Wild can’t trust Kaprizov to do everything

Kirill Kaprizov has been everything we hoped for and more. The Minnesota Wild star, in just two short seasons, worked his way up to being considered one of the best players on the planet and among the NHL’s elite.

Nearly every minute he’s on the ice offers a stark contrast to the team’s grueling game. And it might just be his skating style and the unique way he cuts through defenses with his immense control of acceleration, but it’s pretty clear how those moves can produce goals for his team. He showed exactly that in Game 5 against the St. Louis Blues On tuesday night.

We can go on and on about how overbearing it has become right before our eyes. Even in this first-round series alone, he has been able to break franchise records, scoring seven goals so far, which is the most a Wild player has done in a single round. Those seven goals represent more 40 percent of all Minnesota production of 17 goals in the six games played against St. Louis. Kaprizov is only the ninth player since 2005 to score that many goals in a single playoff series. It is remarkable how much he has been able to do and how little the rest of the forwards have contributed.

When a player is doing so much and seems to be one of the only players who can actually put the puck over the opponent’s goal line, you have to ask a lot more questions.

And, obviously, Kaprizov himself put the onus on the team to just win games, and not make it all about the individual.

“The goal is not for a player to play well,” Kaprizov said through a translator after Game 6. “The goal is for the team to play well and we didn’t win.”

In a selfless way, Kirill has been able to just pick up the slack from the rest of the team throughout the series. Of course, the offense runs through the Russian, but when no one seems to really be able to do anything in the offensive zone, then it is placed on the shoulders of Kaprizov and any playoff team should not be so dependent on one player. Even Connor McDavid has a sidekick and they can barely stay afloat.

Now, of course, the Wild have Mats Zuccarello, Kevin Fiala (for now), Matt Boldy and the other stack of two-way forwards trying to provide offense in the form of defense first. It’s been enough throughout the regular season to post historic numbers and literally score the fifth-most goals among the 32 teams in those 82 games, but the offense has dried up against a tougher-than-average opponent they’ve had. what to play . It’s the next step of being able to create offense against whatever defense the Wilds lack, and it’s become increasingly obvious over the past six games that this team is still in its transition phase.

The next step is difficult. It’s a balance between understanding that this team will be in Cap Hell for the next four years due to the necessary purchases of Ryan Suter and Zach Parise, but also being excited that they currently have one of the best prospect pools in the NHL. That’s cheap talent they can get off of and could still mean an upward trajectory. Yes, the Wild will most likely trade Kevin Fiala this summer, but it could be for a cheaper replacement who could flourish properly under Dean Evason and give them a fresh look for longer than Fiala was going to stay here. The options are endless and there will be a lot of conversation, so that’s a different topic to focus on when we’re in the offseason.

Simply put, Wild has been able to find diamonds in the rough in free agency with Ryan Hartman and Frederick Gaudreau, to play the perfect situation with the perfect players to have career years. But ultimately, you can only get so far when playing underdogs and castaways. The next step is to truly become Good players who not only have a single season of greatness, but have established themselves among the best. They have one of those, at least.

There are so many possibilities this summer, and GM Bill Guerin has another few months to answer plenty of questions and figure out even more of this list. It’s clear that unless another dynamic player is added to the lineup, or just more focus on getting familiar players rather than going for the cheap and annoying strikers who may outperform in Evason’s system.

It’s going to be a tough few months, but Wild just can’t look at Kaprizov and expect him to do it all.

Maybe this will be expanded further this summer, but right now, just one game away from elimination from the playoffs, there isn’t much hope to be had unless the other players can bolster Kaprizov’s existing production.