Can the Wild go far, or is another early playoff exit in the cards?
The Minnesota Wild have won two games in a row and are on pace to qualify for the postseason, but can the team make much noise in the Stanley Cup Playoffs?
On Thursday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, Frank Seravalli and Tyler Yaremchuk chatted about the Wild and the bevy of injury challenges that have held back the team this season.
Tyler Yaremchuk: It was a quiet night last night in the NHL, but one of the games that stook out to me was a 4-0 win by the Wild over the Seattle Kraken. The Wild are an interesting team. They didn’t get up to a whole heck of a lot at the trade deadline, especially compared to what some other teams in their division did. The result of that has been they have sort of fallen behind the pack in the Central Division. The question I want to ask you is, what are the Wild? Are they a team that is a threat to go on a run and pull off some upsets or are they primed for a first-round exit and a reset in the summer?
Frank Seravalli: Unfortunately for them, I think right now as currently constituted, I think they are primed for another first-round exit for a franchise that really hasn’t had that many deep playoff runs to speak of. That being said, I am bullish on the Wild moving forward. They are going to be a tough out just by the way that they are constructed. But you look at last night and Marco Rossi went down with injury. It has been one guy after the other for Minnesota all season long. It’s not that they can’t be a threat to advance, but given the current state of the team – Kirill Kaprizov is not back on the ice yet and he still leads their team in goals at this point in the year. They need to get healthy. They need Joel Eriksson Ek and that huge frame doing what he does best. And now Rossi. I can’t believe the poor luck that they’ve had. It kind of adds up to me that this isn’t their year. I think their general manager Bill Guerin was kind of hinting at that in his post-trade deadline media availability when he said there will be a time that they will push their chips in, and it’s not now. It’s not that far off, and I expect them to be aggressive this summer. They are a firm playoff team but not in the same class as the others as constituted right now in the West.
You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here: