The Minnesota Wild head into this season with a revamped roster and a clear mission to break through in the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Wild have qualified for the postseason in seven of the past eight seasons but haven't won a series since 2015, so simply getting in won't be good enough.
"Our expectations on ourselves have to be much higher," Minnesota general manager Bill Guerin said. "We have to be more demanding of ourselves and expect better, and that's what we're doing."
Wild 31 IN 31: [3 Questions | Top prospects | Behind the Numbers | Fantasy breakdown]
That message was sent during a busy offseason, when the Wild parted with some core players. Center Mikko Koivu was not re-signed after playing his first 15 NHL seasons in Minnesota, including the past 11 as captain, and center Eric Staal, an alternate captain, was traded to the Buffalo Sabres for forward Marcus Johansson on Sept. 16. Devan Dubnyk, who was the Wild's No. 1 goalie for most of the past six seasons, was traded to the San Jose Sharks on Oct. 5. He was replaced four days later by Cam Talbot, who signed a three-year contract.
Upgrading their goaltending and changing their look at center were the hockey reasons behind the moves after they were eliminated by the Vancouver Canucks in four games in the best-of-5 Stanley Cup Qualifiers. However, the motivation went beyond that.
"We needed a different attitude," Guerin said. "We needed to kind of shock the system a little bit with our culture, and to get there, sometimes there just needs to be change. I feel like we've made some good moves and added some good players, some good people. The guys that we had here before were great for this organization for a long time and sometimes there just needs to be some change."
This was not meant as an indictment of the players who left. It was more about having some different voices with a different perspective.
Center Nick Bonino, who won the Stanley Cup with the Pittsburgh Penguins in 2016 and 2017, was acquired in a trade with the Nashville Predators on Oct. 7. Johansson reached the Stanley Cup Final with the Boston Bruins in 2019.
Those two players bring valuable experience to a team that hasn't advanced past the second round since 2003, when they reached the Western Conference Final in the organization's first Stanley Cup Playoff appearance.
"What we were doing just wasn't working," Wild forward Zach Parise said. "It's not as if we had bad guys. It's not as if those guys who were traded away were poison in the locker room. I don't think that was the case at all. But the way any business works, if it's not working, you've got to switch it. That's Bill's job, to find a recipe that's going to work for us."
