As I said, the NHL free agent class this year was relatively weak (with the exception of Kovalchuk), but I think the Wild made out pretty well. They won’t be contending for a Cup anytime soon, but barring the same amount of injuries as last year, I think the team could be poised to grab one of the last playoff spots. It hurts to say that they probably won’t win the division or the conference next year, but the West is so strong that I just can’t see that happening, even when trying to be optimistic…you never know, though.
Fletcher had Wild fans extremely nervous on Day One of free agency, but the Wild came out with the number two center they desired. Matt Cullen, a former Moorhead Spud and St. Cloud Husky, will return to his home state after 14 NHL seasons and one Stanley Cup championship (2006 with Carolina) under his belt. The Wild may have overpaid a bit for Cullen, giving him $3.5 million a year for three years, but I am happy with that. It was better than offering too little and missing out on him all together.
The Wild, unsure about the health status of Pierre-Marc Bouchard, were devoid a second-line center all year last year and I think that killed them. With candidates Saku Koivu and Olli Jokinen already snatched up by the Ducks and Flames, respectively, the Wild needed to make this happen. If there was a deeper class of free agents, I would agree the Wild overpaid a little, but if Cullen had walked on the Wild, Minnesota could’ve been in deep trouble and probably would have gotten into a bidding war with Nashville and others over Matthew Lombardi, who made the same money the next day when he signed with the Preds (a good signing for them).
This acquisition works for me only many levels. First off, Cullen is a Minnesotan. It will be easy for the Team of 18,000 to get behind one of their own and Cullen is at a point in his career where he can handle the pressure of playing in front of his home state. Many younger Minnesotans have shown that it can be overwhelming having that much pressure put on them at that age. I know there are more, but the first name that comes to mind is Nick Leddy. After he was traded from Minnesota to Chicago last year, you could tell a weight had been lifted off his shoulders by the way he played. In fact, he improved so much that Chicago signed him after one year of playing at the U. Instead of feeling the pressure of an entire state that invested a first round draft pick in his future, Cullen will feel excited to help his home state and to play in front of his friends and family. He has a ring already, to there is less personal pressure added on.
Second, as I just noted, Cullen really wants to be here. Cullen could have spurned the Wild to play with a true Cup contender, but after he signed, he sent texts to Michael Russo of the Star Tribune (which Russo posted on Twitter) that showed his excitement. "Holy cow, I'm pumped. Ohh!!!" and "It truly is a dream come true," were the two that I remember. I love the enthusiasm. Not many players would be that excited to come here.
Third, Cullen has a Stanley Cup ring. No one on the Wild last year had one of those. Cullen can replace the experience given to the team by Owen Nolan (who still hasn’t won a Cup himself) down the stretch and in the playoffs, if the Wild do contend. Cullen has also averaged 46 points per season since the lockout. His averages of 18.4 goals per season and 27.6 assists per season over the past five years would have each ranked fifth on the Wild last year. His 46 points would have ranked fourth behind only Mikko Koivu, Andrew Brunette, and Martin Havlat. With that point production coming from a spot in the lineup where the Wild were severely lacking last season, I think Cullen was worth the few extra bucks.
Last year, the Wild had no U.S.-born players on their team. Sure, players like Nate Prosser (Elk River, MN), Casey Wellman (Brentwood, CA), and Robbie Earl (Chicago, IL) made appearances on the team, but they were all far from permanent roster fixtures. This year they will add Cullen to the American mix, as well as their second signing of July 1st, Eric Nystrom. Nystrom (Syosset, NY) will bring to the team a third or fourth-line winger that will add character and grit to a team that needs it.
Nystrom hasn’t put first-round-draft-pick-type points yet in his career just yet, but he just finished his second full season in the NHL, so I think at 27 years old, Nystrom definitely has room to improve. Just to clarify, by first-round-type points, I don’t think he ever will score 70+ points, like a Havlat or a Koivu is expected to, but I think he can improve on his 11 goals and eight assists from last season, as well as add other dimensions to the team. Calgary drafted him tenth overall in 2002 probably expecting a little more than 20 points per season when he got to the NHL and I think he has an opportunity to deliver on that in Minnesota over the next few years.
Since July 1st, many former Wild players found new homes. But before we get to that, I want to touch on the Robbie Earl and Dennis Endras signings. I’m not a big Earl fan solely because he won a national championship with Wisconsin, but looking past that, I will readily admit that I liked him before committing to the University of Minnesota, that I was excited when the Wild got him from Toronto, and that he helped the team a lot when he was in Minnesota last season. Earl explored the free agent market and thought he had proved last year that he was worth signing to a one-way deal. That didn’t happen, so he accepted a two-way deal to stay in The State of Hockey.
