What’s contributing to the Wild’s rough October?

The lead-up to the 2025-26 season came with a lot of optimism for the Minnesota Wild and their fans. The organization had good young players in key spots, Kirill Kaprizov had just signed his eight-year contract extension, and the franchise was finally free from the prohibitive salary cap hits of the buyouts for Zach Parise and Ryan Suter.

Through 11 games, those good feelings have quickly evaporated. Minnesota is 3-5-3 and has allowed 43 goals, the third-most in the Western Conference and the fourth-most in the NHL. The defense has performed poorly in front of Filip Gustavsson, and the Swedish netminder has not reached a level high enough to overcome consistent costly mistakes in front of him.

On offense, the Wild have struggled to find production beyond Kaprizov, Matt Boldy and Marco Rossi, though Marcus Johansson and Joel Eriksson Ek have stepped up more as of late.

On Wednesday’s episode of Daily Faceoff LIVE, host Tyler Yaremchuk and co-host and former NHL goaltender Carter Hutton were joined by former NHL video coach Steve Peters to discuss the various factors that have kept the Wild from winning games.

Tyler Yaremchuk: I’ll give you a multiple choice kind of style question here. Is this just players fighting through a slump? Is this a roster composition issue? Is this a coaching issue?

Steve Peters: I think it’s all of the above, and that’s a really bad sign for the Minnesota Wild. You start looking at 5-on-5 goals, they’re 32nd in the league… They have Kaprizov, Boldy, Rossi. They should be doing better 5-on-5… You look at their back end, and this is a back end that has really been driven by Jared Spurgeon for years. He’s 36; he’s minus-12, and he has one five-on-five point. You have to be able to get the puck to the net, and you’ve got to be able to transport the puck up the ice, and right now the Minnesota Wild’s back end isn’t contributing to the offense like they need to be.

You can watch the full segment and the rest of the episode here…