Myers: On draft day, and most other days, Minnesota Wild seemingly mired in the middle (2024)

ST. PAUL — Anyone who has spent 12 months in the State of Hockey knows about the extremes Minnesotans face when they step outside. Temps of 20-below or colder are not uncommon in January, while the mercury can read 125 degrees warmer than that come July.

In contrast to our weather extremes, the first 23 years of the Minnesota Wild have been pretty temperate. The teams in forest green and Iron Range red have often been good, but never great, and have struggled at times, but have never been truly lousy. This “middle of the road” nature is especially felt at draft time.

If you want extremes, glance southeast a state or two, to Chicago. The Blackhawks were lousy in the early 2000s, and as a result collected several high draft picks. That led to the additions of stars like Patrick Kane and Jonathan Toews, and a trio of Stanley Cup wins followed in the 2010s. Today, the Blackhawks are lousy again, and after grabbing budding star Connor Bedard with the top overall pick a year ago, they’re poised to pick second overall on Thursday in Las Vegas, when the 2024 first-rounders are announced at the Sphere.

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In that same time span, the Wild have been decidedly average. They have made the playoffs in 13 of their 23 seasons of competition, but have advanced to the second round just three times (2003, 2014, 2015) and to the conference finals just once (2003). Ten of those 13 playoff trips have been one-and-done affairs. They’ve never truly stunk — not even as an expansion team — and they’ve never hoisted a significant trophy, winning their division just once, in 2008 (when Minnesota still played in the since-realigned Northwest with Vancouver, Edmonton, Calgary and Colorado).

The Wild’s historic position in the draft reflects those average regular seasons and quiet playoffs. In 2024, Minnesota holds the 13th overall pick, which is exactly where they should be based on number crunching. In 22 drafts where they have had a first-round selection, the Wild's picking position has been 13.4th, on average, and they have picked in the top five just twice.

As an expansion team in 2000, Minnesota had the third-overall pick in its initial draft and grabbed Marian Gaborik, who grew into the team’s first marquee player. Since then, the Wild have picked in the top five once. And they blew it, grabbing Benoit Pouliot fourth overall in 2005. He would go on to play just 65 mostly forgettable games for the Wild before being traded away.

Between 2004 and 2008, the team’s former brain trust led by general manager Doug Risebrough whiffed on the first round pick with regularity, grabbing A.J. Thelen 12th overall in 2004, Pouliot 4th in 2005, James Sheppard 9th in 2006, Colton Gillies 16th in 2007 and Tyler Cuma 23rd in 2008. Sheppard played 224 games for the Wild. Gilles played 89. Cuma played one. Thelen played zero.

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Chuck Fletcher took over as general manager in 2009, and made a smart first pick in grabbing budding star defenseman Nick Leddy, Minnesota’s Mr. Hockey winner and a standout Gopher, with the 12th pick. Fletcher followed that good move with perhaps the worst transaction in franchise history, shipping Leddy’s rights and another player to Chicago to get Cam Barker. Last March, Leddy played his 1,000th game in the NHL, none of them for his hometown Wild.

Recent drafts have provided more prospect promise, with solid NHLers Matt Boldy (12th overall in 2019) and Marco Rossi (ninth overall in 2020), and goalie of the future Jesper Wallstedt (20th overall in 2021) coming to the podium first lately.

So here we are, with current general manager Bill Guerin’s fifth draft upon us, and special weight placed upon the team to pick and develop talent in its own pipeline, as they remain fiscally hamstrung by the Zach Parise/Ryan Suter contracts and their hit on the team’s salary cap for another 12 months anyway.

Experts predict some real depth to be had in 2024, which could be good news for the Wild when their name is called, a dozen slots after San Jose is a lock to grab Hobey Baker Award winner Macklin Celebrini with the first-overall selection. Asked about the prospect of moving up, Wild amateur scouting director Judd Brackett said that it’s not easy, and with a deep pool of talent available, waiting their turn might be the better play.

“The draft will be dictated to us a bit,” Brackett said recently, in a Zoom call with reporters. “We’ve got to sit there and patiently wait, and sometimes we get impatient and start calling teams ahead of us to see if we can get up here. But unless you have a dance partner, it’s hard to get there.”

Much like Wild fans have learned over the previous 23 seasons, the draft can also be a microcosm of the team’s on-ice fortunes. They’re not great. They’re not terrible. They’re sometimes frustrating. They’re often entertaining. And on draft day, just like in the final standings, the Minnesota Wild are typically stuck somewhere in the middle.

Jess Myers covers college hockey, as well as outdoors, general sports and travel, for The Rink Live and the Forum Communications family of publications. He came to FCC in 2018 after three decades of covering sports as a freelancer for a variety of publications, while working full time in politics and media relations. A native of Warroad, Minn. (the real Hockeytown USA), Myers has a degree in journalism/communications from the University of Minnesota Duluth. He lives in the Twin Cities. Contact Jess via email at jrmyers@forumcomm.com, or find him on Twitter via @JessRMyers. English speaker.