John Hynes on the Wild’s offseason plans: Zuccarello, internal options, penalty kill and more

ST. PAUL, Minn. — John Hynes just returned from the Minnesota Wild’s offseason planning meetings at owner Craig Leipold’s home in Exuma in the Bahamas. Along for the ride were Leipold, Wild president of hockey operations and general manager Bill Guerin, Guerin’s three assistant GMs (Chris Kelleher, Mat Sells and Mike Murray), CEO Matt Majka, CFO Jeff Pellegrom and CRO Mitch Helgerson.

Sure, there’s lots of fun in the sun and boat trips onto the turquoise water to do some fishing, but the men did meet daily from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Hynes swore by it when I interviewed him Sunday morning on KFAN.

This will be a big couple weeks for the Wild. Alongside Friday and Saturday’s draft comes trade season, then the opening bell of free agency July 1.

As we’ve reported a lot, the Wild are one of a number of teams heavily pursuing Detroit Red Wings center Dylan Larkin. Larkin originally had Minnesota as one of the three teams he told Detroit he would welcome a trade to, although it has been reported that Larkin has been open to expanding that list for the Red Wings.

Other centers potentially out there via trade this offseason include the New York Rangers’ Vincent Trocheck and the Anaheim Ducks’ Mason McTavish. Or the Wild could conceivably go the winger route: Matthew Knies and Jordan Kyrou were Nos. 5 and 7 on Chris Johnston’s most recent trade board. League sources did tell The Athletic on Sunday that Minnesota was on the trade list Brady Tkachuk submitted to Ottawa, and the Wild made a big offer before he was dealt Sunday to the Florida Panthers.

But because the Wild have so many balls in the air, we reported last week that the team has hit the brakes on re-signing pending free agents like Mats Zuccarello and Vladimir Tarasenko. The Wild still have a lot of interest in re-signing Zuccarello and feel there’s still time, but they also haven’t felt they can sign him until they see where the trade market goes this week into next.

Trades have started to happen league-wide. The Toronto Maple Leafs sent Joseph Woll and Simon Benoit to the Philadelphia Flyers, then acquired Darren Raddysh in a sign-and-trade with the Tampa Bay Lightning. The Colorado Avalanche sent Ross Colton to the Nashville Predators. Michael Kesselring was dealt from the Buffalo Sabres to the San Jose Sharks and, on Sunday, the Panthers traded Mackie Samoskevich to the Seattle Kraken in a deal for a first-round pick and conditional second before trading for Tkachuk.

This brings us back to Hynes.

While the Wild coach can’t talk specific names when it comes to trades and other teams’ potential free agents (until July 1) because that’s deemed tampering, Hynes did say it was interesting listening to all the scenarios spitballed in the Bahamas as they formulated an offseason plan.

Here’s much of the Hynes interview (edited lightly for clarity and length):

Do you come away now with your fingers crossed? Everybody has grand plans, and we know that this organization has for a long time wanted to get a true No. 1 or 2 center and you could potentially be down three top-nine wingers going into next season. How excited are you for this week, or are you on pins and needles wondering what happens if you can’t get everything done?

It’s exactly that. With Billy and Craig kind of leading the show and all of us supporting those two with opinions and thoughts on where our team is at, what we need, what we could get. But then when you really dig into it, as you said, there’s no guarantees in the offseason. So there’s always plans. … The things you don’t like as a coach at times in these meetings is, “OK, well if this doesn’t work, what’s Plan B, what’s Plan C?” So yes, there’s a plan. You’re certainly hopeful that we can get done what we’d like to get done. But it’s difficult. You’re competing against other teams. You have the salary cap. You have guys that we are losing potentially. You have to work with those guys to possibly try to re-sign them. But how does that work and fit?

So when you really go through it, there is a lot of planning. There’s a lot of hope. Excuse me, I don’t even want to say the word “hope,” but you’re going to go after what we’d like to go after. Can we get it or not, that’s all going to be up in the air here over the next couple of weeks.

