Sunday\u2019s loss to Toronto<\/a>, but president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin turned up the heat Monday when he sat down with The Athletic after Day 1 of the three-day GM meetings.<\/p>\n\u201cAnytime it\u2019s this late in the year and you\u2019re losing three in a row, you have concerns,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cI think there\u2019s a solution to it. We\u2019re trying to figure out what that is, but it\u2019s time for our players to reset.<\/p>\n
\u201cI need to see more urgency from everybody. Like, it\u2019s not acceptable the way we\u2019ve played the last three games. We\u2019ve continually, year after year after year, raised the standard of play, raised the standard of expectations, and we\u2019re not meeting it right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Players keep saying that all teams go through this, but the dog days of the season should have occurred back in January. Guerin doesn\u2019t want a repeat of last season, when the Wild lost 10 of 15 games after the trade deadline (5-7-3) before winning four of their final five.<\/p>\n
The Wild, who traveled Monday to begin a home-and-home series with the Chicago Blackhawks, are 1-2-2 in their past five and 4-4-2 since the Olympic break. Secondary scoring is becoming an issue beyond Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy, and the top pair of Quinn Hughes and Brock Faber is starting to bleed chances.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a group, we need to tighten things up,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cWe\u2019re too loose right now, and that\u2019s everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerin is confident in the team he has built, from getting Hughes in a blockbuster back in mid-December to working around the edges with pickups of Michael McCarron, Bobby Brink, Nick Foligno and others at the deadline after being unable to land a top-six center.<\/p>\n
He says the recent slip is not an indication that the Wild can\u2019t win with the current cast of players, especially up the middle.<\/p>\n
\u201cListen, we\u2019ve proven over the course of this year that we can play with the best, we can beat the best, we can be the best,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cI think people like to say, \u2018Yeah, they need a No. 1 center.\u2019 Well, we couldn\u2019t get one. We just could not get one. So this is our team, and I feel we can win with it, and I think, most importantly, the guys in that room feel we can win with it. But for that to happen, it\u2019s important they start to button things up and play with some urgency.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerin\u2019s use of the word \u201curgency\u201d is deliberate because he sees what Wild fans see, and that\u2019s a team that frustrates too often against non-playoff teams but seems to get up for the big games.<\/p>\n
The Wild are 18-11-6 against non-playoff teams this year and have dropped eight of their past 10 (2-5-3) at home against those teams.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur winning percentage is like .720 versus playoff teams, and then you get the non-playoff teams, and it\u2019s like .620,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cWe need to have more urgency in our game. We don\u2019t want to be limping into the playoffs. So, it\u2019s not a panic. But the way we\u2019ve played lately is just a matter of fact. I have no problem telling the guys this, and Hynesy knows. He\u2019s going to change things to try to get us back together. But this takes a concerted effort by the individuals that are playing the game.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerin reiterated what Hynes said after Saturday\u2019s loss to the Rangers<\/a>: that the Wild are looking internally at their routines. Few teams practice as infrequently as they do. Lately, they\u2019ve even held optional morning skates the day after days off, which is abnormal even by their standards.<\/p>\n\u201cWe\u2019re not getting results the way things are going right now,\u201d Guerin said. \u201cSo, we need to change things and help the guys get through this. You can\u2019t threaten guys to play better. It\u2019s our job to help them get out of this. We are in this with them, but they need to take some ownership and realize the way they played these games and the outcomes are not acceptable and up to our standards, especially with the playoffs right around the corner.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANALAPAN, Fla. \u2014 One week ago, the Minnesota Wild were coming off a stretch in which they got…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":528211,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[66],"tags":[4828,385,99],"class_list":["post-528210","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nhl","tag-minnesota-wild","tag-nhl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528210","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=528210"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/528210\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/528211"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=528210"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=528210"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=528210"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}