NHL.com is providing in-depth roster, prospect and fantasy analysis for each of its 32 teams from Aug. 1-Sept. 1. Today, the Minnesota Wild.<\/p>\n
The Minnesota Wild have been right on the edge of contention.<\/p>\n
They’ve qualified for the Stanley Cup Playoffs in 11 of the previous 13 seasons. In their past eight appearances, they’ve lost in the opening round.<\/p>\n
To Wild general manager Bill Guerin, this season is the time to take a step.<\/p>\n
“I like high expectations. I want high expectations,” Guerin said. “I’m not doing this job to kind of sit in the corner or anything. These are big jobs. These are important jobs. There are a lot of people out there that love the Minnesota Wild and I’m trying to deliver something to them. We all are. We’re trying to deliver that to them.”<\/p>\n
Guerin, without salary cap constraints, signaled an active offseason after Minnesota (45-30-7) was the first wild card into the playoffs from the Western Conference and lost in six games to the Vegas Golden Knights in the first round.<\/p>\n
“I like to be aggressive,” he said. “I don’t want to sit on my hands at all. I’m kind of tired of doing that.”<\/p>\n
The market didn’t work that way. Many big-name free agents elected to sign new contracts with their current teams, leaving the Wild to make smaller additions that still addressed key needs.<\/p>\n
Vladimir Tarasenko<\/a> and Nico Sturm<\/a> should give forward depth and Stanley Cup experience.<\/p>\n Tarasenko, 33, was acquired in a trade from the Detroit Red Wings on June 30 after winning championships with the St. Louis Blues in 2019 and the Florida Panthers in 2024.<\/p>\n Sturm, who played his first 111 NHL games for the Wild from 2019-22, signed a two-year contract on July 1. The 30-year-old has won the Stanley Cup twice (Colorado Avalanche, 2022; Florida, 2025) since being traded from Minnesota to Colorado on March 15, 2022.<\/p>\n “Our team is better than it was a couple days ago, I feel,” Guerin said July 1. “I said it after last year and the year before and the year before, today is a big day for a lot of teams, us included. Now, it’s an ongoing process. … When the season starts, it doesn’t matter who signs who on July 1. You have to play the games. We’ll see.”<\/p>\n Even if the Wild stand pat, there will be a notable difference from much of last season.<\/p>\n Kirill Kaprizov<\/a> missed 40 of 43 games from Dec. 27-April 6 with a lower-body injury. He returned April 9, when fellow first-line forward Joel Eriksson Ek<\/a> also came back from missing 21 games with a lower-body injury.<\/p>\n “Usually, when you have that, things tend to fall apart, but they didn’t and we made the playoffs, which is great,” Guerin said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NHL.com is providing in-depth roster, prospect and fantasy analysis for each of its 32 teams from Aug. 1-Sept.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":66835,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[556],"tags":[64,63,575,85],"class_list":["post-66834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=66834"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/66834\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=66834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=66834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=66834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}