Solving the Mediocre Minnesota Wild

[Minnesnota]

They're still mediocre IMO. This season was a bit of an anomaly with the West division being far weaker than most of the rest (LA, SJ, ANA to beat up on) and the shortened/weird schedule lets teams get hot and inflate their records. They have 1 super 24 year old "rookie" and the rest of their guys under 30 are all middle 6ers and 2nd pairing type players. Suter, Spurgeon, Bonino, Johansson, Zuccarello and Parise (kind of) play big roles on the team and are all on the wrong side of 30. This feels more like one last hurrah with the old guard rather than any new resurgence of a strong team/core.

You could not be more wrong if you tried.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

You ever heard of a good, solid tank?

Just take the refill. Fill it up to the brim. Every single Cup champ for the last 13 years has had major pieces taken high in the draft.

Minnesota has refused to tank. The problem is their own doing.

 

[16thOverallSaveUs]

You ever heard of a good, solid tank?

Just take the refill. Fill it up to the brim. Every single Cup champ for the last 13 years has had major pieces taken high in the draft.

Minnesota has refused to tank. The problem is their own doing.

Tanking fails way more often that it works. The ignorance of some posters that think there’s only one way to build a winner. You don’t build a winner by selling off and being bad for 5 years, you build a winner by making good moves more often than not and finding value. Look at Vegas, they might win the cup this year and they’ve never missed the playoffs.

 

[Lolonegoal]

You ever heard of a good, solid tank?

Every single Cup champ for the last 13 years has had major pieces taken high in the draft.

Well first of all this just isn't really accurate. Bruins in 2010 had Seguin sure, but it was his rookie year and he only played about half the playoffs and didn't make much impact. Nathan Horton was a high pick but he was injured. Boston never rebuilt, they had two off years, where they went from being 4th in the league, to missing the playoffs for two years, but then were back in the year afterwards, then 2nd in the league the year after that. Then two years down the road they won the cup.

St.Louis just won the cup and they're only high draft pick was Pietroangelo at 4th overall. They didn't tank to become successful unless you consider getting the #1 pick and taking Erik Johnson in 2006 influential on their cup run. They also hadn't had a draft pick in the top 20 of the draft since 2010.

Second, basic distribution results in every team having an array of high first rounders. There's 20+ players per team and 31 teams in the league, it just makes sense that each team will. So claiming a correlation between teams winning the cup and having high picks is fairly fictitious logic, because you could see the same trend with teams doing poorly. And to prove it, here are the stand out top 5 picks from each team:

Colorado – MacKinnon, Landeskog, Makar
Vegas – Pietroangelo, Fleury
Arizona – Strome, Kessel
Los Angeles – Doughty
San Jose – Marleau
Carolina – Svechikov
Florida – Ekblad, Barkov, Huberdeau
Tampa Bay – Hedman, Stamkos
Nashville – Johansen
Dallas – Heiskanen, Seguin
Chicago – Kane, Toews, Dach
Detroit – Ryan, Raymond
Columbus – Jones, Laine
Washington – Ovechkin, Backstrom
Pittsburgh – Crosby, Malkin
Boston – Hall
NY Rangers – LaFreniere, Kakko
New Jersey – Hischier, Hughes
Philadelphia – Patrick, van Riemsdyk
NY Islanders – Dal Colle
Buffalo – Dahlin, Eichel
Ottawa – Tkachuk
Vancouver - Pettersson
Montreal – Price
Toronto – Matthews, Tavares, Marner
Edmonton – McDavid, Draisaitl
Winnipeg – Wheeler, Duboius
Calgary - Lindholm

The only teams without a top 5 are indeed Minnesota (althoug Koivu was 6th overall and just retired), St.Louis (who just won a cup, and recently lost Pietro), and Anaheim who has a 6th overall (Lindholm).

 

[Wasted Talent]

Suter, Spurgeon, Bonino, Johansson, Zuccarello and Parise (kind of) play big roles on the team and are all on the wrong side of 30. .

Parise is literally a healthy scratch in the playoffs, how is he playing a big role?

