Wild new head coach John Hynes understands there are some players struggling on this team but he hopes to get the best out of them quickly.
ST. PAUL - There is no denying that there are certain players on this team who are struggling but the entire team in general is in a funk. The Wild currently have two more points than the San Jose Sharks who are last in the NHL in points.
They haven't gotten the production of many players who provided massive production to this team last year. Freddy Gaudreau who had 19 goals and 38 points last year has zero goals and zero points through nine games.
Kirill Kaprizov has only two even-strength goals through 19 games but recorded 23 last year in 67 games. Matt Boldy only has one goal this year through 12 games after scoring 31 a year ago.
Ryan Hartman has seven goals this year but only has one goal in his last nine games and was recently suspended for two games after his slew-foot on Alex DeBrincat against Detroit on Sunday.
There are many more players on this team who are struggling and it also doesn't help that the Wild currently have the worst goaltending stats in the entire NHL right now. That shouldn't stay the same the whole season but it is a little alarming to say the least.
Yet Wild President of Hockey Operations and General Manager, Bill Guerin sat at the press conference table today along with John Hynes and reassured that this team will turn it around and he believes in this group.
The hardest part of this is before this season started Guerin extended three players to multi year deals who could've possibly been trade chips if the Wild were struggling by the trade deadline.
"I believe in these players. I don't regret it at all," Guerin said on the extensions he gave to Marcus Foligno, Mats Zuccarello, and Hartman. "I think they are all going to turn their season around."
The Wild need a lot of their players to turn their seasons around if they want to get out of the basement of the league and they need to do it fast with only 63 games left in the season.
Tonight will mark the first game in the Hynes era and will be the start of something new for a lot of these players.
One player in particular is Boldy.
"This is a 22-year-old kid and we are asking a lot out of him," Guerin said of Boldy. "He knows he's struggling more than anyone else. More than any of the experts out there and I guarantee any of the experts out there have never been through anything like this.
This is weighing on him like a ton of bricks and it's our job to help him get out of it," Guerin said while looking at Hynes. "We aren't there to beat him up and point fingers at him, we've got to help him out of it and no one wants to do it more than him."
It may seem hard for a new coach to come into the middle of a struggling season and try to get the best out of some struggling players but Hynes believes that this may help more considering he will enter the struggles right with them.
"I don't think it's tough. You just go back to having experience of taking a team over mid-season," Hynes said. "When you come into the team with guys struggling I think the more you can talk with them, like they have opinions, they are prideful guys. I think understanding their prospective and then you give them prospective back to try and help them.
Giving them some time to be able to get the game going. I think the big thing really is every player has an identity and sometimes when players struggle, they lose their identity that makes them who they are."
There seems to be a lot of players on this Wild team who have lost their identity but if Hynes can bring that out of each player then this team could make a run. That's the hope at least but something Guerin believes will happen.