Weekly Wild Wrap-up: Week 8
A Year Under John Hynes: What's Transformed the Minnesota Wild from the murky middle to the best team in the NHL? The answer might actually surprise you.
Just over a year ago on November 27th, 2023, Minnesota Wild bench boss Dean Evason was fired by GM Bill Guerin after the Wild got off a putrid 5-10-4 start capped off by a 7-game losing streak.
In his place, Guerin instilled John Hynes as the new Head Coach, who up until that point had a relatively mediocre track record behind the bench. There was nothing super eye-catching analytically that said Hynes could turn the team around.
But fast forward to now and the Wild, at the time of this writing, sit atop the NHL with a .750 points percentage (16-4-4) and are 50-27-10 (.632) in 87 games overall under Hynes. So what changed? What’s made the Hynes-led Wild so much more dominant than the Evason-led Wild?
In this edition of the Weekly Wild Wrap-up, we’ll look at the analytics under Hynes and compare those to the analytics under Evason and see where the team has gotten better (or perhaps worse) and what other changes I’ve noticed just from an eye-test perspective. Buckle up!
Eye Test and Obvious Changes
I know you might be here to get the deep analytical dive on Hynes, and that’s coming I promise. But before I get into those numbers, I wanted to just provide MY OPINION (very little facts at this time) as to what has helped Hynes be successful, starting off with perhaps the most obvious change: health.
Injuries
The injuries that plagued the 2023-24 Wild are well documented and the team was impacted by them right off the jump.
Kirill Kaprizov did not look like himself to start the year, likely an after effect of being tackled by Winnipeg’s Logan Stanley back on March 8, 2023.
He went on to miss several weeks before returning just 2 games prior to the 2022-23 playoffs. Despite returning, he clearly wasn’t himself racking up only 1 goal, 0 assists and a -3 rating in 6 games against the Dallas Stars.
Despite having a summer to recover, the injury still seemed to be nagging him into the start of the 2023-24 season. He was still nearly a point-per-game player, scoring 6 goals and adding another 12 assists for 18 points cross the 19 games under Evason, but he just didn’t look quite right. Tough for a coach to be successful when his best player, on an already cap-strapped team, isn’t 100%.
In addition to a banged up Kaprizov, Evason iced a roster that had the following players sidelined for various periods of time in those first 19 games of 23-24:
Jared Spurgeon missed 13 of 19
Freddy Gaudreau missed 10 of 19
Matt Boldy missed 7 of 19
Ryan Hartman missed 1 game
The Spurgeon injury sent Evason reeling, playing the likes of Dakota Mermis, Calen Addison and Jon Merrill up in the lineup before Guerin went out and acquired Zach Bogosian from Tampa Bay on Nov. 8, 2023. The lack of Boldy on top of an injured Kaprizov left the offense in the hands of Mats Zuccarello and rookie Marco Rossi, who mind you produced, but what they did obviously wasn’t sustainable.
This year, the Wild still have had a handful of injuries, but there haven’t been any notable extended absences. The team is also more equipped to handle injuries with 8 NHL-caliber defenseman and more capable depth forwards like Devin Shore and Ben Jones, who can provide a lot more to a 4th line than Vinni Lettieri and Nic Petan.
This isn’t necessarily something that Hynes or Evason controlled, but it’s certainly worked in Hynes’s favor. We’ll see if the injury to Jonas Brodin is the first real injury hurdle for him this season, but the Wild likely hope a surging Declan Chisholm and newly added David Jiricek may be able to hold it down while Brodin is out.
Goaltending
There is serious correlation between bad goaltending and coaches getting fired. While it’s not often the head coach who is responsible for coaching his goalies and leading them to success, they are the ones that have to fall on the sword and this was, in my opinion, the main reason Evason was let go.
The Wild’s tandem of Filip Gustavsson and Marc-Andre Fleury was dreadful in the 19 games under Evason. The two combined for an .878 Sv%, 3.71 GAA and -16.09 GSAx. Historically bad numbers. This was more of a surprise for Gustavsson, who was coming off a Vezina-caliber finish to his 2022-23 season.
Whether or not you think it’s fair the coach should take the fall for bad goaltending is your prerogative, but it’s definitely the leading factor that led to Evason’s demise and you could argue it’s been the biggest key to Hynes’ success, at least so far this season.
