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Wild Notes: Dubnyk, Vezina Finalists, Yeo

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It was a tough day for the Wild’s Devan Dubnyk tweets Sportsnet’s John Shannon, who allowed the game-winning overtime goal to Magnus Paajarvi in today’s Game 5. The veteran goaltender, who is coming off a great 2016-17 season, yielded four goals in what turned out to be their season-ending game. To make matters worse, Dubnyk, who was a candidate to be a finalist for the Vezina Trophy this year, was not selected. The NHL announced their finalists today as Washington Capitals’ Braden Holtby, Columbus Blue Jackets’ Sergei Bobrovsky and Montreal Canadiens’ Carey Price.

Still, the 30-year-old Dubnyk remains a cornerstone for the franchise after finishing the season, having played 65 games with a 2.25 GAA and a .925 save percentage. He is also locked up contractually until the 2020-21 season.

The team should be expected to contend for another few years as they also have the core of their team locked up for the next few years behind veterans Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise, Jason Pominville and defenseman Ryan Suter. The team’s youth is also ripening with solid seasons from Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter and defenders Jared Spurgeon, Mathew Dumba and Jonas Brodin.

The team may have some tough decisions for the upcoming expansion draft. The veteran team is sure to lose a quality player, and must contend with the No Movement Clauses of Koivu, Pominville, Parise and Suter. That leaves only a handful of spots left, depending on which path the Wild chooses to take. Tough decisions will have to be made about several players, including Jason Zucker, Erik Haula, Chris Stewart as well as veteran Eric Staal, who went down during Game 5. Even young defensemen like Brodin and Dumba could be exposed as well.

The team only has a handful of unrestricted free agents, namely Martin Hanzal and Ryan White, both acquired at the trade deadline from Arizona to help with their playoff run. The team must decide if they want or able to being one or both veterans back to the team next season.

  • One consequence to the Wild’s ouster in the playoffs will benefit the Arizona Coyotes. When Minnesota traded for Hanzal and White at the trade deadline, the team sent their 2017 first-round pick, a 2018 second-round pick and a conditional fourth-round pick in 2019 as well as prospect Grayson Downing. To the Wild’s benefit, that 2019 conditional fourth-rounder will remain a fourth-rounder. However, the series loss will allow the Coyotes to get a better pick than they had expected. The Wild at the time of the trade had the top record in the Western Conference and many figured that the pick would land in the high 20’s. Now the Wild could be handing a pick as early as No. 23 to the Coyotes for Hanzal and White, who are both unrestricted free agents in the offseason.
  • Blues head coach Mike Yeo said he has no special feelings about beating the Wild, the team that fired him during the 2015-16 season. “It’s not about me. I’ve been sincere when I’ve said that. I don’t think that what I’m feeling right now would be any different if it was any other team.”

Morning Notes: Glendale, Niederreiter, Halverson

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When Gary Bettman wrote a letter to Arizona lawmakers compelling them to pass Bill 1149—which would allow more than $200MM to be allocated from the state budget to build a new arena for the Coyotes closer to downtown Phoenix—he used some very strong wording. “The Coyotes cannot and will not remain in Glendale,” the Commissioner wrote in a thinly veiled threat that would hopefully force the Senate’s hand. He has received much backlash from the letter, including from a former mayor of Glendale herself, Elaine Scruggs (published by AZCentral).

Before the Coyotes moved out of downtown Phoenix they ranked 29th in attendance out of the league of 30 teams. Their first year in the Glendale Arena they ranked 19th in attendance. Attendance stayed in that tier until the floundering team started losing their disappointed fans’ support.

The truth is that the Coyotes have a world-class, taxpayer-funded arena that is designed for hockey and is only 12 years old. They have a City Council and City Manager ready to work with them to achieve an equitable long-term lease.

Scruggs makes a clear point in her letter, saying that it is not the people or city of Glendale’s fault, but the ownership groups the NHL has installed over their 19-year run. As the team struggles in last place in the Pacific Division, it is looking more and more like it won’t matter for the city that once loved their Coyotes. If they don’t get funding for another new arena, they might end up moving further than anyone—fans or the NHL—have ever wanted.

Dallas Stars May Miss Chance To Trade Patrick Sharp Due To Injury

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Mar. 1: Renaud Lavoie of TVA Sports reports that Sharp’s injury is significant enough that it will stop him from being traded today.

