Russo and Smith: As Wild season spirals, trade-deadline regret is inevitable — ‘Not getting any younger'

New York Times

17-03-2025

ST. PAUL, Minn. — Marc-Andre Fleury, 40, is in the last year of his Hall of Fame career.
Mats Zuccarello, 37, has one more year on his Minnesota Wild contract — and possibly his NHL career — and has been with the club for six seasons.
Captain Jared Spurgeon, 35, has devoted 15 years of his life to the Wild. Jonas Brodin, 31, was drafted 14 years ago.
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The list goes on: Joel Eriksson Ek, 28, has been here nine seasons; Marcus Foligno, 33, for eight; Ryan Hartman, 30, for six; Kirill Kaprizov, who already turns 28 next month, for five; and Jake Middleton, 29, for four.
Other than Spurgeon and Brodin, nobody on the roster has won a playoff round wearing a Wild sweater.
Time is running out for some. As Foligno said during a candid conversation with The Athletic on Saturday morning, 'You're not getting any younger.'
That's always the give and take when you're a general manager like Bill Guerin playing the long game.
Guerin has been waiting for four years for the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyout handcuffs to be greatly reduced this summer so the team can pounce.
But that doesn't help the vets pouring sweat, hard work, pain and career equity into the season. You can bet these players were hoping for some help with Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek and Brodin sidelined.
'It's tough. We all want to win,' Foligno told The Athletic. 'We've been grinding for the past couple months, so it's just — I think you always want to see yourself as a team that's always going for it.
'We have a great team, but we're a different team without those three studs that we're missing. Would you have liked to add or done something? For sure. But when you're kind of going with Billy's plan and what we have to understand is it's moving chess pieces right now, and if you lose something you might regret it. And Billy doesn't want to be put in that position. We understand that side of it, too. But you look at other teams bulk up and it just kinda gives you a little bit of jealousy. We know next year is next year and that we'll have that off our plate finally, but it just feels a little bit frustrating when you always want to be in that position to succeed.'
Injuries have caused the Wild's season to unravel.
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They had the best record in the NHL in mid-December. They handled injuries, particularly Kaprizov's, admirably through the first week of January, but the continuous absence of three critical pieces — Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek and Brodin — has been too much to bear of late. They're the fourth-worst team and lowest-scoring team in the NHL since Jan. 9, and they have frankly stunk since the 4 Nations Face-Off: 4-6-1, two regulation wins, 20 goals scored for an ugly 1.81 per game.
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Russo: Wild look broken, tired and incapable of scoring, and help is not on the way
Brodin seems close to returning — maybe this week. But Kaprizov isn't expected to start skating for another 10 days or so, and it's unclear how long it will be before Eriksson Ek can. When he couldn't walk after practice Feb. 24, league sources were saying it would be a six-to-eight-week timeline.
Guerin has said he expects the three players back before the end of the regular season in explaining the limits the team faced at the March 7 trade deadline, but it sure feels like even if Kaprizov and Eriksson Ek can return, it'll probably be with a handful of games left before the playoffs.
This was the Wild's chance to do what so many other teams do annually and hold one of the two out until the playoffs so they could take advantage of the long-term-injured-reserve loophole and get help.
Brock Nelson went to the Colorado Avalanche for the equivalent of Danila Yurov and a first-round pick. Nobody in their right mind thinks Guerin should have considered that. But surely he could have done something to help an exhausted and overmatched roster by adding some scoring or speed or a faceoff guy who could keep the Wild's head above water and also make an impact in the playoffs once the cavalry returns.
Instead, these players, who have been so professional these past four years — playing their butts off despite knowing their team was not icing a roster commensurate with other contenders because of the Parise/Suter shackles — got miniscule help.
Instead, these fans, who have also been patient for four years, who have paid a fortune to show up only to leave unsatisfied many nights and who were so excited by the early-season play and bought in to this possibly being a special postseason, were told again, 'Our time is coming.'
GO DEEPER
Wild GM Bill Guerin on not pulling LTIR lever while rivals bulked up at deadline: 'Our time will come'
Guerin met with a number of veterans before the trade deadline to explain his predicament. The Wild were capped out, so anything he did after the Gustav Nyquist pickup had to be penny in and penny out.
He had no flexibility, Guerin told them.
But that was only because he wouldn't put Kaprizov or Eriksson Ek on the shelf until the playoffs. If he had, he would have had plenty of flexibility.
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Players know how that works. So even if they were warned, they had to be disappointed when they got back to the team hotel from the March 7 morning skate in Vancouver and no additions were delivered beyond Justin Brazeau for Marat Khusnutdinov, Jakub Lauko and a sixth-round pick.
