What We Learned: Is this the best the Minnesota Wild can do?

(Hello, this is a feature that will run through the entire season and aims to recap the weekend’s events and boils those events down to one admittedly superficial fact or stupid opinion about each team. Feel free to complain about it.)

You want to talk about Detroit backing into the playoffs, and that’s fair enough because they did. But no one backed in harder than the Wild, which lost its last five games of the season in regulation, including dropped results against Ottawa, Winnipeg and Calgary.

Yup, they made the playoffs alright, finishing in the final wild card spot in the West. With 87 points.

Eighty-seven. The lowest total in the shootout era to make the postseason. We’re sitting here worrying about the Bruins finishing outside the playoffs because they have a bottom-10 D corps, but they finished the year with six more points than Minnesota. They finished two points ahead of a truly dreadful Ottawa team, and with the same number of wins.

Look, the top of the Central was tough this year. These guys played Chicago, Dallas and St. Louis five times apiece. They also had three games each against Los Angeles, San Jose and Anaheim. That’s 24 games against really good teams just in their conference. And hey, outside those six 100-point teams, only Nashville (with nine extra points) did better out West. You’d be hard-pressed to find anyone under the illusion that this Wild team has a better roster than the Predators.

But remember, this was a Wild team that had materially improved from the 100-point campaign they turned in last year, following the addition of an actual goaltender who got them into the playoffs after a season-plus of going without. Not that they actually appeared to be a 100-point team once again, but something in the high 90s seemed very reasonable. Instead? Eight-seven.

What’s interesting is that apart from the Devan Dubnyk acquisition and extension last year, the Wild haven’t changed much. They added David Jones at the deadline from Calgary, but that’s it. No other substantial moves were completed since the Dubnyk trade. They signed NCAA free agent Mike Reilly in late summer after he bailed on the Blue Jackets, but he only got into 29 games with the Wild this year. Not exactly an impact player in that regard.

But here’s the thing: The Wild last season were a decent enough team — a little better than even in possession — that was almost ruined by bad goaltending. This year, high-level goaltending is the only thing that saved them; because Dubnyk was very good this year (.918 overall, .933 at 5-on-5) the team finished 14th and eighth in overall and 5-on-5 save percentage, respectively. He was occasionally criticized, but there’s no denying that with an even average goalie this team doesn’t come close to sniffing the postseason.

And that’s the big issue this team has. There was supposed to be a mix of veteran experience and youthful verve that got this team to step up a bit, and it just didn’t happen.

The leading scorer was Mikko Koivu with 56 points. Koivu is a good enough player at what he does, but under no circumstance should he lead the team in scoring. Zach Parise finished with 53 in 70 games, including 25 goals, which is good and everything, but given what you pay him, is it enough?

And what about the kids? Mikael Granlund, Nino Niederreiter, and Charlie Coyle are all 23, and all topped 40 points. That’s good. But again, is it enough to engender any sort of faith in the future as these guys being able to pick up the torch and run with it? That doesn’t even address the near-constant rumors that the team was looking to offload Jonas Brodin (not that you can’t see why), but that leaves Ryan Suter and Jared Spurgeon as the only two defensemen you can really and truly trust on this team right now. Maybe you say Matt Dumba as well, but I’m not so sure he’s an actual difference-maker at this point.

This is a weird mix of players in general. Almost all the guys who are supposed to move the needle — at least insofar as they’re well-paid to do so — are in their early 30s and not likely to get much better. But that doesn’t stop them being signed long-term. Suter and Parise have their (in)famous contracts that see them carry a $7.5 million cap hit until 2025, but Koivu is 33 and signed two more years. Jason Pominville is the same age and locked up for three more. God, Thomas Vanek has another year left on his $6.5 million deal.

Let’s not forget, this is basically a cap team, as General Fanager has them ending the season with about $628,000 in room. How does a roster this frankly underwhelming cost $70.8 million in cap commitments?

It’s worrisome, especially because even after firing their coach, this is a team that’s still trending in the wrong direction. And it got worse under John Torchetti, who is still only the interim head coach. The club would be wise to not cut the first word off that title.

For the year, they’re just a 48 percent possession team that got outchanced and outshot more often than not. Dubnyk is the only reason they weren’t outscored. Fortunately he’ll be around for a while.