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Tanking fails way more often that it works. The ignorance of some posters that think there’s only one way to build a winner. You don’t build a winner by selling off and being bad for 5 years, you build a winner by making good moves more often than not and finding value. Look at Vegas, they might win the cup this year and they’ve never missed the playoffs.

Aand then we have the reality: if you wanna win, you have to take high draft picks

2009, 2016, 2017: Penguins, 1-2-1-2 highest picks on ice
2010, 2013, 2015: Chicago, 1-3, Kane + Toews, Seabrook 14th
2011: Boston, 2nd overall on ice, a 1st overall traded to get pieces
2012, 2014: Kings: 2nd overall Doughty almost MVP, Kopitar #11, Brown #13
2018: Caps: Ovechkin, Bäcström... Carlson+ Kuzy 1st rounders
2019: St Louis, Pietrangelo 4th overall, Schwartz+Tarasenko 14-16, traded 1st OA Johnson for Shattenkirk, and eventually Sanford+picks
2020: Tampa, just loaded with their own 1st rounders: 1st OA Stamkos, 2nd OA Hedman, got Sergachev by trading 3rd overall Drouin, Vasilevsky #19

As you can see, every single cup winner for over a decade has tanked in some point before their win, getting their winning team players by picking high or trading those picks

Minnesota is probably not going to be winning a Cup without tanking for ~3 years.

 

[Prior]

As a MN fan, not interested in the team tanking. There’s more to win the Cup beyond being unwatchable for several years.

You can tank and be successful. Or you can be the Buffalo Sabres and Minnesota Timberwolves and have a difficult time ever turning a corner.

 

[16thOverallSaveUs]

Aand then we have the reality: if you wanna win, you have to take high draft picks

2009, 2016, 2017: Penguins, 1-2-1-2 highest picks on ice
2010, 2013, 2015: Chicago, 1-3, Kane + Toews, Seabrook 14th
2011: Boston, 2nd overall on ice, a 1st overall traded to get pieces
2012, 2014: Kings: 2nd overall Doughty almost MVP, Kopitar #11, Brown #13
2018: Caps: Ovechkin, Bäcström... Carlson+ Kuzy 1st rounders
2019: St Louis, Pietrangelo 4th overall, Schwartz+Tarasenko 14-16, traded 1st OA Johnson for Shattenkirk, and eventually Sanford+picks
2020: Tampa, just loaded with their own 1st rounders: 1st OA Stamkos, 2nd OA Hedman, got Sergachev by trading 3rd overall Drouin, Vasilevsky #19

As you can see, every single cup winner for over a decade has tanked in some point before their win, getting their winning team players by picking high or trading those picks

Minnesota is probably not going to be winning a Cup without tanking for ~3 years.

The reality is that some of the teams that tank do get lucky enough to get a core to win with, most don’t. When did Boston and St. Louis tank. Sure, they had Seguin and Pietrangelo, but that wasn’t years of tanking. Hell, Boston got Seguin with Toronto’s pick.

There’s a lot of way to build a winner. This might make more sense for you: to build a winning team, you have to get the right players in place. It doesn’t matter how you get those players, but you have to get them. To think that a team is cursed because they didn’t tank is idiotic.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Well first of all this just isn't really accurate. Bruins in 2010 had Seguin sure, but it was his rookie year and he only played about half the playoffs and didn't make much impact. Nathan Horton was a high pick but he was injured. Boston never rebuilt, they had two off years, where they went from being 4th in the league, to missing the playoffs for two years, but then were back in the year afterwards, then 2nd in the league the year after that. Then two years down the road they won the cup..

See my other post, where I list the 2009-2020 cup winners

It's pretty evident you need to tank to win. Every single Cup winner for a decade has tanked, and gotten great pieces due to it.

Boston tanked for many years, they got for example

1997 #1 Thornton
1997 #8 Samsonov
2006 #5 Kessel

Thornton --> Stuart+Primeau ---> Kobasew+Ference
Samsonov ---> Lucic

Not all high picks pan out, but the Cup champs have always had high picks, either straight on the ice, or acquiring more assets with them.

