Minnesota Wild need Devan Dubnyk to bounce back
Goaltender Devan Dubnyk was a huge reason the Minnesota Wild didn’t make the Stanley Cup Playoffs last season. Can he rebound after his worst season with the Wild?
There are many reasons the Minnesota Wild didn’t make the Stanley Cup Playoffs during the 2018-19 season. Their offense fizzled, as it’s hard to win games when only three teams score fewer goals than you. The loss of Nino Niederreiter in a baffling trade certainly didn’t help. But if you’re looking for the simplest reason why, it’s hard not to look at goaltender Devan Dubnyk.
Dubnyk had by far his worst season with the Wild last season. In his first four seasons, he posted a .9238 save percentage in 231 games. From the start of the 2014-15 season to the end of the 2017-18 season, no goaltender had a better raw save percentage during that time.
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Even though the Wild made his job easy by significantly limiting the number of high-danger chances Dubnyk faced, he did a good job stopping pucks. Isn’t that the ultimate goal for every goalie?
During the 2018-19 season, Dubnyk stopped being reliable. His .913 save percentage was the lowest of his career with the Wild and his third-worst overall. The Wild continued to make Dubnyk’s job fairly easy and even then, he didn’t do well.
At five-on-five, he had the third-lowest expected goals against per hour rate in the NHL (1.91). Only Tuukka Rask and Jordan Binnington were expected to allow fewer goals per hour than that. Overall, Dubnyk was expected to allow 99.74 goals at five-on-five, but he allowed 120.
His .918 save percentage at five-on-five ranked 28th out of the 43 goalies to play at least 1,500 minutes at five-on-five. Dubnyk’s GSAA/60 (goals saved above average per hour) at five-on-five was among the worst in the league.
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Maybe last season from Dubnyk was merely a fluke. After all, he’s been at worst reliable and solid in the past with the Wild. However, it’s worth pointing out Dubnyk is 33 years old. Age is not kind to goalies. Also, Dubnyk’s played the most minutes since the start of the 2014-15 season of any goaltender.
The Wild better hope last season was a fluke and this isn’t the beginning of the end for his career. Once goalies start declining, things get ugly. Luckily, if Dubnyk’s decline has started, the Wild only have him for two more years. That’s better than, say, four more years.
There’s a decent chance the Wild won’t be as good as they were last year on offense. They’ve lost 34 of the 211 goals they scored last season thanks to the departures of Eric Fehr, Nino Niederreiter, Mikael Granlund, and Charlie Coyle.
Adding Mats Zuccarello and Ryan Hartman should help. Matt Dumba and Luke Kunin hopefully coming back healthy should help too. As should full seasons from Kevin Fiala and Ryan Donato. But that’s still a lot of goals to make up. Keep in mind the Wild were a very bad scoring team, so the status quo isn’t going to cut it.
Even if you’re an optimist, you have to admit the Wild aren’t going to improve too much on offense. This means they’re going to have to depend on their defense. Their defensemen did their job last season. The crease in front of Dubnyk was clear far more often than it wasn’t.
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I’m not sure if the Wild are going to be a good team or not in 2019-20. Dubnyk’s going to play a very important role in answering that question.