The Minnesota Wild are playoff-worthy despite two big buyouts weighing them down. But will they improve enough to win a playoff round?

We’re continuing our THN.com “off-season outlook” series, in which we break down every NHL team’s past season and their overall situation heading into next season. As we’re looking at teams in alphabetical order, today we’re analyzing the Minnesota Wild.

2022-23 Grade: C+

Biggest Positive Heading Into the Off-Season

Stop us if you’ve heard this before: the Wild once again had a slightly above-average regular season, only to fail in the first rou–oh, OK, you’re stopping us. 

In 2022-23, Minnesota finished third in the Central Division with a 46-25-11 record. That was seven fewer wins than they had in 2021-22 (53-22-7) – and, even worse, they went out in the first round of the Stanley Cup playoffs, losing in six games to the Dallas Stars.

There is enough talent on Minnesota’s roster to position them as a playoff team in 2023-24, with star forwards Kirill Kaprizov and Matthew Boldy up front, veteran defensemen Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin on the blueline, and the solid goaltending tandem of Marc-Andre Fleury and Filip Gustavsson (if they re-sign the RFA). 

If you’re a fan of the Wild not sinking into the bottom of the division and league, you don’t have to worry – Minny GM Bill Guerin is not in the habit of accepting defeat lightly.

Ah, but there’s the rub, right? The Wild showed once again this past season they don’t have the depth to get them deep into the playoffs. They’re a classic “Mushy MIddle” team – good enough to avoid having the best shot at top prospects year after year but bad enough to consistently underachieve. 

If you’re an optimist, you can hope the Wild get hot late in the season and get a little bit better luck on the health front, and match the approach of the newly crowned Cup champions from Las Vegas. But this writer has been consistently critical about the makeup of the Wild, and that position is unlikely to change after Guerin makes changes this summer.

Biggest Need Heading Into the Off-Season

Salary cap space is the Wild’s biggest issue at the moment. As per PuckPedia, Minnesota has just $6.518 million in cap space, and they still have to sign five players to put together a 23-man roster. 

The buyouts of veterans Ryan Suter and Zach Parise continue to have a devastating impact on their cap situation, as their combined hit of $14.74-million – for this coming season, and next season as well – marked a monumental gamble by Guerin. Right now, it hasn’t paid off with playoff series wins.

The Wild are set in goal, and their defense is one of their strengths: their 2.67 goals-against average was the second-best number in the Western Conference, and their net power-play and penalty-kill percentages were in the top nine of all NHL teams. But they were 23rd in the league in goals-for in 2022-23 – at 2.91 goals-for per game, they had the worst total of any playoff team in 2023 – and Guerin will need to work more than a little magic this summer just to have some cap flexibility during the season.

Bottom Line for Minnesota This Off-Season

The Wild aren’t going to be picked by many to win the Cup this coming season for good reason. 

When you compare their core members to that of their Central rivals, they don’t have the depth and firepower to go toe-to-toe with truly elite Western Conference teams. 

The Wild’s cap predicament has likely spelled the end of the road for UFA blueliner Matt Dumba in Minnesota, and the Wild will have to depend just as much on the defense corps to win games. That, we suspect, will be notably more difficult for them in 2023-24.

If we had to put in our predictions for Minnesota, we’d slot them in as a wild-card playoff team – one that, once again, will get rolled in Round 1.

That has to be especially frustrating for Wild fans to consider, but it’s the reality. Absent some incredible surges by younger Minny players, there’s probably going to be a reckoning for Guerin’s cap gamble, and it’s probably going to happen this coming year.