 

[MK9]

Aand then we have the reality: if you wanna win, you have to take high draft picks

2009, 2016, 2017: Penguins, 1-2-1-2 highest picks on ice
2010, 2013, 2015: Chicago, 1-3, Kane + Toews, Seabrook 14th
2011: Boston, 2nd overall on ice, a 1st overall traded to get pieces
2012, 2014: Kings: 2nd overall Doughty almost MVP, Kopitar #11, Brown #13
2018: Caps: Ovechkin, Bäcström... Carlson+ Kuzy 1st rounders
2019: St Louis, Pietrangelo 4th overall, Schwartz+Tarasenko 14-16, traded 1st OA Johnson for Shattenkirk, and eventually Sanford+picks
2020: Tampa, just loaded with their own 1st rounders: 1st OA Stamkos, 2nd OA Hedman, got Sergachev by trading 3rd overall Drouin, Vasilevsky #19

As you can see, every single cup winner for over a decade has tanked in some point before their win, getting their winning team players by picking high or trading those picks

Minnesota is probably not going to be winning a Cup without tanking for ~3 years.

Edmonton has been tanking for almost an entire decade and they're mediocre past the only 2 players on that team that matter. The amount of 'high draft picks' they've taken and essentially ruined is borderline criminal.

 

[Spurgeon]

They're still mediocre IMO. This season was a bit of an anomaly with the West division being far weaker than most of the rest (LA, SJ, ANA to beat up on) and the shortened/weird schedule lets teams get hot and inflate their records. They have 1 super 24 year old "rookie" and the rest of their guys under 30 are all middle 6ers and 2nd pairing type players. Suter, Spurgeon, Bonino, Johansson, Zuccarello and Parise (kind of) play big roles on the team and are all on the wrong side of 30. This feels more like one last hurrah with the old guard rather than any new resurgence of a strong team/core.

Literally half of those players are going to be replaced next season by better and younger talent.

Fiala, Zuccarello, Boldy, Kaprizov is going to be a very solid group of Top 6 wingers.

Greenway - Ek - Foligno is one of the best shutdown lines in the league that plays Top 6 minutes.

Brodin, Suter, Spurgeon, and Dumba/Soucy are a core of a defense that are going to be adding Menell and Addison to it next season.

This team isn’t on their last hurrah, this was a throwaway year thats turned into something special because we’ve finally got solid goaltending and a game-changer in Kaprizov.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

The reality is that some of the teams that tank do get lucky enough to get a core to win with, most don’t. When did Boston and St. Louis tank. Sure, they had Seguin and Pietrangelo, but that wasn’t years of tanking. Hell, Boston got Seguin with Toronto’s pick.

There’s a lot of way to build a winner. This might make more sense for you: to build a winning team, you have to get the right players in place. It doesn’t matter how you get those players, but you have to get them. To think that a team is cursed because they didn’t tank is idiotic.

You have already forgot St Louis 's tank years?

2006 1 1 Erik Johnson
2006 1 25 Patrik Berglund
2007 1 13 Lars Eller
2007 1 18 Ian Cole
2007 1 26 David Perron
2008 1 4 Alex Pietrangelo

Berglund as a piece ----> Conn Smythe winner O'Reilly
Cole ---> Bortuzzo
Johnson ---> Sanford
Perron, Pietrangelo played for the Cup team

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Edmonton has been tanking for almost an entire decade and they're mediocre past the only 2 players on that team that matter. The amount of 'high draft picks' they've taken and essentially ruined is borderline criminal.

Yes, but that is not due to not enough high picks, it's because of Canada: taxes, weather, public pressure.

Canadian teams haven't won the Cup since 1993, and for good reason: they have to overpay to get talent, and that does not go well with the cap.

Minnesota can theoretically win it all, the place is not that bad.

 

[Lolonegoal]

See my other post, where I list the 2009-2020 cup winners

It's pretty evident you need to tank to win. Every single Cup winner for a decade has tanked, and gotten great pieces due to it.

