The focal point for Minnesota Wild players in training camp this year, as directed by both John Hynes and Bill Guerin, was to “choose your hard.”
Guerin, the team’s general manager and president of hockey operations, came up with the phrase for when he addressed players when camp broke, and it’s clear it has resonated.
It’s hard to lose in the NHL, but it’s even harder to win.
It’s hard to block that point-blank shot. Hard to hustle on the backcheck. Hard to win that board battle or race for the puck. Hard to do the little things and the painful things to pull out 2 points.
Last season, missing the playoffs the way the Wild did, was even harder, though.
That was the feedback players gave to Hynes, the Wild’s second-year coach, in exit meetings.
Ryan Hartman went as far as to say he would have loved to play against the Wild every night. They were too easy to play against, didn’t rise to the occasion in big games and weren’t “hard” enough.
“Losing sucks,” Hartman said. “Losing is hard.”
“We don’t want to choose that kind of ‘hard’ again,” Wild veteran Marcus Foligno echoed. “We want to do the hard things that are going to allow us to win, to make the playoffs, go on a run and to win the Stanley Cup.”
So Foligno and captain Jared Spurgeon were talking toward the end of camp about what they wanted to do with this year’s “Hero of the Game” award that a player presents to a teammate after a victory.
Over the years, Wild players have handed out St. Paul and Ramsey County police hats, white-water-rafting helmets and, last year, a giant Viking helmet.
Spurgeon and Foligno spitballed what would best represent “hard.”
Foligno reached out to Hartman, who often has bright ideas and also epitomizes “hard” … from his style of play to his blue-collar beard that can grow from clean-shaven to Grizzly Adams in a matter of days.
“He said, ‘It’s usually a chain,’” Foligno remembered. “So then Hartzy designed the whole thing.”
The day before the season opener, Hartman went to Home Depot and bought the thickest steel chain he could find — one that can pull a 1,500-pound load.
He also bought green and red spray paint, giant lettering and “one of those wood things for address numbers you drill into a house,” he said, proudly.
“The night before our first game, I built a little workshop in the garage and I put it together,” Hartman said. “It hasn’t fallen apart yet.”
Hartman brought the chained “HARD” trophy to the rink on the morning of the Wild’s home opener against Columbus. The treasured prize has been handed around the locker room 10 times thus far this season.
“It goes to the guy who not necessarily puts up the most points in a game,” Foligno said.
As Hartman said, “Otherwise Kirill (Kaprizov) could win it every game. Sometimes you want to spread it out.”
“We give it to the guy who maybe at the end of the game blocks three shots or lays the big check or broke up the big play with a backcheck,” Foligno said.
Spurgeon, by virtue of being the captain, first awarded it to Filip Gustavsson after an opening night win against Columbus. In St. Louis, after the Wild’s second win, Gustavsson presented the “HARD” trophy to Hartman, who scored a power-play goal, drew a four-minute power play and sustained a nasty injury that would knock him out of the lineup the next six games.
After the next win in Columbus, Hartman, wearing a suit because he didn’t play, handed the award off to Jonas Brodin. In Florida, Brodin presented it to Foligno. After watching Jakub Lauko hurl his body into Lightning blasts to preserve a win in Tampa Bay, Foligno wanted to make an example of the sacrifice by giving it to the fourth liner.
Next, Lauko naturally gifted it to Marc-Andre Fleury after he was victorious during his emotional final start in Pittsburgh.
Possibly our favorite one yet 💚 #mnwild pic.twitter.com/8XILuVfToo
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) November 2, 2024
Fleury gave the “HARD”ware to assistant equipment manager Matt Benz after he worked his 1,500th game to open the last homestand against the Lightning. After Spurgeon’s backcheck led to his assist of Matt Boldy’s overtime winner against the Toronto Maple Leafs the next game, Benz handed the trophy off to Spurgeon, who then paid it forward to Zach Bogosian after the recent road trip-opening win in San Jose.
Oh Captain, my Captain 🫡 pic.twitter.com/wYJcMWKhut
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) November 4, 2024
Finally, after Gustavsson held strong the last two periods in Anaheim, Bogosian gave it back to Gustavsson for the second time this season.
The Wild open a two-game homestand Thursday against the Montreal Canadiens. If the Wild win that night, Gustavsson will pass the chain on again.
Let’s be honest: When a coach plasters a saying on the locker room wall or a general manager comes up with a doozy of a line during a camp meeting, the message could be taken cynically by players.
It could enter one ear and exit the other.
But Hynes believes the reason this has resonated with the players is it has happened organically as a two-way street.
It was the players who admitted last season they weren’t hard enough to play against.
So in camp, Hynes said, “We can say we want to get to that, but what does that actually mean? How do you do it? What are the actions you have to take to get your identity back?’ This was their messaging. We, together, wanted to establish, ‘What is our hard?’ What is hard work? What does the word actually mean?
“It’s hard to win. It’s hard to lose. It’s hard to be in shape. It’s hard to be out of shape. It’s hard to be rich. It’s hard to be poor. Let’s choose our hard. And I think it was the combination of the players’ feedback and their mindset, incorporating that into a tense training camp and the messaging, combined with Billy’s message, so we were all on the same page.
“The reason this truly resonated with the guys is because everybody was singing the same tune, but then really defining what does it mean, and then committing to it.”
And when teammates recognize the fact that depth players like Lauko and Bogosian are playing such pivotal roles in victories beyond the obviousness of 3 points a night by Kaprizov or Boldy game winners, it has a knack for bringing a team closer together.
“It’s about work ethic and the mindset of going into every game and every practice and just being professionals and understanding what Hynzie wants from us,” Foligno said. “Guys are not questioning, ‘How’s our effort going to be today?’ Hynzie has set the bar pretty high in camp, and now it’s always meeting that bar every day.
“We go into every game confident now because we trust the fact that everyone in that locker room is going to meet that standard. I think last year got away from us in the sense of we weren’t on the same page, weren’t connected, didn’t have that chemistry, and the work ethic wasn’t always there. In Anaheim, we had a bad second period, but it didn’t change things. We got some good goaltending obviously from Gus, but the team came out and said, ‘Hey, that’s unacceptable. Let’s turn it around.’ And let’s be honest: That team probably would have caught us last year and maybe passed us by with a win.”
Foligno has really embraced the “HARD” trophy. In fact, he tries to take a picture with the winner every game.
“I’ve become like the photobomber,” Foligno said.
Hynes couldn’t believe when Hartman came to the rink with the HARD trophy.
“It was like, ‘They got it.’ Like, just really proud of them — proud of the guys that we’re on the same page,” he said. “I was truly impressed that they got the message and then came up with that because it has meaning. Sometimes you can have those (Hero of the Game) things and it’s a goofy thing, but this has meaning.
“They got it, and now we’ve got to live it. We’ve got to keep choosing our hard. Losing stinks. Losing is hard. Winning is hard. Choose our hard.”
The chain is passed to Lauko #mnwild pic.twitter.com/06aqaWZYen
— Minnesota Wild (@mnwild) October 25, 2024
Hartman loves the fact that unsung heroes are being celebrated after every win, plus, “If you ask Benzy, he was tired of carrying around that Viking helmet last year.”
Still, Kaprizov is second in the league in scoring. At some point, he should probably win the “HARD”ware at least once.
“Don’t worry,” Foligno said. “He may get a bigger trophy at the end of the year.”
Maybe not a HARD trophy but a Hart Trophy.
(Top photos of Marcus Foligno, Jared Spurgeon, Filip Gustavsson and Jakub Lauko courtesy of the Wild)
