A look at the top players from the Minnesota Wild that could be valuable in building your winning fantasy hockey team for the 2023-24 season.
The Minnesota Wild are not without some interesting players when it comes to fantasy hockey, especially if defensive categories like blocked shots (the Wild ranked 7th overall in that category last season) and goals against can hurt you (the Wild were one of the stoutest teams in terms of goals against and had a mind-boggling 36 one-goal games last year).
Let’s take a look at some of the top targets for the Wild in fantasy hockey for the upcoming season:
Kirill Kaprizov (LW)
Fantasy Rankings: 11 – NHL.com | 12 – ESPN | 15 – Daily Faceoff
All Kaprizov does is put up points. As part of the team’s top line and top power play unit, he’ll get plenty of opportunities to find the back of the net. Though he was hampered last season due to an injury and missed some time, he’s primed for a bounce-back year. He doesn’t have the strongest center compared to other wingers in the league, but that’s never stopped The Thrill before. He could easily flirt with 100 points again this season and should be a top forward target in most leagues.
Filip Gustavsson (G)
Fantasy Rankings: 87 – NHL.com | 77 – ESPN | 122 – Daily Faceoff
Depending on how heavily your league weights goaltending categories, Gustavsson’s likely to sit atop your list of goaltenders to draft. He’s put up very good goals against average and save percentage stats last season, and with a defensively responsible structure in front of him is very likely on pace to do so again this year. Where he’ll be penalized will be in games played in general and associated categories like wins if he’s part of a tandem deployment again. If Fleury struggles, he may see an increase in work load this year, and is prime to be a good option on your goaltender depth for just this scenario.
Matt Boldy (LW)
Fantasy Rankings: 45 – NHL.com | 97 – ESPN | 80 – Daily Faceoff
Some may look at Boldy’s sophomore season in the NHL and his 31 goals and his dip in point production last year and wonder if he’s not going to live up to the hype again. He came on strong at the end of last season and should be a 30-goal scorer, as he’ll be relied on to provide the team some scoring depth behind Kaprizov. Maybe not the highest on your draft board but definitely worth a mid-draft look for a bit of a dark horse scoring threat.
Dark Horse Pick: Marco Rossi
Fantasy drafts are usually made on mining the rosters for a dark horse, a diamond in the rough as it were, that nobody saw coming. With Rossi training in Minnesota with Wild personnel this offseason to improve his game, and expecting to be relied upon for more consistent appearances in the NHL this season, he might be worth taking a flyer on in the later rounds. If he lives up to his potential, Rossi could easily start seeing top-six minutes on a team that’s weaker at center than others in the league.