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Minnesota Wild GM Bill Guerin addresses the media.

SAINT PAUL – The Minnesota Wild and its club broadcast partners are still maintaining during their game calls that the team is still “fighting” for a playoff spot. They will note that the team hasn’t been mathematically eliminated and they will go to great lengths to explain that they are in a tough spot but that they still have a chance of getting in, albeit a slim one, and that the boys are hanging by a thread. 

I can certainly understand that. If you are the franchise you want fan interest in your product to remain as high as it can for as long as you can. 
If I was the team though, I’d spend a little more time reminding the players that whether they still have a chance or not, whether they have been eliminated from playoff contention or not, they still have an obligation to the fan base to put their best effort on the ice game in and game out regardless of the other details. 

That sure isn’t what I saw this afternoon in a matinee game in the Capital City though. The Wild dropped a lackluster 4-2 decision today against their fierce divisional rival, the Winnipeg Jets. 
Kirill Kaprizov had both of the Wild goals and was pressing to get a hat trick but it wasn’t going to happen on this day. In addition, it appeared as though half the team was playing to simply avoid injury and get into the offseason in one piece. 

I can appreciate that, if anyone knows whether the team is still alive for a chance at the playoff tournament it’s going to be the players and coaching staff. If that notion from sports psychology that says an athlete must beat oneself before they can beat any opponent is true, then it can also be true that at some point, when that big challenge to pursue is no longer in front of you, human nature takes over and many athletes will finally relax in their approach to that ingrained behavior to compete. 

For astute observers of this team it was apparent early on this would be a challenging season. 
Injuries aside, there seemed to be something missing from this team from the beginning. After the 5-10-4 start to the season that led GM Bill Guerin to dismiss Head Coach Dean Evason and bring in John Hynes, it got a little better in the win-loss column. But when the new coach “bump” (11-3) wore off it was straight to the commode for this club. 

After beating Detroit right after Christmas, it began to unravel again and didn’t stop. 

Considering the last two games of December and then all of January the team put up a 5-11 record. February gave us a bit of a false negative reading with a 7-4 record. March would bring a 7-6 record, and thus far in April the team is at 1-2 with six tilts left in the season. 
Those six games include five on the road with the season finale back in St. Paul versus the Seattle Kraken. In reviewing the games remaining I see the team going 3-3 and then the misery will be over for a few months. 
If one were to break down this campaign and see what really happened it isn’t too hard to do. The basics are relatively simple, not enough star power and not enough depth along with some average netminding all combined to doom this season from the get-go. 

The injury situation didn’t help, but before pinning all Wild woes on that you need to consider that the team is right in the middle of the pack when it comes to man-games lost. Half of the league had more injuries and half did not. Perhaps it became a too-convenient crutch for the psyche of this team. 

Consider the basic stats for the Wild, they are 22nd in Goals For with 231. They are 18th in Goals Against with 244. The team is 15th on the Power Play at 21.2%. The club is 29th on the Penalty Kill at 74.1% and sits at 3rd in PIMs with 898 minutes. 

And then, the most telling stats of all, the team is 8-20 versus the nine teams above them in the Western Conference. They are winless against the top three Central division clubs, DAL, COL and WPG. 

Every time they faced a game where a win would put them back in the playoff conversation, they lost. 
And worst of all, the fan angst with the team for not making the playoffs is minimal this season because the fan base knows this team would be a one-and-done entrant, as usual. It knows when the team does get in that the struggle has always existed right there. The team battles and battles just to get in only to disappoint shortly thereafter. 

I fully understand that it is extremely hard to get to the top in the NHL and that you can slip to the bottom in a snap of the fingers.

But this fanbase has been too willing to go along with the mediocrity that has been so cleverly disguised as a hard-core pursuit of excellence for so long. It has been way too polite. 

This club has the best fanbase in the U.S. Do we love hockey here? Yes, we do, but that isn’t the question. The question is, when is this franchise going to get serious about putting a real winner on the ice? Because that isn’t what is happening right now. 

For a historical review, the team is completing its 23rd season in the NHL.  The team has one Divisional title in that timeframe. The Wild have made the playoffs 13 times. They have advanced beyond the first round three times. They have advanced beyond the second round once. They have not won a first-round series since the 2014-15 season. 

In 96 total playoff games the team stands at 34-62. And more playoff games than I care to list have been some real embarrassing losses. 

With current team GM Bill Guerin in charge the team has not won any playoff series and is 8-15 game-wise. The fan base continually gets reminded of the great “prospect pool” the team has and that talent is on the way. 

While I believe some of that, none of them have been ready to step right into the league and my view on prospects has always been until they show me something in the best league in the world, they are still nothing more than prospects. In addition, some analysts who had been stating the Wild prospect pool was one of the best have cooled on that notion to an extent. 

Guerin has overseen five entry drafts in his tenure thus far with only five of those picks playing in more than ten NHL games. Matt Boldy is on the way to being a star if he can overcome some inconsistency. Marco Rossi has improved greatly over his first year. With some other picks finally at Iowa for assessment and development, we will soon see if they will amount to real NHL players. 

The future could be bright, but I’m not convinced it will be bright enough to alter the historical path of this franchise. PEACE