Earl scored six goals in 32 games over six call-ups last season and the Wild was 18-9-5 with him in the lineup. I’m obviously not saying that the Wild could or would sustain a record like that if Earl played a full season in Minnesota, but that 18-9-5 record would equate to a 46-23-12 record over 82 games. That would have been good for 104 points and a Northwest Division title last year. The Wild would have played the Kings at home in round one. In the second round (if they made it), they would have faced Chicago, who the Wild faced one time with Earl in the lineup and as any Wild fan remembers, the Wild won that game 6-5 in a shootout after coming back from a 5-1 third period deficit…obviously that is a HUGE jump and I would probably bet against that ever having happened, but the point is that Earl was a positive influence on a mediocre, injury-riddled team last season.
For me, the Dennis Endras signing kind of came out of nowhere, but I do like it and I believe Endras could be the Wild’s next Niklas Backstrom—an undrafted European goalie that worked his way on to the Wild’s roster and became the number one goalie after the goalies in front of him got injured. Endras backstopped Germany to a fourth place finish in the World Championships this year, stopping 31 of 32 shots against the U.S. in front of over 76,000 fans in a 2-1 overtime, preliminary round win. He also recorded and impressive 41-save shutout against Switzerland in the quarterfinals in a 1-0 German win. After reading all this, I am pretty excited that the Wild signed him. He won’t be wearing a Wild uniform this year unless the they use him as a third goalie in Helsinki, but this could be a small move that could look genius if he becomes a solid NHL goalie with the Wild someday.
The Wild let two more forwards and two more defensemen go as well. Shane Hnidy, who really seemed to be just a top-six fill-in defenseman to me has not been signed yet. The Coyotes picked up Andrew Ebbett, who will join his fourth team (Anaheim, Chicago, Minnesota, and Phoenix) in under a year. He seems valuable enough to keep, but he landed with teams that were too deep at certain times to keep him. Jamie Sifers, who made the original roster and spent time in Minnesota and Houston last season was scooped up by Chicago…I mean Atlanta. It feels like just yesterday I was watching Sifers, Torrey Mitchell, and little Peter Lenes dominate Minnesota Duluth in a pair of 5-1 wins at Gutterson Fieldhouse. I can’t believe it’s almost been five years.
Mikko Koivu would have been an unrestricted free agent in 2011, but instead will be wearing a Wild uniform for seven more seasons. Over the seven seasons (starting in 2011-2012), Koivu will receive $47.25 million, a franchise high, and his cap hit will be just under $7 million per year. Wild fans love Koivu for his complete game and GM Chuck Fletcher believes Koivu will only get better. Some disagree.
ESPN’s Peter Keating wrote a long article explaining why Koivu was not worth what he got in his extension, but I disagree with that main argument. He basically used very advanced statistics that showed how Koivu was overpaid. Looking past the fact that some of the stats he threw out there were a bit outrageous I will say this: No matter how much money we threw at him, I will always disagree when someone says the Wild overpaid him.
Koivu is the franchise. Marian Gaborik was a franchise player and we let him go for nothing in return. It would kill Wild fans to let go of another franchise player and Fletcher did what he needed to do to make sure that didn’t happen. The Gaborik situation was the elephant in the room throughout his entire final season here and both sides ended up losing (in my opinion). Keating compared the Koivu deal to the Kovalchuk deal, which is ludicrous, in my opinion. They are two different players. They have different attitudes. Their situations are very different. And after 1,300+ words of mind-numbing statistical evidence that the Devils made out like gangbusters and the Wild gave up way too much to retain their 2001 first round draft pick and first ever permanent captain, the Kovalchuk deal was rejected by the NHL.
I don’t care what the article says, intangibles cannot be measured in stats—otherwise they are not intangibles. There is not an official stat for measuring leadership, loyalty, or love from the fans, even if there are some things that you could argue come close to putting a number on those categories. I don’t buy it. And that’s not just because these stats were used to lessen the perceived value of one of my favorite players.
THOUGHTS ON FLETCH
Naturally, I gave Chuck Fletcher a chance when he got the Wild GM job last summer and so far he hasn’t disappointed. I would have preferred to see him pick Jordan Schroeder instead of Nick Leddy at the 2009 draft, but if that’s his worst mistake, I’ll take it. It’s not like he picked Nick Leddy over John Tavares. He actually realized that the Leddy pick wasn’t working out and got a solid d-man in return from Chicago in Cam Barker. I think the move was beneficial for everyone involved. Doug Risebrough (albeit this wasn’t all his fault) let one of the best scorers in the NHL leave and got nothing in return when Marian Gaborik left. This move set the Wild back quite a bit. As we saw from Koivu’s new deal, Fletcher learned from Risebrough’s mistakes.
Interesting news is scarce in the offseason, but I’ll try to come up with something before the preseason starts. I could mix in a blog about the Gophers or about the World Junior Development Camp or the Wild’s schedule (or all of that and more), but that’s it until next time.