With trade deadline over, Wild reflect on ups and downs of the season

Wild management brokered the deals, switching out Brandon Duhaime, Pat Maroon and Connor Dewar for draft picks and prospects.

But who — or what — is actually responsible for the Wild subtracting at the NHL trade deadline rather than adding to a roster similar to the one that was furnished with reinforcements only a year ago is a question with multiple answers.

“We put ourselves in a position to see guys have to leave, and I think that’s on us players,” alternate captain Marcus Foligno said. “We gotta blame ourselves when you lose buddies.”

That’s one interpretation.

Had the Wild not dropped three in a row to Carolina, Nashville and St. Louis after getting within two points of a playoff spot at the end of February, they might have taken a different approach to Friday’s deadline.

Maybe they still wouldn’t have acquired new players, but keeping everyone could have been an option.

Instead, those three losses plummeted the Wild eight points back of the last available Western Conference wild-card berth, and President of Hockey Operations/General Manager Bill Guerin reacted accordingly.

First, the Wild moved Duhaime to Colorado for a third-round draft pick in 2026.

Next to go was Maroon; even though he’s still healing from back surgery, Boston was interested in the three-time Stanley Cup champion, and the Wild received a forward for their American Hockey League team in Iowa in Luke Toporowski and a conditional 2026 sixth-round pick.

Finally, Dewar secured the Wild a 2026 fourth-rounder and minor-leaguer Dmitry Ovchinnikov from Toronto.

A three-game dip, though, wasn’t the only costly lull.

The Wild can also bemoan their slow start to the season that culminated in a seven-game skid and the firing of Dean Evason as coach. There was also the four-game losing streak that ended their turnaround under new bench boss John Hynes. And who could forget those letdowns against Nashville and Anaheim going into the bye week and All-Star break?

“I know we’re still trying to get in and rightfully so,” Foligno said. “But we’re in a position that you think if shoulda, coulda, woulda in other areas, we wouldn’t be doing this. It’s frustrating.”

Although the Wild returned most of last season’s roster, they’ve underperformed compared to the previous lineup, but they also haven’t been as healthy.

“I don’t put this all on the players,” Guerin said. “I don’t because there’s just some things you can’t control, and players getting hurt is one of them.”

Only briefly have the Wild had everyone available to play, and the absence of captain Jared Spurgeon because of season-ending hip and back issues is glaring. The Wild have also gone stretches without fellow defenseman Jonas Brodin, goaltender Filip Gustavsson, leading scorer Kirill Kaprizov and playmaker Mats Zuccarello, as well as Foligno.

“The one thing that we really needed this year was good health, and we didn’t have it,” Guerin said. “We haven’t had it. But that’s the way it goes. You can’t control if players get hurt or not. It’s a tough game, and injuries happen.”

These injuries put even more of a strain on the salary-strapped Wild, who were already up against the cap with almost $15 million of their budget eaten up by the Zach Parise and Ryan Suter buyouts.

Before the season started, that price tag looked like it might be the biggest drain on the Wild’s competitiveness.

Fast forward to 18 games left on the schedule, and other explanations have joined the equation.

Still, the season isn’t over, a fact made clear by how fiercely the Wild battled Cup contender Colorado Friday night before falling 2-1 in overtime — an effort by the players that looked cathartic in the aftermath of all the recent changes to the team.

“We have to play to a level where we gotta make up some ground,” Hynes said. “But you want to put yourself in situations where you can play meaningful games, and we’re still in that situation right now.”