The Minnesota Wild will have to deal with tight salary cap space this off-season. Are they good enough right now to capitalize on their competitive window?
Like more than a few NHL teams, the Minnesota Wild are firmly on the clock regarding their competitive window.
After 46 games, the Wild are a thoroughly mediocre 25-17-4 – including a 4-4-2 mark in their past 10 games – and they’re currently in fourth place in the Central Division and ninth in the Western Conference. They do have two games in hand on the eighth-place Calgary Flames and three games in hand on the seventh-place Edmonton Oilers, but the surging Colorado Avalanche has leapfrogged Minnesota for third in the Central. The Wild are also just five points ahead of the 11th-place St. Louis Blues.
Making matters worse: Minnesota has to deal with the probability that key defenseman Matt Dumba – an unrestricted free agent this coming summer – is likely too expensive to sign to a contract extension.
As per Cap Friendly, the Wild have approximately $3.7 million in salary cap space at the moment, and that number is projected to rise to $16.5 million in space by the NHL’s March 3 trade deadline. But that number shrinks drastically for the 2023-24 campaign – they’ve got just $9.3 million in projected space and only 14 players under contract.
This is, of course, because of GM Bill Guerin’s decision to buy out the contracts of veterans Zach Parise and Ryan Suter last year – their combined cap hit of $14.7 million next year is debilitating in the extreme, but there’s no going back on it now. They’re on a collision course with cap hell, and no NHL GM will come to their rescue.
So, even if Guerin makes a decent trade for Dumba, the return he gets back is almost assuredly going to be a cheap, young player. The Wild may be buyers at the trade deadline, but it feels likely they will get a rental-type veteran who won’t be on the team’s books beyond this season.
But will that be enough to get them to the playoffs, let alone for them to enjoy a deep post-season run? We continue to have our doubts. To get into the playoffs, Minnesota now needs a collapse from the Flames, the Oilers, or the third-in-the-Pacific-Division Los Angeles Kings, and that seems to be a serious stretch.
And what happens to the Wild after that? What’s the appropriate course for a franchise that’s exerting all its energy just to tread water in the West? Sure, there’s the outside chance Minnesota catches fire in the coming weeks, but does anyone see them as being favorites to win a playoff round? Very few people we know of. Guerin has been the Wild’s GM for more than three years now – not an eternity by NHL standards, but long enough to expect more out of this franchise than we currently see.
This cannot be a comfort to long-suffering Minnesota fans who haven’t seen their team win a playoff round since 2015. The Wild continue to underwhelm, and if this year doesn’t already feel frustrating enough, their prospects for next season feel even worse.
The Wild will be one of the NHL’s older teams next season, with an average age of 29 years old right now. They’re not totally devoid of skilled youngsters, but they’re also not brimming with generational talents. Guerin is going to be under the gun to give them a boost next year. Once again, they won’t be one of the league’s lesser lights, but once again, they probably won’t be nearly as fearsome as the Avs, Dallas Stars and Winnipeg Jets in the Central. History seems like it’s destined to repeat itself in Minnesota.
Maybe we’re wrong. Maybe Guerin’s vision for the future will pan out better than it’s panning out at the moment. But what if we’re right? What if the sum of this franchise is lesser than its parts? Where does the organization go from here? The answers are bleak, and the assurances to the contrary are fragile. The Wild can hear the clock ticking on them, and there’s every reason to believe they don’t have the proper solutions on the ice.