The year is 2033 and the Minnesota Wild are preparing for its home opener. Marcus Foligno is on the ice and flanked by Ryan Hartman and 48-year-old Mats Zuccarello, but instead of wearing his trademark No. 17 jersey, he’s in a suit and standing on the red carpet.
The Wild are ready to honor Foligno by inducting him into their “Ring of Honor,” The space is headlined by legends such as Brian Rolston and Cliff Ronning, and Foligno fights back tears as his name is unveiled right under the No. 9 banner of Mikko Koivu.
The 18,000 people in attendance inside Xcel Energy Center roar and the Wild begin the quest for another trip to the playoffs.
If this scenario seems underwhelming, it probably is. But in “The State of Hockey” it has become a symbol of excellence. The Wild made headlines when they signed Foligno and Zuccarello to contract extensions last week and with an extension for Hartman on deck, a team that hasn’t made it to a conference final since 2003 is dangerously close to repeating its history of mediocrity.
It begins with the current state of the Wild. While general manager Bill Guerin ushered in a new era with the decision to buy out Zach Parise and Ryan Suter in July 2021, that era has yet to bear fruit thanks to the hefty dead cap hits their buyouts created.
But an optimist would look at the foundation that Guerin has built – which includes one of the best prospect systems in the NHL – and see a bright future. This is especially true when the cap penalties created by the buyouts will go down from $14.7 million in each of the next two seasons to $1.6 million in four straight seasons beginning in 2025-26.
“We’re going to have a lot of money to play on the open market,” Wild owner Craig Leipold said last week via Sarah McLellan of the Star Tribune. “We’re going to have these young guys that are going to be on third and fourth years. It’s going to be a perfect storm for us.”
This seems like a perfect opportunity to mold the Wild into a contender but Guerin decided to not only run the current group back for this season but deep into the future by extending Foligno and Zuccarello.
Extending Foligno is a questionable move due to his age (32) and the $4 million annual average value he is now set to make over the next four seasons. While Foligno generated a career-high 42 points (23 G, 19 A) in 74 games with the Wild in 2021-22, he recorded just 21 points (7 G, 14 A) with his lowest plus/minus rating (-6) since 2013-14 in 65 games with the Wild last season.
Mix in a couple of ill-timed (albeit questionable) penalties during the Wild’s playoff loss to the Dallas Stars and one could argue the Wild should have let Foligno play out the final year of his contract and re-evaluate him at the end of the season – even if another team is willing to out-bid them for his services.
But Guerin views Foligno as an indispensable piece of his roster and made it clear during a press conference on Friday afternoon.
“I know it’s probably coming, like, ‘He’s this old, it’s too many years, it’s too much money, it’s this and that.’ I get that,” Guerin said. “But you know what? I like our team with Marcus Foligno way better than without him. And if we didn’t have him on our team, the first thing we’d be doing is trying to find a guy just like him. And there just aren’t many of those guys around. So I’m not really worried about the term because all those reasons.”
If Foligno was a lynchpin to a team that has made several deep runs to the playoffs, keeping him around for the foreseeable future would be understandable. But it’s not like the Wild have been a powerhouse since Guerin’s arrival in August 2019.
The Wild have made the playoffs in three straight seasons but have failed to get out of the first round since 2015. The current group also held 2-1 leads in each of the past two playoff series but proceeded to lose three straight games in losses to the St. Louis Blues and Stars, respectively.
In the latest meltdown last spring, the usually forgiving Wild fan base rained down boos as the team skated through an elimination game at the Xcel Energy Center. Many agreed that the Wild needed some changes in order to take the next step but the Wild brought back Dean Evason for a fourth full season and didn’t make any significant moves outside of acquiring fourth-line grinder Pat Maroon to replace Ryan Reeves.
Even if Guerin believed in running this group back for one more season, he is doubling down on a group that hasn’t done much by signing Foligno, Zuccarello and eventually Hartman, who had 37 points in 59 games last season, to extensions.
It’s almost the same energy that Guerin’s predecessor Chuck Fletcher had while running back a core of Jason Zucker, Charlie Coyle and Mikael Granlund only to see them get bounced early in the playoffs throughout the 2010s. But this group is in their 30s and doesn’t represent the real doomsday scenario for the Wild.
Back in the 2000s, the Wild had a dynamic superstar in Marian Gaborik, who still holds several records in franchise history. With his contract winding down, he was surrounded by lackluster talent that was good enough to get to the playoffs but unable to make a legitimate run to a Stanley Cup.
Eventually, Gaborik got tired of the Wild’s ineptitude under Doug Risebrough and signed with the New York Rangers in free agency. The Wild sat in irrelevancy for several years until they overpaid for Parise and Suter on Independence Day 2012 and kickstarted another era of mediocrity.
Like Gaborik many years ago, the Wild’s current superstar Kirill Kaprizov could be in a similar situation, though Leipold seems confident that he can keep his star happy.
“Kirill’s a special player, and we want him to believe that we’re going to help field a Stanley Cup team and he’s a huge part of our future, but only if he stays here,” Leipold told McLellan. “We feel we have a great relationship with Kirill. I think he enjoys it here.”
Keeping Zuccarello is one way to appeal to Kaprizov. Zuccarello helped Kaprizov acclimate to his new surroundings after he finally came to North America for his NHL debut prior to the 2020-21 season and referred to him as “his first son” in a piece by Michael Russo in October 2022.
Kaprizov and Zuccarello have one special relationship on and off the ice.
After every single practice or morning skate, they can be on the ice for up to an hour doing little contests together. pic.twitter.com/p931WnuAfu
— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) March 24, 2022
But while Zuccarello’s production (146 points over the last two seasons) has remained consistent, he’ll be 36 this season. His signing also overlooks that Kaprizov might be interested in other things like having a legitimate center on his line or advancing past the first round of the playoffs.
It’s a similar situation to what Gaborik experienced and if Foligno, Hartman and Zuccarello all fall off age cliffs in the next few seasons, it could lead the Wild’s franchise star – who will turn 27 next April – to look for a new home when his contract expires after the 2025-26 season.
This leaves the Wild to rely on their prospect pool to fill the holes but even Guerin admitted that those players don’t always turn out. If most of the players turn out to be similar to Marco Rossi, who has so far failed to meet expectations, it could leave the Wild in the same stagnant position they’ve been in for the past 23 years – able to reach the playoffs but not able to compete for a Stanley Cup.
Too negative? It might all work out, but the pattern is too similar to roads previously traveled to generate a lot of optimism. We’ll find out when they get where they’re going…
