Minnesota Wild preview: Ryan Suter leads aging but talented core
The Minnesota Wild have a core that should be winning postseason games. However, they’ve been eliminated in the first round in each of the past three seasons. Could Ryan Suter and the Wild exorcise their demons like the Washington Capitals did?
The state of Minnesota has been on the wrong end of a lot of disappointment involving sports ever since the Minnesota Twins won the World Series in 1991. A source for a lot of their agony in recent years has been the Minnesota Wild. When they signed Ryan Suter and Zach Parise to the last of the ill-advised 10+ year deals, they were expecting they would carry them to a Stanley Cup. That hasn’t happened yet.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one – the Wild are a really good team in the regular season who fail to get it done in the postseason. This should sound familiar because a lot of people were saying those precise words about the Washington Capitals before last season. And look what happened to them.
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The Wild are remarkably similar to the Caps. While they do lack the elite talent the Capitals have, they have a well-balanced team coached by someone with the perhaps unfair reputation of being a choker in the postseason. On the other hand, much like the Caps, the Wild’s window of contention is starting to close, especially since they’re in a very competitive Central Division.
Minnesota is known as the State of Hockey, but lately, it’s been the State of Postseason Sadness. The Wild are going to try to change that.
Offseason Recap
Additions: F J.T. Brown, F Matt Hendricks, D Greg Pateryn, F Eric Fehr, D Matt Bartkowski, G Andrew Hammond, F Matt Read
Most of the Wild’s moves this summer were done to improve their overall depth. Between Brown, Hendricks, Fehr, and Read, they have a solid group of depth forwards to choose from. This should help improve their fourth line, which was a bit of an issue last season. The full-time addition of 2018 Olympian Jordan Greenway should help as well.
The Wild are a defense-first team, which makes Pateryn a very nice fit. He put up some impressive shot suppressing numbers with the Dallas Stars. Pateryn should give the Wild some more defensive depth, which is never a bad thing.
Stats are courtesy of Natural Stat Trick and Corsica.