There probably aren’t many players this team can go out and get and help on the ice given the financial situation. No room to sign a difference-maker, and no super-attractive trade pieces to acquire one another way. If they’re lucky, they offload some of the dead weight on someone looking to get to the cap floor. Differences can be made with judicious discount shopping, if they’re smart (and given the analytics people the club hired recently, they’re at the very least getting there). But everyone’s getting smart in that way. Improvements on the margins seem to be a best-case scenario. So the focus has to be on upgrading the coaching.

Could a better coach get better results with this roster? Probably. Could those results be significantly better than what the team turned in this year? Well, it would have to be a hell of a coach. I never rated Yeo all that highly, but the results above — particularly the steady downward trend in possession — seem to indicate that this isn’t necessarily something over which he had much control. The team might have reached its logical ceiling at some point in the last season or two, given everything we know about the nearly maxed-out cap and aging core.

Another issue is that it seems like a third of the league will be making coaching changes this summer. Can the Wild offer a more attractive situation for, say, Claude Julien, than other teams? I’m not so sure.

Even if they get a good coach, tough decisions have to be made to make this team truly competitive once again. That is, if they were ever truly competitive to begin with. Which is tough to say, really.

What We Learned

Anaheim Ducks: When your options are Nashville or San Jose, neither should be all that attractive, if you think about it.

Arizona Coyotes: Can’t imagine you get anyone better for the GM and coaching jobs than the two you have right now. Don’t go shopping on this.

Boston Bruins: Many in the Boston media are trying really hard to blame everyone but Don Sweeney, aren’t they?

Buffalo Sabres: Well folks, I guess Jack Eichel hates America. So long!

Calgary Flames: Words the Flames themselves use to describe why they missed the playoffs include but are not limited to “consistency,” “hunger,” “disciplined to the system,” “get off to a better start,” and so on. No one mentioned “bad coach” or “no depth.” Weird.

Carolina Hurricanes: It would be pretty wild if this team just up and moved this summer.

Chicago: Artemi Panarin finished top-10 in scoring after all, meaning Chicago is now over the cap ceiling and will be assessed an overage penalty of about $2.75 million next season. The price of success, but this is adding up quickly.

Colorado Avalanche: Yeah, I wonder why that is.

Columbus Blue Jackets: Man, 30 goals for Brandon Saad. Imagine if the team around him were any good at all.

Dallas Stars: The Stars are the best team in the West with that goaltending? Man, imagine if they had someone behind them who could make a save. Their 5-on-5 save percentage was fourth-worst in the league this year and they finished with 109 points!

Detroit Red Wings: This is sad for the NHL but you gotta do what you gotta do for your family.

Edmonton Oilers: The fact that it’s somewhat newsworthy that a former No. 3 pick who won’t be 21 until late October is in a team’s future plans is kind of incredible.

Florida Panthers: Roberto Luongo had a pretty amazing season in Florida this year. Awesome.

Los Angeles Kings: It has been a very weird season in the Pacific. That’s for sure.

Minnesota Wild: Well, have a good one.

Montreal Canadiens: Wait, the Habs’ motto this year was “No Excuses?” For the team that is only keeping its coach around because its All-World goalie got hurt? Excellent. You couldn’t write something that good.

Nashville Predators: I think they invented the term “up-and-down season” to describe the Preds this year. Such a weird run.

New Jersey Devils: I would generally think this is not a particularly good idea, but I also don’t think it’s particularly likely, so there ya go.

New York Islanders: Oh are we doing this again?

New York Rangers: Are the Rangers going to have any defensemen at all healthy for the playoffs or what?

Ottawa Senators: Is this a “smart manager takes over from his old boss” move, or a Don Sweeney move?

Philadelphia Flyers: Hmm the lesson here really shouldn’t be that this team doesn’t need to rebuild.

Pittsburgh Penguins: This is a really good look at Trevor Daley, whose usage under Mike Sullivan has him looking effective once again.

San Jose Sharks: Ah jeez.

St. Louis Blues: Okay so at least we knew David Backes is healthy, right?

Tampa Bay Lightning: Good lord what goes on down there?

Toronto Maple Leafs: Get a lot of very young pros plenty of NHL time, acquire a bunch of picks and prospects, finish first in the AHL (and look like a huge favorite to win the Calder Cup), finish dead last in the NHL. This is basically the definition of a perfect tank season.

Vancouver Canucks: Do you think anyone at all wants Alex Burrows at $4.5 million next season?

Washington Capitals: My wonderful large son has done it again.

Winnipeg Jets: This team with Connor Hellebuyck in net instead of Ondrej Pavelec…. could be good? I dunno.