Gus Bus and The Flower have rebounded admirably to start the 24-25 season. They’re rocking a league-leading .923 Sv%, league-leading 2.20 GAA and have 5.83 GSAx (literally all thanks to Gus who currently leads or is Top 5 in GSAx depending on which model you use). A bit later I’ll dive into why I think Hynes’s system has helped these two find their games again.
In-Game Adjustments
This is the main thing I don’t have a ton of analytical backing for, but is a clear difference between Hynes and Evason. Hynes has a willingness to make in-game adjustments.
Evason was stubborn. He didn’t like tinkering with his lines once he assembled them and especially had little interest in doing so during a game. This often led to the Wild’s opponents being able to adjust and get better matchups and slow down the Wild.
Hynes couldn’t be more opposite. We see him make tweaks and roll different lines often during games. Whether it’s chucking Zuccarello, Boldy and Kaprizov on the ice after a penalty, jumbling lines to wake the team up midway through a period, or sitting guys for a few shifts to send a message, Hynes has shown he’s not afraid to make changes in real time.
There’s not a ton of stats to back up why this might work in his favor, but my opinion is this is just what a head coach should do. He should be aware of the situation and what players are going and not going on a given night and ice lines to react to those things accordingly. Hynes has been great at that and there have been a few instances this season where we’ve seen those tweaks swing momentum in a game.
Systems
The last piece here, which might have enough sustenance for it’s own newsletter, is just the systematic differences between Hynes and Evason. In my opinion, the Wild look better fundamentally under Hynes. They utilize more center breakouts, attack the offensive zone with the puck on their stick, establish forechecks that incorporate all 5 players, and play very responsibly in the defensive zone taking away passes and protecting the front of the net (why this can’t carry over whatsoever to the PK is beyond me).
Not to say those things were non-existent or bad under Evason, but it just seems there’s more attention to detail in the Wild play now. We don’t see a lot of those wide-open, firewagon type games anymore like we did with Deano.
This is one of the things that make me believe there’s a level of sustainability to what Hynes and the Wild are doing. It’s technical, it’s sound and it’s repeatable as long as the players remain bought in.
What the Analytics Say
Alright enough with the boring eye test jibber jabber, let’s get into the numbers. We’ll start with a simple comparison chart of Hynes and Evason using per 60 rates comparing the 19-game stretch that got Evason fired to the first 24 games of this season under Hynes.
On paper, these look like two awfully similar Minnesota Wild teams at 5v5. Under Hynes, the Wild don’t generate quite as much offensively as they did under Evason, but have been stingier defensively. The numbers aren’t dramatically different though. Shot attempts per hour are about the same, high danger chances are only about .5 chance per hour different and expected goals have only 0.2-0.3 expected goals different per hour.
So… what changed? To be honest, nothing really. At least at 5v5 - more on that in a bit. The notable change here is probably in the expected goals against per hour, a metric the Wild are 2nd place in right now only behind the Los Angeles Kings. Giving teams very little at 5v5 has likely helped Gustavsson and Fleury settle into games early on and make some easy stops. They aren’t being tested and have an easier time going later into the games seeing and feeling the puck and making more saves.
TLDR: Better defense has led to better goaltending, go figure!
Finishing
I kind of eluded to this earlier with Kaprizov, but another significant difference from Evason to Hynes is the Wild’s finishing ability, especially from their best players. A reminder from Wildly Informed (my weekly analytics-focused Minnesota Wild podcast, subscribe on YouTube), finishing is a measure of a player’s ability, or lack thereof, to score more or less goas than expected. Scoring more goals than expected = good finisher. Scoring fewer goals than expected = bad finisher. You get the gist.
Let’s take a look at some of the key offensive pieces and the differences under each coach. For the purpose of this exercise, we’re going to stick with the smaller sample and compare Evason’s last 19 games to Hynes’s 24 this season.
The disparity here isn’t gigantic, but there are a few notable things I want to call out. The first, and most obvious, is Matt Boldy. Under Evason, Boldy battled injury and a scoring bug that left him with just 1 goal in 12 games. An uncharacteristic slump for a player who’s on pace for over 40 goals this season. And the numbers suggest the goals are coming because of hard work from Boldy who’s putting a lot more pucks toward the net. Perhaps being coached to take charge and be a shooter and passer, not just the latter.
