Minnesota Wild Kids Go Play – Minnesota Wild

Have you ever gotten exactly what you wanted? Exactly what you wanted. No substitutes, no disappointments, just exactly what you wanted.

It’s not a feeling I’m particularly familiar with, especially as a sports fan. Maybe it would be different if I were rooting for the Los Angeles Dodgers or something. But from my perspective, it feels like a constant desire for more, a constant state of fandom. It’s not even limited to big things like playoff disappointments. Maybe that feeling comes up when you want a player to be just 5% better or when you lament what could have been if a star hadn’t suffered an injury early in his career.

Or, if you’re like me, watching the Minnesota Wild last year, a team that didn’t exactly handle a losing situation the way you’d like. Despite being a clear non-contender, Minnesota didn’t play the majority of their prospects until Game 79 of the season — until they were technically eliminated. And even then, that meant just a pair of starts for Jesper Wallstedt and Liam Öhgren.

We get it, there wasn’t much of a pro prospect pool to draw from. What was there, besides Wallstedt? Daemon Hunt wasn’t the best through 12 NHL games. Carson Lambos, the 2021 first-round pick, struggled as a rookie in Iowa. Marat Khusnutdinov and Öhgren had to complete their regular seasons overseas.

But this year? We’re going to get exactly what we want. The only question is: Do we really want it?

Yes, the Wild’s early training camps didn’t show much room for youth. Marat Khusnutdinov was the only member of our Top-10 Prospects list on the team’s four forward lines… centering the fourth line.

But make no mistake, the kids are going to play. They have to. Minnesota left itself little choice this offseason.

The Wild’s salary cap outlook dictated that their improvements had to come from within. There wasn’t enough money to bring in a big-money player, so they plowed what little they had into Yakov Trenin’s $3.5 million AAV. As a result, Minnesota’s top two lines saw some very familiar configurations: Kirill Kaprizov paired with Ryan Hartman and Mats Zuccarello on the top line, and Marcus Johansson reunited with Matt Boldy and Joel Eriksson Ek on the second.

But as we’ve seen, injuries will take their toll. Boldy is now week-to-week with a lower-body injury. While he’s expected to be available for opening night, it’s still a learning experience. Players get injured and as we saw last year, they underperform. Opportunities arise.

There aren’t many NHL veterans waiting to step into St. Paul’s top six shoes. Despite rumors the Wild had him in their sights, Patrik Laine isn’t stepping through that door. Unless an injury frees up some LTIR cap space, they’re not going to make any big deals to get some offensive juice.

That leaves Öhgren, who is entering his first full season in North America, as a player who could compete for that kind of role. Marat Khusnutdinov should be able to move up the lineup if there is an opportunity. Riley Heidt, a 19-year-old who is 15 months removed from draft day, even has a realistic chance to make the team after training camp.

It’s not just that Minnesota could hypothetically move one of their prospects into a top-six role. They’re practically begging for someone to do so. A team doesn’t go after a defensive liability like Laine because it doesn’t think his scoring needs an upgrade. The most likely way to get it now is if Öhgren and/or Heidt are ready to step into the NHL like Wyatt Johnston was for the Dallas Stars two years ago.

As for options, Minnesota has a lot more young guys available this year than they did last season. Wallstedt (our No. 1 prospect), Öhgren (No. 4), Heidt (No. 5), Khusnutdinov (No. 6), Hunt (No. 8) and Lambos (No. 10) are deploying more than half of their top names. Additionally, forwards like Caedan Bankier and defensemen like Jack Peart and David Spacek could figure.

It’ll be new, and it’ll be new, but will it be better? We’ll find out. We’ve wanted to see the future for so long, and this season will force Minnesota to throw at least a few of these guys in the pool without armbands. If they flourish right away, great, they were ready. Or maybe they were witches. But more likely, they were ready.

If not, we need to be prepared for that too. There is no safety net when the kids are your first (or almost first) option. There are no veterans from Iowa to stop the bleeding when the prospects flop as the first line of defense. As a fan and prospect nerd, it will be exciting to watch these players. But there is also a chance that I will have to face the feeling that I should have been more careful what I wished for.

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