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Minnesota Wild General Discussion - 2023-24

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I find maroon to be a useful 4th liner who surprises me from time to time with decent hands and good decision making. I’d put him in the Bogo camp of usefulness
 
Sweetnut said:
So how do we get rid of Merrill and his $1,2M contract?
With Mermis and Hunt playing good, he's not needed anymore.
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He's only a $50k cap hit if they send him through waivers to Iowa and he's not claimed.

Merrill isn't hurting anything being the pressbox d-man right now. MN has ~$4m LTIR space left. I'd rather have Hunt (any of the prospects) getting ice time in Iowa over sitting in the pressbox in MN.
 
Wabit said:
It wouldn't surprise me if the did. They just don't have much of anything to sell that will make them worse, while some of the teams ahead of them do.

The schedule is easier the rest of the season. The top of the lineup players are getting healthy. All they need is the goalies to be average or slightly below average and they'll finish .500 for the season.
There is even some cap room to play with now to carry a full roster and maybe add a (better) player or two. I'm not talking a big trade and spending lots of assets. Just saying waivers claims (Kapanen and Tolvanen last year), cap dumps, etc. are all options now.

Spurgeon being LTIR the rest of the season is probably the worst thing that could have happened for those wanting to tank. MN's 5-9-2 record (61.5p pace) with him in the lineup was just terrible this year and they had 0 cap space to do anything. MN has been 14-12-3 (87.7p pace) without him.
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Team is definitely better with Merrill/Goligoski/Mermis than Spurgeon :laugh:
 
Wabit said:
Correct. Same story, different year.
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I keep seeing "record with Spurgeon vs record without Spurgeon" over the years, so I got curious today what the total records with vs without actually are. Is it possible for a team to play better, over a long period of time, without a defender that most metrics claim to be elite? Let's see! For this, I decided to go with simple wins vs losses, because compiling the wins was enough work without worrying about overtimes and shootouts. I took the totals from all the games Spurgeon has played in, for even a second, and compared them to all of the games from those seasons.

Win-Loss Win% Totals
548-492 0.527

Win-Loss Win% with Spurgeon
457-410 0.527

Win-Loss Win% without Spurgeon
91-82 0.526 (rounding error)

This team has won an identical amount (after rounding) with him as without him. Now the question is, why? What does this mean? Does it mean anything? I can see a few potential explanations.
1) Spurgeon is overrated, which would require both traditional and advanced metrics for measuring performance to be mostly worthless.
2) Spurgeon has been carried by better defensive partners his entire time here, making his stats look good, but not bringing anything to the table himself. This means that every coach who's coached him has been bamboozled. It also means we consider Middleton to be an elite defender.
3) Hockey is a team sport, and most players aren't able to affect the results in a meaningful way all on their own. This means he may be good, but is not elite. Or perhaps it means we need to look into obviously elite players in this same way I've looked into Spurgeon, and see if even they are able to affect the team's record much. For this we would need a large sample size and an elite player who's had a long career but also missed a significant amount of time, and played in the same era as Spurgeon. Sid Crosby would probably be my pick for that.
 
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BagHead said:
I keep seeing "record with Spurgeon vs record without Spurgeon" over the years, so I got curious today what the total records with vs without actually are. Is it possible for a team to play better, over a long period of time, without a defender that most metrics claim to be elite? Let's see! For this, I decided to go with simple wins vs losses, because compiling the wins was enough work without worrying about overtimes and shootouts. I took the totals from all the games Spurgeon has played in, for even a second, and compared them to all of the games from those seasons.

Win-Loss Win% Totals
548-492 0.527

Win-Loss Win% with Spurgeon
457-410 0.527

Win-Loss Win% without Spurgeon
91-82 0.526 (rounding error)

This team has won an identical amount (after rounding) with him as without him. Now the question is, why? What does this mean? Does it mean anything? I can see a few potential explanations.
1) Spurgeon is overrated, which would require both traditional and advanced metrics for measuring performance to be mostly worthless.
2) Spurgeon has been carried by better defensive partners his entire time here, making his stats look good, but not bringing anything to the table himself. This means that every coach who's coached him has been bamboozled. It also means we consider Middleton to be an elite defender.
3) Hockey is a team sport, and most players aren't able to affect the results in a meaningful way all on their own. This means he may be good, but is not elite. Or perhaps it means we need to look into obviously elite players in this same way I've looked into Spurgeon, and see if even they are able to affect the team's record much. For this we would need a large sample size and an elite player who's had a long career but also missed a significant amount of time, and played in the same era as Spurgeon. Sid Crosby would probably be my pick for that.
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There are also a couple of huge variables in this: who are we playing when Spurgeon is out, and what is the other injury situation to key players when he's in vs. when he's out.

