The Minnesota Wild may spend the rest of the summer chasing a Dylan Larkin trade, but the fallback plan is starting to look awfully familiar: Ryan Hartman back in the middle of Kirill Kaprizov’s line.
That’s the reality hanging over a team that badly wants a true top-line center. Detroit has not exactly made life easy on the Wild’s pursuit of its captain, and with a deal not appearing close, Minnesota has to keep looking at the options already in house.
One of those options is Danila Yurov, who drew 41.1 percent of the vote in a The Athletic fan survey asking who should handle the top-line center job if the Wild do not add another center. The survey collected more than 4,600 responses, and Wild beat writer Joe Smith pointed out that Minnesota could still stick with Hartman in that role.
“The Wild love Yurov’s 200-foot game. Coach John Hynes said he has Joel Eriksson Ek qualities.
He does a lot of little thing instinctively that teams beg young players to do,” Smith wrote. “...
This will be a second big season for Yurov…but most likely [Hartman] will start the season centering the [Kirill] Kaprizov line.”
That would not be a popular outcome with plenty of fans, but it would also not be a shocking one. Hartman has already shown he can click with Kaprizov, most notably during the 2021-22 season when he put up 34 goals and 65 points. Last season, he finished with 23 goals and 43 points in 76 games, a useful reminder that he can still contribute plenty.
He also brings some edge and net-front work to the line, while allowing Joel Eriksson Ek to anchor a stronger defensive unit with Matt Boldy and an open winger spot. But Hartman’s fit at the top has always come with limits.
His 34-goal season remains the peak, and he has not reached 30 goals for the Wild since. His finishing has been uneven too, with a career shooting percentage of 10.6 and a 7.0 mark two seasons ago.
The bigger issue is whether Hartman can really handle elite competition in that spot. He’s more of a grinder than a true top-line center, and his faceoff numbers reflect that, including a 45.3 percent career win rate last season.
For John Hynes, using Hartman there would at least mean one less chemistry puzzle in a lineup that is already dealing with a lot of turnover and a loss of 150 points from last season’s starting group. Still, it’s hard to call it an ideal answer when the Wild spent the season’s biggest moments getting exposed in exactly this kind of setup.
Minnesota finished with 104 points and was one of the NHL’s best regular-season teams, but it still landed third in the Central Division behind the Colorado Avalanche and Dallas Stars. Both of those teams have clear top-of-lineup drivers, with Nathan MacKinnon and Wyatt Johnson leading the way. The Wild, by contrast, have been trying to force the issue with Hartman in a spot that may be better suited for a third line.
That weakness showed up again in the playoffs. When Eriksson Ek was injured in the series against the Stars, the depth chart got scrambled, and the Avalanche took advantage of the chaos all series long on the way to eliminating Minnesota in five games.
It’s easy to see why fans keep hoping for Larkin. It’s also easy to see why the survey showed 68 percent of them do not believe the Wild will actually land him. Yurov offers upside as a backup plan, but if Minnesota truly saw him as the answer right now, he might already be off the table in a trade package for Larkin or another center.
With about six weeks left before the Wild open next season, Hartman still looks like the front-runner. Unless Detroit suddenly changes course, Minnesota may be headed right back to the same uncomfortable answer.
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