Feb. 28, 4:00pm: If you’re a fan of the Dallas Stars and you hate that they’ve begun to sell off expiring assets this year, you may be in luck. Elliotte Friedman of Sportsnet is reporting that team doctors will meet with Patrick Sharp at the conclusion of the Stars game against Pittsburgh to discuss a nagging injury. Though he is able to play through it—he played two nights ago and is expected to be in the lineup tonight—it may keep him off the trading block.

Friedman says that Stars GM Jim Nill has been very up front with teams who have inquired about the pending free agent. Though this doesn’t by any means guarantee that he won’t be moved, any team looking for an immediate impact in their top six may look elsewhere.

Sharp is in the last year of a five-year, $29.5MM deal that he signed with the Chicago Blackhawks back in 2011 and is easily one of the most decorated scoring threats on the rental market. With eight 20+ goal seasons (including four in which he scored at least 33) he presented an opportunity to get a player who could provide a real impact with top-line players for the remainder of the season and in the playoffs.

We profiled Sharp a month ago and listed no less than seven teams that could have been interested in the three-time Stanley Cup winner. The fact that he has 47 goals in 142 playoff games and is only owed an actual salary of $5MM this season was just icing on the cake. Sharp is admittedly getting older at 35 and has seen his production slip this year because of concussion problems, but when the market is paying solid prospects for Alex Burrows and second-round picks for Brian Boyle, he still looked likely to command a hefty return.

Again, this doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed to stay with the Stars but it could definitely cool the market on him if he’s deemed to injured to help immediately. Teams may still acquire him if he had a shot at returning for the playoffs, but it would likely have heavy conditions on any picks sent back to Dallas. Obviously the type or extent of the injury isn’t known, but Michael Russo of the Star Tribune guesses that it may have been a collision with Nino Niederreiter on February 16th for which the Minnesota forward was given a five-minute major and game misconduct (video of hit).

Regardless of when it happened, it’s bad timing for the Stars if they wanted to get anything out of Sharp at the deadline.

Deadline Primer: Minnesota Wild

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With the trade deadline now just a week away, we continue to take a closer look at each team. Where do they stand, what do they need to do, and what assets do they have to fill those needs?

After slipping into the playoffs last year with less than 90 points and the final wildcard position, only to get punched in the mouth by the Dallas Stars and go home early, the Minnesota Wild needed a change. They’d fired their coach halfway through the season, and were relying on an aging (but excellent) core of Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise and Ryan Suter too much to succeed.

Enter Bruce Boudreau and the kids. After good solid seasons from the young guns a year ago, many of them have exploded to the forefront of the team this season, with Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter, Charlie Coyle, and Jason Zucker all already setting career-highs in points through 59 games. They’re leading the Western Conference by five points and look poised for a deep playoff run.

Record

39-14-6, 1st in Central Division

Deadline Status

Buyer

Deadline Cap Space

$5.20MM – full-season cap hit, 47/50 contracts per CapFriendly.

Draft Picks

2017: MIN 1st, MIN 3rd, MIN 4th, MIN 5th, MIN 6th, MIN 7th
2018: MIN 1st, MIN 2nd, MIN 3rd, MIN 4th, MIN 5th, MIN 6th, MIN 7th

Trade Chips

Minnesota will almost surely avoid trading anything off the roster that has put them in prime position for a Stanley Cup run, meaning they’ll have to use draft picks and prospects as bait if they want to add anything next week. It’s a shame they don’t have their second-round pick from this season—which they traded to Buffalo for Chris Stewart back in 2015—since they are used so often in rental deals. Jason Pominville

The Wild do however have a fairly stocked cupboard of prospects that could be waived in front of a team looking to get younger. Their drafting the last decade (or longer) though not perfect in the first round has unearthed plenty of talent in later selections. They’ve picked players like Cal Clutterbuck (3rd), Justin Falk (4th), Marco Scandella (2nd), Erik Haula (7th), Darcy Kuemper (6th), Zucker (2nd) and Johan Larsson (2nd) all outside of the first round and found excellent value in each.

If a team really wants to go after youth, they could ask for prospects like Jordan Greenway, who showed off his skills at the most recent World Juniors. Kirill Kaprisov is tearing up the KHL as a 19-year old, and it was recently reported that he’ll play for CSKA next season. Alex Tuch is showing his ability at the AHL level after a dominating NCAA career, and Luke Kunin continues to captain the University of Wisconsin up the college hockey rankings. It would be crazy to trade any of these names for a rental, but if the Wild want to enter the ring of possible long-term upgrades, they have the pieces to do it.

