Wild sees 'window' to succeed right now

Every year, Wild players are issued T-shirts with a mantra.

This season's? The front: "I'M COMMITTED!" The back: "OUR TIME IS NOW!"

"The consensus in the room is we have to make it now or never," defenseman Marco Scandella said recently. "We have to get it done. It could be our last year as a group, so it's now or never. And that's the mentality we have to have to win.

"I feel like we're so close. We're on the brink of greatness, and we just have to find it within ourselves. We have guys that are young still, but we have guys in their 30s now. With our group of guys, it has to happen now."

Two nights after looking a couple of steps slow in its opener against the St. Louis Blues, the Wild hopes to open the Xcel Energy Center portion of its schedule with a bang Saturday against the Winnipeg Jets.

Scandella has an interesting point about this potentially being the "last year as a group."

Teardowns are impossible in today's NHL, but the core of the Wild has been together essentially since Zach Parise and Ryan Suter signed identical 13-year, $98 million contracts before the 2012 lockout.

If the Wild, which has made the playoffs four consecutive seasons but is coming off a disappointing 87-point, first-round exit season, doesn't get it done this year, even General Manager Chuck Fletcher agrees there will have to be changes.

First, the Wild will surely lose one young forward or defenseman to Las Vegas in next June's expansion draft. Second, if the Wild doesn't take a step this season, the front office will have no choice but to start re-evaluating the core.

Mikael Granlund and Nino Niederreiter are in the final year of their contracts and Parise, Suter, Eric Staal, Jason Pominville, Devan Dubnyk and captain Mikko Koivu, whose contract expires after next season, are all older than 30. Koivu and Pominville turn 34 this season.

"We've got a group of players over 30, and they're not going to play forever, although Suter may try and may have that ability," Fletcher said before training camp. "Guys like Zach and Mikko, Staal, they take very good care of themselves. I don't think this will be their last season by any stretch, but once you get north of 30, you want to win. You want to win all the time, but you're closer to the end than you are to the beginning.

"But we have a whole group of players 26 and under. Players may have individual windows, but I'm not sure a team always does if you manage it properly. We're trying to contend, we're trying to compete and our expectation is to be a top team in this league. That's why we brought in Bruce [Boudreau], Staal, [Chris] Stewart. We're trying to do everything we can to help our team win right now."

The most fascinating part is the subject of the Wild's window.

All of the Wild's 26-and-under players interviewed intimated that the Wild's window is now. The veterans, with the exception of Dubnyk and Staal, believe that's nonsense.

"I never believe in that window talk," said Parise, 32, coming off a back injury that caused him to miss last season's playoffs. "At the end of the day, I really like our team. I think we're going to do a good job this year and beyond, so I don't buy into that window talk.

"Of course we want to win now. Thirty teams want to win now, want to win this year, but I don't believe if we don't win this year, then we're done. That just doesn't make sense. We all feel really good physically despite how old we are."

"I don't think we're that old," Parise added, with a chuckle.

Suter, for the most part, agreed with Parise. On the other hand, what attracted Staal, 32, to Minnesota is the "drive to win now. Winning the Cup is why you play, and you have to realize there are windows of opportunity to be able to do that.

"And," Staal said, "I kind of feel like we're in one now."

Boudreau said he feels the Wild has the chance to be a real good team.

"How far are we going to go? I set my sights personally for the top all the time and try to make them believe that's where they can get to," Boudreau said. "The question mark to me — you know Mikko will be as steady as the day is long, that Zach's in a good place right now because his back has been no problem, that Suter's Suter, Staal looks great to me — can the young guys take that step?

"Are they going to get better or are they as good as they're going to get? And if they're going to get better, you've got to believe there's going to be a lot of good things that will happen with this team for a long time when you think of the [Joel] Eriksson Eks and [Alex] Tuchs coming."

Owner Craig Leipold maintains he has Fletcher's back, but if the team doesn't win, the pressure will be on the GM.

"I'm expecting we're going to be much better. I believe we have too much talent, we have a very good coaching staff, it's fresh, everybody's energized with the change," Fletcher said. "I believe there's too much talent and too much depth here to have a bad season. We're going to have a good season. We have a good team.

"Last year was frustrating, it was disappointing. I take it personally. I built the team, so when a team struggles like that, ultimately it's my responsibility. I take full responsibility for it. But I'd like to think we've made enough adjustments this year that we're going to be better."

And if the Wild struggles out of the gate?

The Wild is one of 15 teams within $1 million of the $73 million salary cap, with a little more than $700,000 in space. The Wild has gotten a little handcuffed by a $370,000 cap charge for Victor Bartley's training camp injury, but Fletcher said there's still the ability to make changes if the team's not up to par.

"I don't expect the team to be perfect coming out of camp," Fletcher said last month. "There's going to be things we're going to have to look at, like many teams. Maybe there will be one or two teams that are going to be perfect, but the rest of us are going to be trying to make adjustments.

"For a whole host of reasons, once we got into last year and we were struggling, whether it was lack of draft picks, carrying three goalies, lack of cap space, not having as much depth at certain positions, we could not make as many adjustments as we wanted to. That falls on me, but this year we do. We're still not perfect, but we have way more flexibility than last year."