So far in the young 2023-24 season, the Minnesota Wild have not been good at, well, anything except maybe underperforming. The current team is mostly the same team that for the previous two seasons has collected over 100 points and been a top 10 contender in the entire NHL. After 15 games played this season, they are on pace for 66 points, which last season would have placed them in fourth-last behind the rebuilding Montreal Canadiens.
Now, it is unlikely that they continue to struggle this badly, and their 8-3 pummeling from the Dallas Stars felt like rock bottom. They are now headed to Sweden to play in the Global Series, which provides them a perfect opportunity to get a full reset. There have been bright spots amongst the darkness though, and not every player on the roster needs a rest. Here are five Wild players who have been leading the charge and exceeding expectations so far this season.
Joel Eriksson Ek – A True Center
The Wild have quite a few players from Sweden, likely part of the reason they were chosen to participate in the Global Series with historical franchises like the Toronto Maple Leafs, Ottawa Senators, and Detroit Red Wings. Perhaps the most prevalent and yet, still underlooked Swede on the roster is none other than their best natural center, Joel Eriksson Ek.
A player can rarely continue to improve over multiple seasons at the rate that Eriksson Ek has since he entered the league in the 2016-17 season. The 6-foot-1, 210-pound center is constantly outdoing himself in a manner that can only be described as ridiculous. He has slowly but surely improved in every facet of the game every season, including faceoffs where he is currently above 50% (51.6% to be exact) for the first time in his career after improving slightly for the last six seasons in a row. That has continued this season despite the team around him falling apart.
Eriksson Ek is leading the team in goals, currently putting him on pace for 43 goals and 76 points, a massive season considering his current season bests are 26 goals and 61 points. While I don’t think he will continue to score at his current rate, I see no reason that he won’t easily blow past that 61-point mark, especially if the rest of the team gets going and he stops getting shuffled around the lines in an attempt to kickstart the players around him. All of this is even more impressive when you factor in that he is only in year three of an eight-year extension that gives him a cap hit of just $5.25 million.
Marco Rossi – Top 10 Draft Pick
Wild fans obviously didn’t learn their lesson about centers taking a little more time to develop because just last season there was a very vocal group calling for Marco Rossi to be traded after just 21 games of NHL experience. Fast forward one year, and he is tied for third in goals scored on the team, behind just Eriksson Ek and Ryan Hartman, while also being one of their most dominant players at five-on-five.
Rossi took his experience from last season, and used it to improve himself into an extremely effective and confident NHL player. He has already proven himself to the point where he has earned time at the first-line center after head coach Dean Evason attempted to spark the team with some line reconfiguration. Despite fans’ initial distress about his potential, he has been one of the team’s best players through this rough start to the season.
Pat Maroon – Tough Guy with Silky Mitts
There was a section of the Wild fanbase that was extremely sad when they learned that Ryan Reaves was moving on to the Toronto Maple Leafs, including general manager Bill Guerin, who had no qualms about letting it be known he wanted to keep him on the team. Post Reaves’s departure, Guerin brought in Pat Maroon in a trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning to fill the role of an energy-providing enforcer. Letting Reaves go may be one of the smartest moves Guerin has made because upgrading to Maroon is infinitely better in all aspects.
Related: Wild Betting on Bogosian’s Size Over Addison’s Offensive Prowess
During my initial reaction to the trade, I openly doubted Maroon’s ability to add any offense to the team, and instead would just be an experienced locker-room presence. I was so wrong. Maroon has collected nine points in just 15 games with the Wild, but more than that he has been more than just a body on the fourth-line. Maroon has great hands, wins board battles more than he should, and is inhumanly strong on the puck. There is a reason that he has won multiple Stanley Cups, and if he can impart some of his drive and mentality to the other players on the Wild’s roster, they will be much closer to winning their own cup.
Brock Faber – NHL Ready from Day One
There is only one person with more ice time this season than Brock Faber, and that is his veteran defensive partner, Jonas Brodin. Faber walked onto the Wild’s roster right out of college and looked like a veteran from the very beginning, playing himself into a playoff roster spot with just two games of regular-season experience. He continued that trend into this season as he has easily been one of the Wild’s most reliable and steady defensemen through all of their hardships.
Faber has never been known for his offensive talents, but there are times when he makes the defensive side of things look so easy that he decides to play a little offence in his downtime, which there is not a lot of because he is averaging over 23 minutes of ice-time per game. At just 21 years old and with 17 games of regular season experience, Faber’s current play could evolve him into a true top-pairing defenseman as he gains more familiarity with the pace and play of the NHL over the coming seasons.
Dakota Mermis – Finally Out of the AHL
It is not often that a 29-year-old breaks into the NHL from the American Hockey League (AHL) and sticks, but it looks like Dakota Mermis, the captain of the Iowa Wild, has done just that by finding himself a nice little niche on the Wild’s bottom defensive pairing. Through 426 games in seven seasons in the AHL, Mermis has had brief stints in the NHL with both the Arizona Coyotes and New Jersey Devils before being acquired by the Wild. His current streak of 13 NHL games is the longest he has managed to string together, but it appears as though he might be staying this time.
The Wild came into the 2023-24 season with too many defensemen already, but a pair of injuries led to Mermis being called u,p and he has played like a man who does not want to go back. Aside from collecting two goals and three assists, Mermis plays an average of over 15 minutes per game and is exactly what a team wants in a third-pairing player. He shuts down opposing breakouts effectively, is not afraid to block shots, is a capable puck-mover, and will stick up for teammates ferociously. Carrying a cap hit of just $775,000 makes him a steal for the money-strapped club.
Good Has Not Overcome the Bad
Unfortunately for the Wild, the strong performances of these five players have, on most occasions, not been able to outweigh the rest of the team’s lackluster start to the season. No matter which way you cut it, three forwards and two defensemen can’t win you games no matter how hard they try, that takes an entire roster. The good news is that if they can spread their effective play around the locker room just a little bit, the Wild should still be able to turn their season around and play like the team most people thought they would be heading into this season.