I'd be interested to see these numbers for Makar, so far. A smaller sample size for sure, but also thought to be one of the elite defensemen in the league, and has missed significant time.
 
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Dr Jan Itor said:
There are also a couple of huge variables in this: who are we playing when Spurgeon is out, and what is the other injury situation to key players when he's in vs. when he's out.

I'd be interested to see these numbers for Makar, so far. A smaller sample size for sure, but also thought to be one of the elite defensemen in the league, and has missed significant time.
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To your first point, my hope was taking the large sample of his career would smooth any weirdness that occurs because of replacement players and injuries to other players. To record all that data would be a massive undertaking, since you'd be doing it for, probably, dozens of players.

I'd also be interested to see it for Makar, but I have my doubts as to their validity just because of the small number of games so far. I love your idea of using him though, because he's definitely an elite player and, importantly, plays the same position as Spurgeon.
 
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Wabit said:
Correct. Same story, different year.
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Such a bad take. Who was injured this year when Spurgeon played his games? What was the QoC? What was the xGSA?

You do the same thing every year Spurgeon is injured and take such a simplistic approach to trying to make the argument that he’s a bad defenseman. It’s a complete misuse of statistics that doesn’t consider the effects of any extraneous variables.
 
Last edited:
BagHead said:
I keep seeing "record with Spurgeon vs record without Spurgeon" over the years, so I got curious today what the total records with vs without actually are. Is it possible for a team to play better, over a long period of time, without a defender that most metrics claim to be elite? Let's see! For this, I decided to go with simple wins vs losses, because compiling the wins was enough work without worrying about overtimes and shootouts. I took the totals from all the games Spurgeon has played in, for even a second, and compared them to all of the games from those seasons.

Win-Loss Win% Totals
548-492 0.527

Win-Loss Win% with Spurgeon
457-410 0.527

Win-Loss Win% without Spurgeon
91-82 0.526 (rounding error)

This team has won an identical amount (after rounding) with him as without him. Now the question is, why? What does this mean? Does it mean anything? I can see a few potential explanations.
1) Spurgeon is overrated, which would require both traditional and advanced metrics for measuring performance to be mostly worthless.
2) Spurgeon has been carried by better defensive partners his entire time here, making his stats look good, but not bringing anything to the table himself. This means that every coach who's coached him has been bamboozled. It also means we consider Middleton to be an elite defender.
3) Hockey is a team sport, and most players aren't able to affect the results in a meaningful way all on their own. This means he may be good, but is not elite. Or perhaps it means we need to look into obviously elite players in this same way I've looked into Spurgeon, and see if even they are able to affect the team's record much. For this we would need a large sample size and an elite player who's had a long career but also missed a significant amount of time, and played in the same era as Spurgeon. Sid Crosby would probably be my pick for that.
Click to expand...
There is no "one" explanation. Spurgeon is one player out of 20 on the active lineup on a nightly basis when he plays. Is he overrated? Probably a bit, but not completely. Has he been carried by better defensive partners? Not completely, and other times he has done the carrying... it depends on how he is playing and who his partner is. Probably both yes and no at many various different times. Yes, hockey is a team sport and no one player can win a title, we all know that. That said, no one defender can do it alone to get the team victories. Yet losing one player can be or may not be devastating. I will say, it has been rarely devastating to lose Spurgeon, which implies that his impact has always been a bit more on the overrated side than the underrated side.

He's a solid defenseman, he can help the team, but if he's lost, he's replaceable. Brodin and Faber are better.
 
Dr Jan Itor said:
There are also a couple of huge variables in this: who are we playing when Spurgeon is out, and what is the other injury situation to key players when he's in vs. when he's out.

I'd be interested to see these numbers for Makar, so far. A smaller sample size for sure, but also thought to be one of the elite defensemen in the league, and has missed significant time.
Click to expand...

22-23: (60 games) 34-21-5 100p pace. COL had 109p
21-22: (77 games) 56-16-5 125p pace. COL had 119p
20-21: (44 games) 31-10-3 83p pace (56 game season). COL had 82p
19-20: (57 games) 36-15-6 96p pace (70 game season). COL had 92p
 
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TaLoN said:
He's a solid defenseman, he can help the team, but if he's lost, he's replaceable. Brodin and Faber are better.
Click to expand...
What are you basing this off of?

