgf
FireBednarsSuccessor
I’m pretty sure Bruce’s first year as coach they were. They were the 2nd highest scoring team in the league and were 2nd in the division. They lost in the first round because Jake Allen decided to stand on his head.
Yes. It's obvious. They are never going win the Stanley cup with old Koivu, Parise and Suter. I guess thats the dilemma though. They want to get everything out of them so they can't tank or re-build but that would be the smartest decision. Not sure why the hell they are trying to trade for Kessel. Minnesota seems lost..
Jeffrey Lebowski
The Chicago Little Lebowski Urban Achievers
From a strictly hockey-fan perspective, i think they could really make a killing trading away Parise, Suter, and others. Probably great returns at the trade deadline... The kind of returns that could really rebuild a franchise 
From a Chicago-fan perspective, you guys got this. Just keep plugging away.
From a Chicago-fan perspective, you guys got this. Just keep plugging away.
16-17 season when they had those ~15 win streaks with CBJ. It was really a strong team.
To me it came down to Dubnyk not being able to steal a game while his counterparts found some crazy playoff gears.
Should they rebuild? From this general hockey fan's perspective with no financial interest in the Minnesota Wild, I think they should. They're kind of like that team that is good enough to finish anywhere from 8th-11th in the West, but not real Cup contenders. Can't see the Wild competing for a Cup anytime soon with what their aging core looks like and what their farm is like.
But it doesn't seem like the owner of the team wants that. Guess tickets have to sell somehow, right? Even if it's not in the long term benefit of the team.
But it doesn't seem like the owner of the team wants that. Guess tickets have to sell somehow, right? Even if it's not in the long term benefit of the team.
They can still compete, they got a solid core.
I see no reason why they couldn't turn it around and do what the Blues did. If they end up rebuilding, I would follow the Habs route. They managed a decent rebuild in very short time.
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