One Player To Watch: F Jason Pominville, who has a big cap-hit and is playing much less due to the emergence of the young guns is a contract that the Wild may look to move out if they’re to make any improvements.

Team Needs

1) Wing Depth – The Wild would like to move Coyle back to center ice if possible, but they’d need a winger who can jump into their top-six to do it. Jannik Hansen has been rumored to be on their radar, but a player like Patrick Eaves seems a better fit. It’s not guaranteed that they’ll do anything, though GM Chuck Fletcher has said that they have some “unproven depth” at forward.

2) Center – The nice thing about having Coyle is that if you can’t find the upgrade at the wing you could always acquire a center instead and leave him out there. Arizona’s Martin Hanzal was quoted today by Chris Hine of the Chicago Tribune as saying he wants to stay in the middle even if traded, which would still be possible for the Wild.

Central Notes: Hutton, Hossa, Pickard, Niederreiter

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Although his signing in the offseason didn’t generate a lot of buzz, Blues backup goalie Carter Hutton has played a significant role for the team lately, writes Benjamin Hochman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.  With starter Jake Allen battling inconsistency at times, St. Louis has had to rely on Hutton more often than they originally anticipated.

To say that he has lived up to expectations would be an understatement, especially lately.  Over his last eight starts, he has recorded four shutouts (matching his career total heading into the season) and has played a big role in the Blues getting themselves back into a top three spot in the Central Division.

With Allen returning to form lately, it’s likely that he will go back to getting the bulk of the starts but if he falters again or is injured, Hutton’s recent stretch should give them confidence if they need to turn to him again.

Elsewhere in the Central:

  • While it’s not a role he would have been happy with too long ago, Blackhawks right winger Marian Hossa is comfortable as a third liner in Chicago, notes Mark Lazarus of the Chicago Sun-Times. Not only does him being there mean that they have the potential for three quality scoring lines, the 38 year old can certainly benefit from seeing a bit less ice time from a rest perspective.  The cut in playing time hasn’t really slowed him down as Hossa has nine points in his last 12 games.
  • Although there isn’t a whole lot to play for in Colorado, that isn’t the case for goalie Calvin Pickard, suggests Terry Frei of the Denver Post. With Semyon Varlamov out for the season with recurring groin problems and no proven backup behind him, Pickard has a prime opportunity to show he’s ready for a bigger workload next season.  Further adding to the important of his play in the coming months, both netminders require protection for the expansion draft in June and the Avalanche will only be able to protect one of them.
  • The NHL rescinded the game misconduct penalty assessed on Thursday to Wild right winger Nino Niederreiter, reports Michael Russo of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune. The decision is noteworthy as any player who receives two game misconducts for physical fouls within 41 games of each other is automatically suspended.  By having this misconduct taken away, Niederreiter isn’t in danger of a guaranteed sit-down if he gets ejected for a physical foul in the next few months.

2017 Prospect Update: Patrick, Liljegren, Hischier

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Amazingly, the 2017 NHL entry draft is now less than five months away, and teams are starting to really dig into their draft boards to find that next superstar talent. The draft is an odd one this year, since the top two players have faced injury and inconsistency and didn’t take part in the World Juniors at all.

Nolan Patrick is still the consensus top talent and should go first overall, but has missed a huge chunk of his season due to injury. He make a triumphant comeback in early January with a four-point night, and is about to take part in the top prospects game tomorrow. The centerman from Winnipeg has 17 points in 11 games this season for the Brandon Wheat Kings, and will have front offices drooling over him come this summer.

An interesting connection is that of Kelly McCrimmon, who is now the assistant general manager in Vegas and was the GM in Brandon when Patrick made his debut. The Golden Knights have a chance in the lottery equal to that of the third-last place team, giving them a real chance to make him their franchise’s first selection. While his season hasn’t gone the way one had hoped, his stock hasn’t fallen nearly enough for him to be challenged for the top spot – yet.

That second spot is becoming a bit more contested though, with Timothy Liljegren not being the lock he once was thought as. The Swedish defenseman that some say has a ceiling as high as Erik Karlsson struggled in the first division before being loaned down to Timra. While this by no means hinders his development, with the explosion of a few other names it’s no guarantee that he goes second. Like Jesse Puljujarvi last season, if a team believes they have a bigger need a different position Liljegren may drop a spot. Anyone that gets him will be excited, as he can do everything on the ice and should be a star in the league for a long time.