It sure feels like Guerin didn't go the LTIR route because he didn't want to give up big assets for players at the deadline — so he can instead go into this offseason with enough assets to have options to make bold moves.
But that didn't stop him from giving up first-, second-, third- and fourth-round picks and defense prospect Daemon Hunt for 21-year-old David Jiricek, who has played six games since being acquired in November and has been a healthy scratch in seven straight games since being recalled from AHL Iowa. It didn't stop him from giving up a second-round pick for Nyquist, 35, who has one assist in seven games.
'If you could have thrown two guys on there, yeah, for sure, maybe you can open up a spot to get a top-tier guy that makes a lot of money and can add to it, but it sounds like a lot of things handcuffed them and he really couldn't do much,' Foligno said. 'So it is what it is. It's been the story for the past couple years, so we've just got to find the character in the room to do something this playoffs.
'Is it tough to do that when you're playing against some big powerhouses? Yeah. But hockey's hockey and there's bounces and things may go our way this time.'
Foligno said he 'sure hopes' that Kaprizov, Eriksson Ek and Brodin will return 100 percent and give the Wild a boost. But he also knows how difficult it will be for them to magically be their very best when they haven't played for so long and Minnesota's playoff opponent will be going 500 mph at that time of year.
'I think everyone thinks coming back, it's going to be back to normal,' Foligno said. 'It's not like we're going to rush someone back here. I think everyone's hoping that it works out well, but from what I know from the injuries, I think it's going to be something where you're going to talk about getting into game shape, things like that that might hurt us or hurt the guys. But I don't know. I think that they'll fit pretty comfortably, and I think our depth will be there once those guys come in, too, and maybe that will help our team a little bit more this postseason.'
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Foligno, after back-to-back seasons where he tried to play through core-muscle issues that ultimately required surgeries, has been one of the NHL's best defensive forwards this season. He's doing everything possible to be a leader on and off the ice during these tough times. He's just hoping the Wild can devote themselves to playing defensive hockey since it's proven so difficult for this team to score right now.
'That 40-to-60-game range is a grind, and if you don't compete and don't show up, it's going to be a nightmare in the best of times, but especially now without our three studs,' Foligno said. 'So we caught ourselves in that a little bit, and I think just having a voice of, 'Let's just play it this way,' and I don't want to say play it safe, but we have to. We're not scoring goals whenever we want. We're fighting things right now, and if we can win 2-1, 3-2, then that's how we have to do it.
'I think that's the mentality. If you can get it through your teammates' heads, 'This is how we have to play,' then you're going to see results. But if you don't and you go on your own page, it's going to be a little bit nightmarish trying to make the playoffs.'
But this is why Foligno and his veteran teammates had to be hoping for some sort of help from management at the deadline. The injuries this season have been truly outrageous.
'We thought last year was bad and then this year was another crap storm,' Foligno said. 'I don't know. Hopefully this is the end of it and there's better luck to look forward to next year. But we're still getting those three guys back, and we've got to focus on just this season and go from there. We take it day by day and I think that's the biggest mentality, is when you go through all these injuries, it's like you don't even know what day it is. You just know it's a practice day or a game day, and you've just got to see who's in the lineup and you've got to play and you've got to play hard. But, man, this has been 2 ½ months of this.
'It's been a grind, for sure, but we're in a position where we've had probably the toughest injuries, I feel like, in the league. I feel like the schedule's been crazy and our roster's been crazy, and yet we were at the top of the league and that just shows a lot about the guys we have on the team.
'Take (Nathan) MacKinnon off Colorado, take Leon Draisaitl and (Connor) McDavid off Edmonton, Auston Matthews off Toronto, Jack Eichel off Vegas — it changes everything. We've been playing without Kirill for three months. Ekker for a while. I don't know if too many teams are going to survive that. They're stars in this league for a reason, and when you don't have that star, it's just an energy (depletion). They do things in the game that get you that one or two more goals that you can say, 'Hey, our offense is back,' or, 'We can play a little bit more like this.' But other teams didn't have that this year, and they're ahead of us for that reason.'
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Then add in the fact that the Wild were icing a roster with more than $15 million (including Marco Rossi's bonus overages) in dead money already, and it explains why the Wild are running on fumes.
This is why it just feels like a missed opportunity not to do what so many other teams have done — and would have done — in the situation the Wild found themselves in, and that's hold Kaprizov or Eriksson Ek out until Game 1 of the playoffs.
Help could have been provided. The players were owed that. So were the fans.