LOS ANGELES — Let’s be honest: Freddy Gaudreau didn’t have to fly to L.A. for one meaningless game. He had already missed two games due to the birth of his first child, the Wild aren’t making the playoffs and they had two extra forwards on the trip, so there was no reason to hustle out to California when he could have just remained in Minnesota and played in Thursday’s finale.
“It’s my job,” Gaudreau said. “So we just do it.”
Gaudreau got the call from his wife, Kjersten, while he was in Denver at 1:30 in the morning last Wednesday that she was in labor. He sprinted to Denver airport for an early-morning flight back to Minnesota and arrived in time to see their son, 6-pound, 14-ounce Felix, be born.
“Our hearts have been exploded in the best way possible,” said Gaudreau, 30. “It’s been a beautiful experience. Everything’s been beautiful. Nothing else. Nothing less than that. Just so beautiful. We feel very lucky.”
Marc-Andre Fleury, whom Gaudreau idolizes, welcomed him to the club.
“Freddie has such love for life,” said Fleury, who signed a one-year $2.5 million extension Wednesday. “He’s a little more spiritual than others. To see him with a big smile this morning was good.”
That smile has been few and far between this season. Gaudreau is one game from the end of a tough 2023-24 campaign after he was rewarded with a five-year, $10.5 million contract thanks to a breakout 19-goal campaign.
He has scored just five goals and 10 assists and is a team-worst minus-21 in 66 games this season. By Dom Luszczyszyn’s projection model for The Athletic, Gaudreau was expected coming into the season to have a minus-2 net rating (offensive and defensive combined). He’s at minus-9. It’s the worst drop-off on the team.
His decline on both ends of the ice contributed to that, but the real killer was his offense. He scored 0.70 points per 60 minutes at five-on-five and dragged down the team’s shots, goals and scoring chances in his minutes relative to his teammates.
His game simply hasn’t been nearly as effective as it was his first two seasons with the Wild, when he registered a combined 82 points and was trusted wholeheartedly by former coach Dean Evason.
Top-six, third line, center or wing, penalty kill or power play, shootout, defending extra attacker situations, Gaudreau was deployed in every scenario.
But this season Gaudreau has gained little traction, and it started with former teammate Ryan Reaves crushing him with an open-ice hit in Toronto on Oct. 14 in the first period of the Wild’s second game of the season. Gaudreau suffered injuries to his rib cage, tried to play through them and finally had to be pulled from the lineup for three weeks (10 games).
But coach John Hynes said last week that Gaudreau hasn’t been healthy all season, and Gaudreau has confirmed that he never fully recovered from the Reaves hit and has had the injury aggravated numerous times on checks.
Ryan Reaves absolutely hammers Freddy Gaudreau & Marcus Foligno immediately drops the gloves pic.twitter.com/dy6Wjwi720
— Spoked Z (@SpokedZ) October 14, 2023
Gaudreau’s not making excuses. In fact, he only reluctantly admitted what’s been going on when pressed at Monday’s morning skate in L.A.
But it’s been obvious because not only hasn’t Gaudreau been as effective offensively and defensively, but he also hasn’t been as engaged. At times, he almost seems to avoid contact and confrontation.
Of all the players on the Wild, it feels like Gaudreau is in the most need of an offseason reset.
“Yeah, it’s been a lot of adversity for sure,” Gaudreau said. “But there’s no excuse. (I’m not) like, ‘It’s because of this. It’s because of that.’ I can just say there’s been a lot of adversity. And all I know is that there came a point where I almost feel grateful for that adversity. It gives different perspective. It makes you feel like you discover a different part of yourself, different strength. I think that’s the lesson to take out of it.
“We wish life was always uphill, and we would just go and fly through life, but it’s not. There’s moments like that. And for me, definitely it’s been a season like that. But I do believe it’s been a good thing for me to go through something like that and learn more about myself. And that’s what I want to carry through this summer.”
Gaudreau’s not just talking about mentally. He’s talking about physically. As Wild players told you in our player poll in February, nobody spends more time in the gym on the team than Gaudreau. But it’ll be interesting to see if he changes his training this offseason in an attempt to get stronger. That would likely be the wish of Hynes, who’s new to Gaudreau and trying to identify the areas that made him so valuable to his previous coach.
Wild player poll: Worst road roommate? Best and worst dressed? Always late? Most obnoxious? https://t.co/Z9pqcEDrgr
— Michael Russo (@RussoHockey) February 27, 2024
“The summers are huge for quality time with the people I care the most about, for time in nature,” Gaudreau said. “I love to take care of my body and work on becoming better and stronger and just really making sure you come back in the season and you’re full of energy and just ready to attack a full season. And now that we’re not in the playoffs, I think that’s the focus of everybody is to take that opportunity to build and grow and come back better.”
Gaudreau said that unlike last offseason, when he needed core muscle surgery, the maladies he has been dealing with won’t require anything but rest.
But, again, Gaudreau refuses to blame his down year on injuries.
“Everybody goes through stuff,” he said. “It’s been coming back and forth sometimes with some hits that made it feel weird and stuff. But that’s true that your mind’s trying to protect your body, and that’s why I say you learn a lot of things through that.”
In other words, the reaggravations he endured all season finally caused him to even subconsciously not engage in high-traffic areas as much as we’ve seen in the past.
“Like I said, we wish it was always uphill, and it hasn’t been this year,” Gaudreau said. “But there’s a lot of things to take out of that and grow from, and that’s my mindset 100 percent. And I don’t feel sorry for myself. One thing I know is I haven’t showed up a single day thinking, ‘Screw the day.’ I always wanted the best out of the day, but just sometimes it was harder this year. So we grew from it and the team moving forward.”
One thing Gaudreau admits he had trouble getting over was the guilt that followed Evason’s firing in November. He knows how much Evason championed him throughout his career dating back to their days together in AHL Milwaukee and felt responsible as one of many Wild underachievers before Evason was dismissed.
“It was a tough start of the season and could feel kind of the tough energy following that,” Gaudreau said. “I had no points in nine games. And even though I don’t pride myself on points and my focus is on playing the right way, I know that that’s how we were being judged. So I was putting a lot of pressure on myself. With that feeling, that pressure, that was coming with hearing stuff about the coaching staff. I cared so much about them that you feel — you take it personally, feel guilty, and that was the tough part. I love Dean and (Bob Woods), and I believed in them, and I knew it was tough for everybody.
“So to see that it’s two people that are booted out for everybody, you take it personal. And yeah, it’s tough. It’s tough. It was tough, man. I can’t lie on that. It’s tough because you never think coaches are (the problem). It’s just how the business works.”
Gaudreau said it won’t be just him that will return motivated to be better next season. It’s the entire team.
“Everybody in this hockey room wants to win a Cup, and everybody shows up every day for that,” he said. “And despite the adversity that we’ve gone through this year, everybody’s stayed that way. Everybody’s stayed just dialed on their tasks, ready to show up the best version of themselves, ready to just be good teammates.
“And so of course we don’t want to (miss the playoffs). but there’s still good lessons to learn from that. And I do believe through the adversity, you learn a lot. And I know everybody in this room is going to learn from the season and grow from it. I know that.”
(Photo: Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
