First Golf, Then Hockey

Oh, sure, there was some golf to be had at the Minnesota Wild’s annual fund-raiser on a picture perfect fall day at the Royal Golf Club in Lake Elmo.

Some of it was actually good golf.

Like Joel Eriksson Ek claiming he rarely golfs and isn’t very good and then crushing his first drive down the middle of the fairway. He promised after that would be his only shot of the day.

And some of it was, well... Golf is a funny game isn’t it? Not everyone can play it. Ask Kirill Kaprizov who very nearly took out a cameraman who shouldn’t have been in harm’s way but turned out to be very much in harm’s way after one of the gifted winger’s errant tee shots.

But even one good putt can brighten anyone's day.

The event included one celebrity joining each of roughly 30 foursomes with mulligans purchased to raise additional funds for the Wild Foundation along with putting events and even a handful of adorable puppies who got a day away from the shelter courtesy of Coco’s Heart Dog Rescue group in the hopes of finding new owners and support for the group.

“Obviously it’s fantastic to be out here and obviously a lot of sponsors and fans and what have you, it’s a great day,” said Head Coach Dean Evason. “Our players love it. We enjoy it as a staff and hopefully the people do as well. All for a great cause. We do so many of these things through the year to try to give back. Obviously we’re in a real great position as NHL people so anything that we can give back to the community and to different sponsors and functions, it’s fantastic.”

But as virtually the entire Minnesota Wild roster, along with coaches and management and staff, joined some 120 golfers in the Wild Off The Tee Golf Tournament to raise funds for the Wild Foundation, there was also very much a sense of a page being turned on the greens and fairways.

The second annual event now marks that line in the sand separating the quiet of the off-season and the rising anticipation of hockey’s return.

“I’m seeing all the guys again and all the guys are back so you really feel like it’s almost like today is the kickoff for the season,” Eriksson Ek said. “We’re for sure looking forward to getting going here.”

The talented two-way center missed all but a few seconds of the Wild’s first-round playoff series against Dallas after breaking a bone in his fibula blocking a shot late in the regular season.

He is ready to roll, though.

“I’m all good. All healed up so it’s good now,” he said.

He’s not alone.

With camp set to start there may be one or two players who aren’t ready to step on the ice Thursday but Evason said it’s also possible he’ll have every player on the ice from the get-go.

Regardless, there’s nothing to suggest, health-wise, they won’t have a full complement of players come Oct. 12 when they open the regular season by welcoming Stanley Cup finalists Florida to Xcel Energy Center.

Frederick Gaudreau had surgery to correct an abdominal issue at the end of the season and, having spent a restful summer mostly outdoors near his summer home in Quebec, is ready to take the lessons learned in a hard-fought first-round loss against Dallas in six games last April into another run at a Stanley Cup.

“I believe, you know, the unsuccess in playoffs is something but there’s still a lot of learning from that and then from learning there is a lot of growing,” said Gaudreau, one of the Wild’s most eloquent players.

“I believe we are a better team each year and we learn from that,” he added. “We just keep building with essentially the same core that’s been there for a long time. You don’t win a Stanley Cup just by saying, 'Oh, I want to win a Stanley Cup.' There’s a ton of things you need to do before.”

So, by Tuesday morning the golf clubs will be set aside in anticipation of Wednesday’s medicals and photos with the first day of training camp set for Thursday.

From that moment on, the momentum will build for the 2023-24 season and what the Wild are hoping will be a significant step forward in their evolution.

“There’s tweaks, obviously, systematically that we’re going to make. You do every season,” Evason said. “There’s been a lot made of our special teams at the end of the year. They were much improved through the regular season and we just didn’t get it done in the playoffs. Obviously we didn’t get it done as far as getting through the first round, second round and getting to our ultimate goal of a Stanley Cup. There’s a lot of different things that we’ve talked about that we’ll implement right away.”

“But the one thing that we’re going to stress is there’s a process for sure to this,” Evason added. “We want our group to do anything, literally anything it takes to win. That’s got to be our motto. Billy’s (Wild GM Bill Guerin) talked about it a lot. Our goal doesn’t change because we didn’t have success last year. Our goal is to win the Stanley Cup and it’s going to be again this year.”

Because the core of the team remains virtually unchanged since last season with the one key addition being three-time Stanley Cup winner Pat Maroon, Evason and his staff will devote more time earlier in camp to scrimmaging.

They will focus on defensive, offensive and neutral zone play over the first couple of days of camp along with power play on Day 1 and penalty kill on Day 2. But the coaches want the players to be in game frame of mind in advance of the start of the regular season.

“We’re going to play hockey,” Evason said. “The nice thing about having a group back is they know our systems. They know how we’re going to play. You know we’ll tweak a little bit but now we want to play hockey.”

Maroon, who is in the beginning stages of getting to know his teammates after his successful run in Tampa where he won back-to-back Cups after winning one in St. Louis in 2019, already has a sense of what kind of cohesion there is in the Wild locker room.

“We know we have something special here,” Maroon said. “A lot of excitement around right now. They’re willing to take the next step, right? It seems like they’ve been kind of hovering around, they’re there but they’re not there yet, and they are willing to whatever it takes, right? I think we have a really good hockey team and hopefully things change this year.”