Free washer | Wild: Bill Guerin tries to win without rebuilding

It is still too early to call the Minnesota Wild, the Canadian’s next opponent, a Stanley Cup contender.

The Wild missed the playoffs last year, finishing 20^e place in the overall standings, and has not made it past the first elimination round since 2015. That year, Zach Parise, Jason Pominville, Thomas Vanek and Mikko Koivu dominated the club’s scoring rankings. You might as well say an eternity.

But the Wild are off to a roaring start this season with a 10-2-3 record. Its general manager, Bill Guerin, is trying to make his club a power without rebuilding.

Minnesota has drafted just once in the top 10 for 12 years: Marco Rossi, 9^e overall picks in 2020. But Guerin has always made it a point to keep his first-round picks and even add more as needed.

Guerin inherited a club in tatters in August 2019. This aging team relied on Parise, Eric Staal, Ryan Suter and Mikko Koivu. There wasn’t much relief, but we had nevertheless just drafted Matt Boldy at 11^e rank, almost the last decision in the short but tumultuous reign of GM Paul Fenton, who sowed controversy by appointing his son as co-director of amateur recruiting. At least they will have done this well.

But the club’s new general manager will have succeeded where his predecessors failed: convincing Russian Kirill Kaprizov, drafted in the fifth round in 2015, to join the team at age 23, five years after being chosen by the Wild.

Since his arrival, Kaprizov has amassed 358 points in 293 games. That’s a pace of 100 points per season. And if we take his first year out of the equation, Kaprizov produces at a ratio of 121 points per season! He has 28 in just 15 games since the start of the season.

Otherwise, the Wild does not rest on extraordinary foundations. Rossi, 23, is his first center. He scored 40 points in his first full season last year and has 13 points, including 4 goals, so far. Joel Eriksson-Ek, 27, a 20^e total pick who was slow to hatch, the Kotkaniemi of the rich, is at the center of the second trio. He is an attacker of around sixty points per season.

Matt Boldy already has nine goals this season. Mats Zuccarello, still productive at 37, and Marcus Johansson, 34, whose last season of more than 30 points dates back to 2017, complete the top 6.

Guerin’s stroke of genius came in June 2022 when he obtained young defenseman Brock Faber, still in the NCAA at the time, and a first-round pick, for forward Kevin Fiala. Faber became a pillar on defense last year in his first season in the NHL. He has played 25 minutes per game since the start of the season and is still producing offensively, well supported by the excellent Jonas Brodin, 31, for whom this is the 13th.^e saison.

Jacob Middleton, 28, obtained from the San Jose Sharks a few years ago for goaltender Kaapo Kahkonen, is a pleasant surprise and the return to health of Jared Spurgeon does not hurt.

Guerin pulled off another excellent move by luring goaltender Filip Gustavsson from the Ottawa Senators organization in exchange for an aging goaltender, Cam Talbot.

The Wild GM also got his hands on one of the best recruiters in his profession, Judd Brackett, the man behind the selections of Quinn Hughes and Elias Pettersson in Vancouver.

The Wild’s succession is interesting with Zeev Buium, Liam Öhgren (drafted with the Kings’ choice), Danila Yurov and goalie Jesper Wallstedt, among others. But it will also be necessary to retain Kaprizov, a free agent without compensation at the end of the 2025-2026 season.

Guerin and the Wild will try to prove that they can be Stanley Cup contenders for the next decade by relying on wise decisions, without drafting among the first and living years of misery as a result.

But another defeat in the first round, or even a collapse by the end of the winter for the second exclusion from the playoffs in a row, would reinforce the argument that we are condemned to remain a mid-pack club unless we rebuild. not.