Boston tanked for many years, they got for example

1997 #1 Thornton
1997 #8 Samsonov
2006 #5 Kessel

Thornton --> Stuart+Primeau ---> Kobasew+Ference
Samsonov ---> Lucic

Not all high picks pan out, but the Cup champs have always had high picks, either straight on the ice, or acquiring more assets with them.

I read your other post. My point is you could list high picks from literally any team, regardless of whether their being successful or not (which I did).

I again reiterate that Boston did not tank, even in the 1997 season era - which is 14 years before their cup and hardly relevant. That season was an anomaly. They were in the top 10 in the league the previous 12 years, and again the two years after. None of the players you listed were on the cup winning team. Samsonov played his final game before they won the cup. He was also pick acquired from Carolina in a trade so not a result of tanking, per se.

You could track any players trade long enough that it eventually results in gold. This isn't really indication that the original trade had an impact on the resulting player, its just that the more pieces that are moved, the more are involved and the higher chances that one involved will be higher caliber and you can claim it was a result of the initial piece. If you want proof of this watch Steve Dangle's trade tree videos on Sportsnets youtube page. The logic is just sophistry.

 

[16thOverallSaveUs]

You have already forgot St Louis 's tank years?

2006 1 1 Erik Johnson
2006 1 25 Patrik Berglund
2007 1 13 Lars Eller
2007 1 18 Ian Cole
2007 1 26 David Perron
2008 1 4 Alex Pietrangelo

Berglund as a piece ----> Conn Smythe winner O'Reilly
Cole ---> Bortuzzo
Johnson ---> Sanford
Perron, Pietrangelo played for the Cup team

Perron was drafted 26th. Don’t need to tank for that pick. Pietrangelo is the only peice that they needed to tank for. And even then, you can get number one defenseman without tanking. Like I’ve been saying, you need the right peices to win the cup. Typically, cup winning team have a bonafide 1C, 1D, and top 10 goalie. They also have a elite winger typically . How you get those peices does not matter. You do not need to tank to win

 

[Lolonegoal]

You have already forgot St Louis 's tank years?

2006 1 1 Erik Johnson
2006 1 25 Patrik Berglund
2007 1 13 Lars Eller
2007 1 18 Ian Cole
2007 1 26 David Perron
2008 1 4 Alex Pietrangelo

Berglund as a piece ----> Conn Smythe winner O'Reilly
Cole ---> Bortuzzo
Johnson ---> Sanford
Perron, Pietrangelo played for the Cup team

You must be trolling.. 25th and 26th overall draft picks?

Picks 12 years before they won. The picks you listed for Boston were 14 years before they won.

There's 30 teams in the league. 26 in 1997 when you listed your Boston picks. If you're keeping tabs from a decade and a half ago, then simple logic tells you a team is likely to fall into the bottom at least for some duration of that time period. Consistent success with t hat longevity simply doesn't exist. This isn't due to teams intentionally tanking, it's due to parity.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

You must be trolling.. 25th and 26th overall draft picks?

Picks 12 years before they won. The picks you listed for Boston were 14 years before they won.

There's 30 teams in the league. 26 in 1997 when you listed your Boston picks. If you're keeping tabs from a decade and a half ago, then simple logic tells you a team is likely to fall into the bottom at least for some duration of that time period. Consistent success with t hat longevity simply doesn't exist. This isn't due to teams intentionally tanking, it's due to parity.

You do realize that the players drafted 15 years ago still have an effect? 2003-2007 drafts still have a huge effect on the league.

"You must be trolling.. 25th and 26th overall draft picks?"

You did realize they were not their only first rounders that year? Having multiple first rounders = being sellers = not even trying to do everything possible to win now = tanking

They sucked, tanked pretty hard, sold old assets, got high picks + extra other picks.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

Perron was drafted 26th. Don’t need to tank for that pick.

So what? He wasn't their first pick that year. Teams goin all-in don't have multiple firsts

 

[Obvious Fabertism]

You do realize that the players drafted 15 years ago still have an effect? 2003-2007 drafts still have a huge effect on the league.