Kaprizov, as mentioned earlier, also was finishing on fewer of his chances than expected. This was likely due to the aforementioned injury, but something has really clicked under Hynes for the kid too as his ixG per game has jumped from 0.35 under Evason to 0.48 under Hynes. That may seem small, just 0.13 goals per game, but if you take that over an entire season that goes from about 29 expected goals under Evason to 40 expected goals under Hynes, a jump of 11 goals! And Kaprizov is historically a good finisher, so his actual goal total will likely exceed that expected projection.
Overall, the Wild have seen their Top 6 goal scorers pot 6.02 more goals than expected this season across their first 24 games compared to the -1.61 they were sitting at after 19 games last year. The difference of 5 game is notable for sure, but I think the picture I wanted to paint here comes through.
It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what impact the coaching has, but as I mentioned, Boldy seems to be playing much more confident. The coaches have found ways to give Kaprizov and Boldy extra shifts to create more scoring opportunities. The Power Play hired Jason King and since then the team has seen stronger chance numbers with the extra man. Finally, I think Hynes is reaping the rewards of natural growth from the younger players like Rossi and Boldy and the chemistry formed as a result of his lines, notably the Kaprizov-Eriksson Ek-Boldy line, which is an offensive chance creating machine.
TLDR: Growth, better chemistry, healthy bodies and system focused on the getting the best players as many scoring opportunities as possible has led to the Wild’s six forwards leaned on most to score, to finish on more of their chances under Hynes than Evason.
Discipline
The other piece I think that has made a big difference (perhaps the biggest difference overall) is nothing that’s really analytical - it’s discipline.
According to StatMuse (they have pretty accurate but not perfect data), the Wild were the 7th most penalized team in the NHL during Evason’s tenure racking up 882 minor penalties across 251 games. That comes out to roughly 3.51 penalties per game. #GritFirst
So far in Hynes’s tenure, the Wild have taken 272 minor penalties in 87 games, roughly 3.13 penalties per game. HOWEVER, if you focus that down a step further to just this season, the Wild have only taken 61 minor penalties in 24 games this season, an average of 2.54 penalties per game, the 4th FEWEST in the NHL.
Why does this matter? The penalty kill.
Under both coaches, the Wild struggled on the PK. Under Evason the Wild killed only 78.8% of their penalties, 13th worst in the NHL. In the 19 games before he was fired, they killed just 66.7% of their penalties, the worst of any team in the league during that span.
While we’ve seen some slight improvements recently under Hynes and his staff, the Wild still haven’t been great under them, killing just 76.5% of their penalties (a number worse than it was under Evason). This season that number is 73.7% and is 6th worst in the league.
The difference between the Hynes Wild and the Evason Wild is obviously the Hynes Wild don’t have to kill nearly as many penalties. We can see why this is so important with some quick maths.
The 19-game Evason Wild were taking 4.05 penalties per game, a pace of 332.31 penalties over an 82-game season. If we assume the kill would’ve eventually regressed positively at some point and got to say… 75% the rest of that year, that would mean they would’ve allowed 83 power play goals against last season.
The Wild under Hynes this year in their first 24 games are pacing to only take 208 penalties. With a 75% kill rate, that would mean they’re pacing to allow 52 goals against on the kill.
That’s a difference of 31 goals across the season from one coach to the next and likely explains the one notable gap in the stat comparison between Evason and Hynes - goals against. This discipline has provided opponents fewer opportunities to take advantage of the Wild’s poor penalty kill, helping the Wild find more wins because they’re not bleeding goals against each game on the Kill.
Gotta respect Hynes’s mentality of, “Well, if we can’t improve the penalty kill, we could at least try to take fewer penalties!” (not a real quote btw) and so far that seems to be working and frankly might be sustainable.
TLDR: Even though the Wild PK is actually statistically worse under Hynes than it was under Evason, they’re combatting it by taking far fewer penalties and thus are pacing for fewer overall goals against while on the Kill.
So that’s what I got. If there are other things you’ve noticed or want me to look into, feel free to drop me a comment on X @B_Marsh92 or on Bluesky @b-marsh92.bsky.social
This was excellent, Brett. Thanks!