Pool Outlook for Minnesota

The Minnesota Wild were a team also looking for a different identity in 2010, with the change in coaching, change in top-end scorer and a few other new faces in the organization, but in their look for that new identity, they had a hard time finding some wins and then found themselves on the outside looking in on the playoffs.  Today, we'll have a review of the season and maybe predict what and how their Summer may turn out, because they might need a little bit of a hand figuring it all out.

The Wild spent a fair bit of coin looking for someone to score in place of Marian Gaborik, who left the team via free agency last Summer, but ended up with a player from their own roster leading the way in 2010.  Mikko Koivu improved his numbers yet again, scoring 71 points (22 goals & 49 assist) in 80 games for the Wild, setting a new career-high in points and in pool ranking, finishing 36th among all pool scorers.   That would make him a solid 3rd round pick in the Draft this past year, if we picked in order of rankings using this year's numbers.  That's an impressive season for the coming-of-age Finn.

There was definitely some ups and downs among the rest of the Wild forwards in 2010.  Andrew Brunette had an up year, 61 points in 82 games; Martin Havlat had a down year, 54 points in 73 games; Antti Miettinen had a down year, 42 points in 79 games; Guilliaume Latendresse had a big up year, 40 points in 78 games; and Owen Nolan had a down year, 33 points in 73 games.  The Wild did look to Havlat and Miettinen to be better, especially Havlat, who signed a big contract to take Gaborik's job in the off-season.  Instead, their scoring suffered and they finished 11 points out of a playoff spot.  Of course, the season-long injury to Pierre-Marc Bouchard was a huge blow to the Wild offense, since he's been known to pick up 15-20 goals a year. 

The defense going into the 2010 season had a fair bit of promise attached to it, especially offensively.  Marek Zidlicky and Brent Burns were on the verge of having some pretty good seasons, but they didn't really break out the way the Wild were hoping.  Zidlicky finished with 43 points in 78 games, while Burns only picked up 20 points in 47 games.  You can point to the Burns injury during the year as a definite contributing factor, but they didn't quite meet up to expectations, especially for the hockey poolies out there.  The addition of Cam Barker at the deadline should be a positive one for the future, as he's rounded out to be a pretty good defenseman in the NHL.

Sharp definitely wouldn't be a word used to describe the goaltending for Minnesota during the season.  Niklas Backstrom was not playing at the level that we are generally used to see him play at, while Josh Harding wasn't the rock solid back-up we've seen out of him in the past couple seasons.  Without a doubt, things were a little bit shaky in the net for the Wild, but that's nothing a bounce-back season couldn't make you forget about, right?  Backstrom only finished with 26 wins and 57 points in 2010, ranking him 88th among all pool scorers.  That's way down from 11th in 2009 and 38th in 2008, so there were definitely some struggles. 

2011 Season Outlook
When 100% healthy, the Minnesota Wild have a very good core of players, which should be able to compete with any team in the league and make a good run to the playoffs.  Of course, that wasn't the case in 2010, but there should be plenty of hope for 2011.  As you can see below, the team that is put together so far, looks pretty good.

Forwards	Defense	Goalies
Mikko Koivu	Marek Zidlicky	Niklas Backstrom
Andrew Brunette	Cam Barker
Martin Havlat	Brent Burns
Antti Miettinen	Nick Schultz
Kyle Brodziak	Greg Zanon
Cal Clutterbuck
Chuck Kobasew
Pierre-Marc Bouchard

To Minnesota's credit, they do spend the money allocated to them under the salary cap, as their 2010 number was nice and snug to the cap ceiling, so Wild fans can take comfort in that. Currently, the group of players listed above have an annual cap hit of $43.9 million and that includes a few franchise forwards, some pretty good defense and their number one goalie. This should suggest that they will use their $14 million (or so) remaining under the cap to bring some of their top end youth in and/or sign some above-average depth players.  This does look awfully good for the Wild.

There is a mighty fine possibility that the unrestricted free agent crop coming out of Minnesota will signal a bit of a cleansing of their operation.  Owen Nolan, Shane Hnidy, Petr Sykora, Wade Dubielewicz and Jamie Sifers are all likely done with the club, unless they can serve some minor ice-time purpose going forward.  I do expect to see Derek Boogaard and John Scott back and signed before they can get away, but otherwise it's time for some fresh thinking in Minnesota.

The Wild will also have to re-up some restricted free agent talent in the way of Latendresse, Harding, James Sheppard, Anton Khudobin and Nate Prosser (a mid-season signing) to help move their team along.  The toughest one of the bunch will be Harding, who was looking to be a number one guy somewhere by now I'm thinking and he'll want some sort of deal that sees to some more ice-time.  I could almost see him go somewhere in a Draft Day trade.

If there is one position that the Minnesota Wild have done well to stock up on, it's been defense.  They have a number of young defenders on the verge of making the jump into the pro circuit with the team and the Wild will likely be better for it.  Between Marco Scandella, Nick Leddy and Tyler Cuma, they could end up being a quick and agile bottom three defense set that earn their way up to some more solid minutes. The Wild do have five solid NHL defenders already signed on to their 2011 roster (see table above), so it could very well be a fight between these three for one, possibly two, spots on the blueline next season.  That should be a good battle to watch in training camp.

What I had said at the same time last year: "Beyond the obvious in Minnesota, this team will be hard to choose from come fantasy draft day. I also have a hard time believing that they will make the playoffs next season, unless the new coaching staff has an immediate rapport with the team that is already in place. This is a wait-and-see team, which has some potential, but not very much. Wait on Backstrom, wait on Gaborik, wait on Koivu... see where Foster goes and get him relatively high. There you have it. "

Well, my gut feeling about Minnesota not making the playoffs sure came true, eh?  Very nice.  Did you wait a bit on Backstrom?  He fell through a bit.  Gaborik moved to the Big Apple in the off-season, so he was pretty well fair game and if you didn't wait on Koivu and you made him into a higher pick, you probably were not disappointed.  There was a lot of wait-and-see at my Draft around the Minnesota Wild and I think that really paid off in the end for quite a few teams.

For 2011, I see it being a lot of the same, but just a little bit better.  The Wild do have some cap flexibility going into the silly season of off-season dealings, so they could very well improve to the extent of being a playoff team, but the pickings are pretty slim, so I don't forsee a big improvement, unless their youth can really take them to the next level.  I'm expecting Backstrom to respond to this mediocre season with a good push in the right direction and I have a good feeling about the defense putting up some better points in 2011 as well.  Do pencil in some Wild players as sleepers next Fall.