He's a solid defenseman? Most people who cover the game for a living have him in the top 20 defensemen in the entire league. He's absolutely more highly regarded than Brodin and Faber. Now 50 games into his career you're making the assertion that Faber is just a flat out better player? This is one of the more extreme cases of recency bias I've ever seen.
 
Sota Popinski said:
What are you basing this off of?

He's a solid defenseman? Most people who cover the game for a living have him in the top 20 defensemen in the entire league. He's absolutely more highly regarded than Brodin and Faber. Now 50 games into his career you're making the assertion that Faber is just a flat out better player? This is one of the more extreme cases of recency bias I've ever seen.
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I'm basing it off of what I have seen when I watch him play. "Many" call him a top 20 D-man, sure... not all. There's a reason Brodin has consistently played tougher minutes than Spurgeon.
I made many of these comments 5 years ago as I am making them now. He started his career severely underrated, then the needle swung severely one day and he became overrated. The answer is usually somewhere in the middle. IMO, he's been more of a great #3 defenseman than anything else. He's never been a true top pair guy IMO.

I see Faber as a true top pair guy right now, possibly a real #1 in the making.
 
Wabit said:
22-23: (60 games) 34-21-5 100p pace. COL had 109p
21-22: (77 games) 56-16-5 125p pace. COL had 119p
20-21: (44 games) 31-10-3 83p pace (56 game season). COL had 82p
19-20: (57 games) 36-15-6 96p pace (70 game season). COL had 92p
Click to expand...
So if I'm reading this right, Cale Makar has had a marginal effect on whether Colorado wins game, correct?
 
TaLoN said:
I'm basing it off of what I have seen when I watch him play. "Many" call him a top 20 D-man, sure... not all. There's a reason Brodin has consistently played tougher minutes than Spurgeon.
I made many of these comments 5 years ago as I am making them now. He started his career severely underrated, then the needle swung severely one day and he became overrated. The answer is usually somewhere in the middle. IMO, he's been more of a great #3 defenseman than anything else. He's never been a true top pair guy IMO.

I see Faber as a true top pair guy right now, possibly a real #1 in the making.
Click to expand...
A great #3 can probably technically be a decent/good #2. Which is what Spurgeon was playing alongside a prime Suter.
 
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Dr Jan Itor said:
A great #3 can probably technically be a decent/good #2. Which is what Spurgeon was playing alongside a prime Suter.
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With a guy like Suter in his prime, Spurgeon was well suited to play next to him. Without a guy like Suter in his prime, Spurgeon is better suited to the 2nd pair where he has been.
 
JHS brought up the possibility of signing Phil Kessel.

- Right handed forward
- Connection to Guerin from Pittsburgh days

The Hot Dog Man himself. 9 points from 1000
 
Dr Jan Itor said:
So if I'm reading this right, Cale Makar has had a marginal effect on whether Colorado wins game, correct?
Click to expand...

I just gave the numbers you were curious about. I don't watch COL enough to give you more observation than that. TBH I didn't even know he missed that many games last year.

I wouldn't use the 77 game season or the COVID season. Anything less than 10% of the season is just too small or a sample size for me. Too much weirdness overall in the COVID season for me.
 
Digitalbooya said:
JHS brought up the possibility of signing Phil Kessel.

- Right handed forward
- Connection to Guerin from Pittsburgh days

The Hot Dog Man himself. 9 points from 1000
Click to expand...
Seems a bit unlikely, but I guess we have cap space, I would rather fix the D first but no reason you can’t address scoring too with the space if he comes cheap. Lucchini and Raska are not NHL capable and we have a lot of guys playing through injuries that are ripe to go right back on the IR list in the second half so I’m not opposed to more bodies.
 
Obvious Fabertism said:
Seems a bit unlikely, but I guess we have cap space, I would rather fix the D first but no reason you can’t address scoring too with the space if he comes cheap. Lucchini and Raska are not NHL capable and we have a lot of guys playing through injuries that are ripe to go right back on the IR list in the second half so I’m not opposed to more bodies.
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Primary point was that he wouldn’t cost assets, just cash, to obtain.

I’m not even sure how we should go about fixing the defense. Part of me wonders if we should just rotate all of the Iowa guys through for a couple games to evaluate.
 
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