"You must be trolling.. 25th and 26th overall draft picks?"

You did realize they were not their only first rounders that year? Having multiple first rounders = being sellers = not even trying to do everything possible to win now = tanking

They sucked, tanked pretty hard, sold old assets, got high picks + extra other picks.

The Wild have two first rounders this year, by your logic we already have tanked then...

 

[Lolonegoal]

The Wild have two first rounders this year, by your logic we already have tanked then...

According to him this Boston era tanked:

 

[BagHead]

The Wild have two first rounders this year, by your logic we already have tanked then...

Wait, THIS is tanking? I love tanking!

 

[57special]

Now let's see the list of teams that tank, and go nowhere. It will be quite long.

Anyway, this conversation has little to do with the Wild. Guerin moved their older, starting goaltender, their #1C, their #2C and longtime captain, and has given the coach his support to bench Parise, and shorten Suter's TOI. He has traded players like Kunin and Donato to get extra draft picks. Fiala and Kaprizov are two dynamic young forwards, and with any luck Boldy and Rossi will be joining them soon.

Give me a team that is trying to win everytime. Tanking is another word for losing because you aren't trying your best. It can get to be a habit, and very hard to break. I'd rather be in MN's shoes than NJD, who have had two #1 draft picks recently. I am not jealous of DRW and their recent record...or Ottawa and BUF. Even TOR who look to be a very good team...they got really lucky in drafting Marner, Mathews, and Rielly, but have yet to win a playoff series. I think they are on the right track, but they spent years fighting the loser's mentality. EDM, too.

 

[Muikea Bulju]

I read your other post. My point is you could list high picks from literally any team, regardless of whether their being successful or not (which I did).

I again reiterate that Boston did not tank, even in the 1997 season era - which is 14 years before their cup and hardly relevant. That season was an anomaly. They were in the top 10 in the league the previous 12 years, and again the two years after. None of the players you listed were on the cup winning team. Samsonov played his final game before they won the cup. He was also pick acquired from Carolina in a trade so not a result of tanking, per se.

You could track any players trade long enough that it eventually results in gold. This isn't really indication that the original trade had an impact on the resulting player, its just that the more pieces that are moved, the more are involved and the higher chances that one involved will be higher caliber and you can claim it was a result of the initial piece. If you want proof of this watch Steve Dangle's trade tree videos on Sportsnets youtube page. The logic is just sophistry.

Nice of you to make an example of Lindros

Quebec had one of the hardest tanks, three first overalls in a row. Traded them for multiple others assets, which directly led to them winning 2 Cups as Colorado

Even the 90s/00s dynasties / Cup winners had tanked

Devils:
Shanahan (2nd OA) ---> Stevens
Guerin (5th) ----> Arnott
Niedermayer (3rd), Rolston the same year 11th
Rolston ----> Claude Lemieux

Colorado: loooong tank as Quebec

Dallas: Modano 1st overall, Hatcher 8th

Pittsburgh: Biggest tank in history for Lemieux, got Jagr because of Lemieux at 5th overall
Simpson (2OA) + Joseph (5OA) ---> Coffey
Shannon (4th OA) ---> Barrasso

Detroit:
Murphy 1st ---> Carson ----> Coffey ----> Shanahan (package)
Yzerman 4th
Primeau 3rd ----> Shanahan (package)

Tampa:
Hamrlik ---> Marchment
Marchment + 1998 2nd overall ---> Lecavalier
Gratton (3rd OA) ---> 4 firsts ---> Renberg (+4th OA Langkow) ---> Gratton (again) ---> Sarich + Sillinger
Svitov (3rd OA) ---> Sydor
Wiemer (8th OA) ---> Brad Richards
Paul Mara (7th OA) ---> Khabibulin

 

[JTToilinginToronto]

Kaprizov was a complete game changer for them.

 

[DuklaNation]

Eriksson Ek needs to play top line and top PP for at least 40 games to see what he can do. They love him with Greenway/Foligno but I wonder what his true offensive upside is.