It really is fascinating because when you think about it, John, there’s nine days ’til free agency, but it’s very clear that the team has taken a little bit of a pause here on re-signing some of their unrestricted free agents after Michael McCarron because you’ve got so many balls in the air. But on the other side is if those balls don’t hit the ground, now you might have to circle back to a Zuccarello or Tarasenko or somebody and try to re-sign them. But that deadline is luring them as well to maybe sign elsewhere. So that’s what you’re talking about too. They might be a Plan B, but you can lose the Plan B, right?

Yeah, I think Billy does a good job of communicating with the guys and it’s not necessarily that they would be a second option, but you’re talking to your guys and saying, “OK, we have some different things going on. What are you looking for?” Like, does that fit what we can do?

Although the guys haven’t been re-signed, there have been conversations with either the player or the agents. And the key thing is that you communicate, everyone’s on the same page, you have to be honest in what we’re doing. And I think that’s also where I think the relationships come into play that you’re transparent with our guys. They understand the situation. They understand that it’s a business as well. Things will really start to heat up this week.

Forgetting potential trades and free agents, Marcus Johansson has returned to Sweden, Vladimir Tarasenko may go to market and Mats Zuccarello isn’t re-signed, although there’s still time to do it. That’s three top-nine wingers. What internal candidates do you have and how much have you started really now kind of thinking about Bobby Brink or Hunter Haight or where Matt Boldy fits?

Yeah, there’s a lot of thoughts on that from the coaching side. But also, those are some things we talked about last week quite a bit.

Bobby Brink, he’s a young player. He’s a guy that we acquired for a reason. I think there’s lots of positives for Bobby. I think he’s got good offensive instincts, he’s got good speed, he’s a tenacious competitor. I think he came in to us and played pretty well. Unfortunately, he got hurt a little bit, and then it was his first experience also in the playoffs, and I think, as we all know, whether it’s a team experiencing it or a player experiencing the playoffs, the difference of that, I think he learned quite a bit. So he’s certainly a guy that we’re looking to be able to commit and impact the game from an offensive perspective, and he does add speed to our lineup, which I think is important as you look at how the league’s going. It’s speed and pace, particularly when you look at the playoffs.

Hunter Haight’s done a good job. We’ve seen steady progress from him. Every time he got called up and got NHL experience, he was he was a better player, a little bit stronger, more confident in his game at this level. He’s got good hockey sense. He’s a competitive guy in the faceoff circle. He plays with a little bit of an edge and he does have some good offensive instincts.

Charlie Stramel’s another guy who’s going to be coming in — he’s a big right-shot centerman whose development’s really gone in a real positive way over the last couple of years, particularly at Michigan State.

So I think those are those are three internal candidates that we look at that kind of have those attributes of some of the guys that we potentially may lose in Vladi and Zuccy if things don’t work out. But I think the priority is to really make sure that (while) we feel like we have some good internal candidates, there are outside candidates possibly as well. But I think for us, it’s also making sure that we have some real strong communication with Vladi and Zuccy as well as we move along here over the next two weeks.

Next year is an 84-game season, meaning a shorter training camp. Does that affect guys like Stramel and Haight and their ability to make the team because they’re gonna have less of a runway to try to prove themselves or not?

I don’t think so for those guys. And the reason being is I think that they’re guys that are kind of knocking at the door. I think where it does affect certain guys is that there’ll be less probably draft picks at camp, younger guys that you add to the camp and they get an exhibition game and they get sent back to junior or things like that. But when it comes down to guys that you feel like have a strong potential and need to make an impact in camp for the team, they’ll get good looks, whether that’s the practice group they’re with, the exhibition games, things like that.

But in saying that, yes, the runway is shorter, so you have to be able to come in and really take advantage of your opportunities because it is a shorter camp.

We both know Mats Zuccarello means the world to Kirill Kaprizov on and off the ice. What do you do if Zuccy isn’t back? Do you just hope that he’s going to find chemistry with an external pickup or could an external pickup even allow you to put Matt Boldy on his line? And how do you think Kirill would handle it if Mats isn’t back?