With the top two prospects out of the World Junior’s, the stage was open for other names to impress scouts and perhaps vault themselves into the discussion at the tops of draft boards. Nico Hischier did just that, showing the world that he should be considered as one of the very top prospects in the world. Some draft boards likely already have him ahead of Liljegren, and his play for the Halifax Mooseheads hasn’t changed that. With 68 points in 40 games as a rookie, Hischier only turned 18 three weeks ago and is already a dominant centerman. He’ll undoubtedly set the record as the highest-drafted Swiss player ever, topping Nino Niederreiter’s fifth-overall selection.

One more name to keep an eye on is Owen Tippett. The young forward is currently second in the OHL with 36 goals and has elite scoring senses from anywhere in the offensive zone. He is flying up draft boards and may even make it into the top five by the year’s end. Though he plays the wing, he may even jump over center ice prospects like Casey Mittlestadt and Gabriel Vilardi, both of whom are projected for the top-10.

Vegas Golden Knights At The World Juniors

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Even though the Vegas Golden Knights don’t start playing until 2017-18, doesn’t mean they haven’t already started to scout the young talent throughout the game. With the World Junior Championships underway in Toronto, the team has sent several scouts to the tournament to watch the collection of under-20 talent. While some are still draft-eligible, and some are under contract with teams around the league, it’s a wonderful opportunity to scout the best of the best all at once.  Dan Marrazza of NHL.com caught up with the Golden Knights’ Assistant Director of Player Personnel Bob Lowes to get his take on the tournament.

It isn’t just the draft eligible players. It’s other team’s drafts, guys that are already picked. I think it’s a really good tournament for our staff to see both of those groups of players, and to get a good handle on it going forward for our organization.

While the team will have a chance in the draft lottery this summer (equal to that of the third worst team in the league), something that is often ofterlooked is that they’ll also have the third pick in each subsequent round regardless of where they fall in the lottery. That gives them some strong picks even as the rounds go later, when the lesser-known teams at the tournament will have talent available. On Denmark, who has shocked the world by defeating both the Czech Republic and last year’s winner Finland:

Obviously, they’re having some success, so it makes you take notice a little bit more. It makes you look at a guy that’s maybe slipped through the draft, if he’s draft eligible, and saying: ’this kid’s doing it on the world stage against some of the best competition in the world.’

Lowes points out that there have been breakout stars at the tournament before, referencing Nino Niederreiter of Switzerland and Oliver Bjorkstrand of Denmark as players who greatly improved their draft stock at the tournament. While obviously the top names of the tournament are often well scouted prior, or even already drafted, it’s a big deal to see under-the-radar guys on this big of a stage. As Lowes puts it:

Performance here goes into a player’s overall profile. You wouldn’t just base it on this tournament, but it is an important part of the development of a player. It’s just a really good snapshot of the possible potential of that player.

The preliminary round ends today with the quarter-finals starting on Monday. Before they do though, Finland will need to fight for it’s tournament life in the relegation round on Monday morning against Latvia.

Wild Notes: Dumba, Niederreiter, Spurgeon, Stewart, Haula

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Mike Russo of the Minneapolis Star Tribune had a productive morning today, publishing an article with news and notes on a number of intriguing Minnesota Wild-related topics. The full post is of course worth a read but here are some of the highlights:

  • Mathew Dumba was set to be scratched for Thursday night’s game against Toronto but drew into the lineup because Marco Scandella was ill and could not suit up. Wild bench boss Bruce Boudreau thinks the threat of a benching alone might have served as a wakeup call for the talented, fourth-year pro: “I think the fact he was supposed to sit out one game and go back in could be the Wally Pipp syndrome. It might have opened his eyes for him to start playing the way he’s capable of playing.” Dumba agreed with his coach, saying: “I didn’t like it. I took it in a way that if I got back in the lineup I was never going to let that happen again. That’s the kind of motivation that I have. Just pride as a player. I hold myself to a higher standard. Just what the be the best I can for my teammates.” The 22-year-old Dumba tallied an assist in the Leafs game and followed that up with a solid performance against New Jersey last night, finishing with four shot attempts and five hits, according to Russo. Dumba was moved up to the top pairing to play with Ryan Suter since Jared Spurgeon – more on him in a bit – sat out with an upper-body-injury.
  • Through five games this season, six-year veteran winger Nino Niederreiter is averaging just 12:18 of ice time per game. That’s down 1 1/2 minutes off his average from 2015-16. The diminished ice time might be a factor in Niederreiter’s sluggish start – two points, both assists – but as Russo writes, Boudreau hasn’t seen enough from Niederreiter to award him additional ice time: “Not enough. Not enough. Granted he hasn’t played a lot of minutes, probably averaged 10 ½ minutes, 11 minutes a game. He’s a big, strong guy with a good shot. He’s got to get more.” When asked whether moving him up in the lineup would spark the Swiss left-wing, the coach said: “I don’t think you get anything for free in this league. Hopefully he’ll earn them. I thought he was better last night than he was the previous night, which is good. So he might get a few more minutes tonight.” Niederreiter has posted back-to-back campaigns of 20 or more goals and has averaged 1.9 shots-per-game over the last two years. The Wild need Niederreiter to be better though the usual disclaimer about small-sample sizes applies here.
  • As noted above, Jared Spurgeon missed Saturday’s game with the Devils due to an upper-body-injury he originally suffered Thursday when Matt Martin of the Leafs crunched the Wild defender against the boards. As Russo indicates, Spurgeon will miss his second consecutive game tonight and there doesn’t appear to be a timetable for his return.
  • Erik Haula, like Spurgeon, is expected to be held out of the lineup tonight. According to Russo, Haula has been wearing a walking boot since the home opener though last night was the first time the injury has kept him out of the lineup. Russo considers a potential lengthy absence of Haula “a significant loss for the Wild.”
  • Finally, free agent addition Chris Stewart, who inked a two-year pact with the Wild over the summer, is off to a slow start despite recording three points in five games. The big winger was signed to add physicality and some scoring punch to the club’s bottom-six. However, Stewart has just two hits and three shots on goal while averaging better than 13 minutes per contest. During a career which has spanned 524 regular season games, Stewart has averaged 1.25 hits and more than two shots per game, numbers which suggest the big winger does in fact have more to offer the Wild on the ice.

Snapshots: Kucherov, Wild, Dumoulin

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While TSN’s Bob McKenzie noted yesterday that Tampa Bay RFA Nikita Kucherov is the most likely of the remaining restricted free agents to receive an offer sheet, he told TSN 690 in Montreal today (via Chris Nichols of Today’s Slapshot) that he doesn’t expect the Lightning to make him available in trade talks:

“Steve Yzerman is not, I don’t believe, going to make a conscious decision to trade him. Because I think of all of those guys, some of them that he signed recently like (Alex) Killorn – we’ll keep Hedman out of the equation because he’s a lynchpin on defense – but when you’ve got all of those guys… Palat is up next year, Tyler Johnson is up next year, you’ve got Killorn. Let’s be honest. The guys that you would think Steve Yzerman would be most interested in moving are guys like Val Filppula and some of the other guys up front, not Kucherov.”

On top of Killorn and Palat needing new deals next year, so too does Jonathan Drouin while Ben Bishop will be an unrestricted free agent.  The team has roughly $5.5MM in cap space to work with this season according to Cap Friendly and have just over $55MM committed to 13 players already for 2017-18.  While Yzerman has suggested in the past that he shouldn’t have to trade anyone to get Kucherov signed for this season, someone inevitably will have to go sooner rather than later.

Elsewhere around the hockey world:

  • The Wild have a quartet of players drafted in the first two rounds back in 2009 that will be crucial to their success this season, writes Michael Russo of the Star-Tribune. Forwards Charlie Coyle, Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter, and Jason Zucker are all 24, which in the eyes of GM Chuck Fletcher is a key year as it often represents the time that players have their breakthrough.  The team didn’t change much up front over the summer and will be counting on those four to take another step forward offensively under new head coach Bruce Boudreau.
  • After spending 2015-16 in a shutdown role, Pittsburgh defenseman Brian Dumoulin is looking to get more involved in the attack this season, notes Bill West of the Pittsburgh Tribune. After starting last year on the third pairing, he slowly worked his way up the lineup, finishing the postseason on the top pair while averaging nearly 22 minutes per night.  He made a mark at the offensive end late in the postseason and wound up scoring in the Stanley Cup-clinching game which also was just his second goal in 103 games.  With Olli Maatta now healthy, Dumoulin is in a battle in training camp to retain his top pairing spot alongside Kris Letang.

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