Things are not looking good for the Minnesota Wild right now when it comes to winning games in the NHL. Having just suffered a demoralizing 5-1 defeat to the Vegas Golden Knights to start a seven-game homestand against very good hockey teams that can define the entire season, the confidence to claim that this team can be something similar to last year’s is non-existent.
But that is not where the focus is as the league crawls towards the NHL trade deadline on March 3. Sure, expectations were that this team is good enough to make the playoffs — they are still more likely to enter the postseason than not — unfortunately the reality has now been understood that this roster is just not quite there and does not deserve to be invested in yet.