Yeah, those are all things that you constantly think about. One is, for me as a coach, Zuccy has been a great player for us. I have a lot of respect for him. We all know his relationship and his chemistry that he has with Kirill. So from that standpoint, you’re still thinking that something can be done there possibly. But it also takes both sides to be able to do it, and that’s where the business side comes in for both parties.

I think as far as Kirill, we all know if Zuccy’s back, it’s a positive thing I think for he and Kirill, for our team and for the organization. But if it doesn’t work out where he’s not back, Kirill is a great player. And I think eventually here that we all know nothing’s gonna be forever, so I think it’s Kirill understanding that if there’s a potential that Zuccy doesn’t come back, he’s obviously gonna have to play with someone else. And all those things come in. Is it Bolds? Is it another player? Is it someone that we can acquire? Even at the end of it all, when free agency is done … we still won’t truly know until we get on the ice in September.

At the end of the season, penalty kill was the big topic. How much have you starting digging into that?

I put a lot of thought into it. … I think we have a really good, strong foundation of how we want to be able to play, and there’s that 20 percent that you’re always looking to get a little bit better at and penalty kill is part of that. I had extensive discussions with the players, with the coaches about it, about the system, about how we can get it better, what are their thoughts on it, and then you go around (and look at the league). That’s a big part of what we’re going to do in the offseason, and I’ve looked at different things in the playoffs. As a staff, we’ve looked at different skills and some things that we’d like to adjust possibly from some other teams and have already set up. We got a Zoom call (Monday) morning actually at 8:30 with another team, with the coach that runs it, and really go through what they’re doing, what are the teaching points, and it’s going to be something that I think collectively as a group spend some time on this summer and come back with a little bit different look.

I also do think because we’ve used this kill now for two years and it’s had really good stretches here in Minnesota — it’s obviously been successful in the 4 Nations and the Olympics (when I coached it for the United States), but I do think that every year, particularly on the penalty kill and the power play, there’s so many little adaptations and things that change that I think it’s time we’re going to look at whether it’s personnel, but also some different things that we can get a bit more aggressive than we have been in the past.

The team’s going to need to sign a really good No. 2/3 goalie because of Filip Gustavsson’s offseason hip surgery. Do you know when Gustavsson will be back?

You always have the timeline when the guys have surgery, of when they’re going to come back. So I think that for sure … early November, it’s safe to say at this point that he won’t be ready until then. And then you always want to make sure with when guys are coming back that when they do get in the net, particularly with a goalie, that they’re ready to play at a high level. So the third goalie is a huge thing for us. … I think I feel good in listening to some of the names of what we’re looking for that we know we need to have a real quality guy that can help us win games at the start of the year.

Lastly, Carolina just won the Stanley Cup. What do you glean from Carolina and the way they’ve been able to build their team, and is there anything that you guys could take from it, whether it’s getting speedier or younger?

Yeah, I think it’s a little combination. And when you look at Carolina, it’s taken them eight years. … but they’ve never changed their identity. They’ve played the same style. … I think they’ve done a good job of bringing in players that fit how they want to play, and they have the attributes that can play the style of play that that Rod (Brind’Amour) wants them to play. And I think that even when you go through and you look at the Vegas series, Carolina just stayed with it. And I think throughout the lineup they all play a certain way. They play to the identity of the team.

I think they’re a resilient group. But I think when you look at how the team was built, whether it’s on the on the D corps or up front, … they don’t have a ton of big, big guys, but they do play fast, they do play tenacious, they got guys that have good instincts. And the way that they play collectively as a group is ultimately how you have to win. You have to have a really good team to ultimately win it. You have to stay healthy. But I also think the style of game they play, they brought in players that really fit that.

Do me a favor, remind Billy Guerin that Quinn Hughes isn’t the only one entering the last year of his contract. (Russo note: Hynes is expected to have his contract extended this summer.)

(Laughs hard) There you go. I love it, Mike. You’re always thinking, you’re always thinking.