Let’s be clear from the jump: a shaky fourth line in January isn’t a red alert. NHL teams aren’t built around their fourth lines, and frankly, nobody’s fourth line is setting the league on fire.
These lines exist to buy time-five to ten minutes a night-so the top-nine forwards can stay fresh. That’s their job.
And on elite teams, you might get a faceoff specialist or a penalty killer down there, but more often than not, the best fourth line is the cheapest one.
That said, Minnesota’s fourth line needs to be better-especially if this team wants to be more than just a playoff participant come spring.
Now, it’s not about chemistry. The issue is depth. The Wild have a rotating cast of six or seven players who could fill those fourth-line roles on any given night, but for the sake of this breakdown, we’re talking about Tyler Pitlick, Ben Jones, and Vinnie Hinostroza.
And so far? The results haven’t been kind.
Let’s talk goals. When these three are on the ice, the Wild are getting buried.
Opponents are scoring 80% of the goals with Jones out there, 75% with Pitlick, and 59.6% with Hinostroza. That’s not just bad luck.
That’s getting outplayed. Sure, goaltending can skew raw goal numbers, so let’s go deeper.
Looking at expected goals (xG)-which factors in shot quality-and Corsi (shot attempts), the picture improves slightly, but not enough. These guys are still underwater. They’re not flipping the ice, not creating sustained pressure, and not defending well enough to justify the minutes.
Now, defenders of the fourth line might argue, “They do their job. They get the puck deep, don’t give up goals, and keep things simple.” But the numbers push back hard on that narrative.
Take Nico Sturm, for example. He’s a model fourth-liner-strong defensively, wins draws, drives play the right way.
Compared to him, Pitlick, Jones, and Hinostroza just aren’t getting it done. Even if we lower the bar and compare them to someone like last year’s Yakov Trenin-who struggled mightily in Minnesota-the current trio still falls short in key metrics like scoring chances against and offensive generation.
Bottom line: this group shouldn’t be Plan A for playoff hockey.
To be fair, the Wild front office didn’t build this roster expecting all three of these players to be in the postseason mix. Ideally, only two of them make the healthy lineup.
Their low cap hits are part of the strategy-giving Minnesota flexibility to load up elsewhere in the lineup and bank space for the trade deadline. That’s smart cap management.
And in the regular season, if the fourth line can play even hockey-just keep things level-the top lines can do the heavy lifting. Even grabbing a loser point in overtime helps in the standings.
But that luxury disappears in April. You don’t overtime-point your way through a playoff series.
Let’s zoom out and look at the bigger picture.
To get a sense of where the Wild stand, it’s worth comparing their current roster to last year’s contenders-teams like the Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, Florida Panthers, and Vegas Golden Knights. Using The Athletic’s analytical model and filtering for players with a minus-three game score (essentially, third-line or third-pair level contributors), we can see how Minnesota stacks up.
Now, a few things to note before diving in: The data for Minnesota is based on last season, since the current season’s player cards haven’t been released yet. That means some aging players might regress. Also, players like Danila Yurov and Daemon Hunt didn’t meet the minimum ice time threshold but are included here because they’re believed to be performing at or above that third-line level.
With that in mind, Minnesota’s roster actually compares most closely to last year’s Avalanche. Both teams feature an elite forward (Nathan MacKinnon for Colorado, Kirill Kaprizov for Minnesota), an elite defenseman (Cale Makar vs.
Quinn Hughes), and enough top-six talent to support their stars. Both teams can roll out their five best skaters at once and tilt the ice.
Where the Wild fall short is forward depth-and that’s the ripple effect of trading Marco Rossi in the Hughes deal. But there’s a path to bridging that gap. Yurov’s emergence helps, and a smart move at the deadline could close it entirely.
But the fourth line? That’s where the comparison really stings.
Let’s revisit Colorado. In the 2024-25 playoffs, the Avs used 11 forwards in all seven games.
Gabriel Landeskog missed two, so let’s focus on the three with the fewest five-on-five minutes: Jack Drury, Charlie Coyle, and Joel Kiviranta. Even those depth pieces delivered stronger analytics than Pitlick, Jones, and Hinostroza.
That’s the difference between a team that can roll four lines in the postseason and one that’s hoping its top nine can shoulder the load.
Look, Pitlick, Jones, and Hinostroza are NHL-adjacent players. They’re close enough to the line that you can get by with them in the regular season.
And barring a catastrophic rash of injuries, Minnesota is going to make the playoffs. If that kind of injury storm hits, the season’s likely sunk anyway.
So there’s no need to panic. But let’s be real: this trio is here for cap reasons, not playoff contributions.
Once the postseason hits, opponents will hunt mismatches. And if even one of these three is in the lineup when Minnesota’s healthy, that’s a target waiting to be exploited-especially on the road, where the other team controls the matchups.
The Wild have time. They have flexibility. And they have a team capable of making noise in the playoffs.
But if they want to do more than show up in April, they’ll need to upgrade that fourth line. Because in the postseason, every shift matters-and Minnesota can’t afford passengers.