If you’re one of those maniacs who bought an exotic sports car from a dealership on the 100 freeway and had it run 394, you’re probably familiar with octane boost. But most drivers probably aren’t. Fuel octane booster is a liquid additive that increases the octane level of gasoline. Did you put regular gas in your Ferrari by accident? No problem. Drop a little Diamond Nanolubricant in the tank and you’ll be running premium. No more knocks and pings. Your engine will not die a sad and untimely death.
There are different types of octane boosters. Some of them permanently increase the octane number of gasoline. Others, like NOS (nitrous oxide), give it a powerful temporary boost. Octane boosters increase engine power and reduce heat and emissions. But it doesn’t add horsepower. Instead, it increases the compression ratio of the engine. A higher compression ratio means better power; better power means more efficient power, which affects vehicle performance. It’s a way to jump when you step on the gas pedal.
Another is to use the right type of gasoline.
Bill Guerin used the octane booster this year. He and the Minnesota Wild had the nation’s No. 1 prospect pool to work with. But prospects are like crude oil. They need refining. Teams can’t plug a player without developing him and expect positive results. The best organizations know how to develop their prospects and work them into the NHL roster. Unfortunately, the Wild still haven’t figured out how to do that.
They carried Marco Rossi for 16 games to start the season and threw him out in the cornfields of Iowa. Rossi got three games late in the season when Minnesota had to play him out of necessity, but they didn’t prepare him for the playoffs. Consequently, they entered the postseason without a bona fide Top-6 center following the injury to Joel Eriksson Ek. Unsurprisingly, Kirill Kaprizov and Matt Boldy were unproductive, with a right-back and a Bottom-6 player centering their lines.
Likewise, they could have used Calen Addison on their ineffective power play. But the Wild traded for John Klingberg, a player the Dallas Stars had let go in free agency, at the deadline. Klingberg’s arrival signaled that Minnesota had grown disenchanted with Addison, which is curious considering they traded for him three years ago. Also, they should have known exactly what they were getting into. Guerin took over the Wild GM job in 2019 after previously working with the Pittsburgh Penguins, who drafted Addison. Why would Guerin trade Zucker, a former 30-goal scorer, for Addison if he didn’t see the upside? And, more pertinently, why haven’t the Wild been able to capitalize on it?
Oil refining is a long process. Workers must drill it into the ground and then send it through a pipeline to nearby refineries. At the refinery, the crude undergoes analytical tests before it is ultra-heated to a boiling point and separated into liquids and gases. Then they send it to its final destination. With the No. 1 prospect pool in the NHL, the Wild are sitting on oil. But they seem to have given up on the process this year. Instead of distilling the crude they have, they went to Holiday, filled 87 and made it to the NOS at the deadline.
Minnesota’s post-deadline run catalyzed the belief it could win in the playoffs. The trade deadline was March 3, and the Wild entered their March 4 game at the Calgary Flames with a 36-21-6 record. They were hovering on the playoff bubble when Kaprizov left the Winnipeg Jets game on March 8 with an injury that kept him out for a month. Still, the Wild went 10-5-6 from March 4 through the end of the season; Kaprizov only played in three of those games. Guerin’s deadline acquisitions fueled that. A rejuvenated Marcus Johansson joined Matt Boldy on the second line, and Boldy scored 12 goals in March. Klingberg rounded out the top 4 defensive pairings. Oskar Sundqvist provided depth and Gustav Nyquist was productive when he returned from injury.
But the deadline moves were nothing more than a dose of NOS as the Wild raced to the Central Division title. They fell apart once the octane boost ran out. But they also fell short of winning the division title because they lost a lot of games they should have won during that stretch.
1-0 in a shootout to the Calgary Flames, who missed the playoffs for the second time in three years and fired Darryl Sutter.
5-4 in overtime to the Arizona Coyotes in a college hockey arena.
5-4 in a shootout to the Philadelphia Flyers, who missed the playoffs and fired old friend Chuck Fletcher.
4-1 to a Pittsburgh Penguins team that missed the playoffs for the first time in 16 years and fired everyone.
By then, we should have realized that the end-of-season push was misleading. In retrospect, Minnesota’s first-round playoff exit was pretty predictable. They were without a Top 6 center once Eriksson Ek got injured. So they had Kaprizov playing a right wing as a pivot and paired Boldy with a Bottom 6 center. The Wild played undisciplined hockey. Dean Evason doesn’t seem to like coaching young players and hasn’t won the playoffs at any level. Pete DeBoer already had the plan on how to accompany him. Why should we have expected a different result?
Worse yet? They don’t seem to understand why another first-round exit is a disappointing result, and it seems unlikely they’ll have more luck integrating young players onto the roster next year. Guerin bristled at the idea that the Wild have a reputation for not getting out of the first round, despite inheriting a team that hadn’t gotten out of the first round since 2015. He said the players and coaching staff were playing . with one hand tied behind his back, which is the result of his decision to shop Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.
Guerin got upset with a reporter in his final press conference of the season after the reporter pointed out that the Wild needed to get past the first round to reach the Stanley Cup. The Wild aren’t going anywhere until they take responsibility for what happened this season. Guerin chose to buy two expensive players. The organization buried Rossi, a talented center field prospect at Iowa. They stuck Addison in the rafters so often that he can probably draft a player at the deadline.
The Wild was a Ferrari that ran on Holiday gas with some nitrous oxide mixed in. They didn’t burn premium fuel and the engine shut down once the nitrous wore out. Dallas wasn’t that much of a better team than the Wild. Minnesota just broke. And they will continue to do so until they can better leverage their potential pool.
