Bill Guerin has tried his first two seasons as Wild general manager to change the culture inside the Wild dressing room.
He thinks things got too complacent in the State of Hockey.
He wants the players to think bigger and have loftier expectations for themselves as he works to build the organization into a perennial Stanley Cup contender.
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This is one reason he acquired two-time Stanley Cup champions Ian Cole and Nick Bonino.
The two were teammates on the victorious 2016 and 2017 Pittsburgh Penguins, and Guerin, an executive on the Penguins back then, grew an immense amount of respect and admiration for the two gamers. He thought their influence and leadership could positively affect the Wild – both on the ice and off.
As the Wild return to Minnesota for Game 6 Wednesday night with the hope of forcing a Game 7 Friday in Vegas, you just know Bonino and Cole have to have large roles if the Wild are to extend the series against the Golden Knights.
“It’s the best time of the year,” said Bonino, the 33-year-old former Boston University product in his 12th NHL season with 103 games of playoff experience. “We have been looking forward to (the playoffs) ever since we clinched. I don’t think winning a Cup has made me content. It’s only made me hungrier. The feeling of winning, it doesn’t go away. It’s stayed with me and made me want to win it even more. Everyone in this room has the eyes on the prize.”
Cole, 32, the former Notre Dame standout with 11 years of NHL experience and 94 playoff games under his belt, couldn’t agree more.
Bonino was acquired in the fall in the Luke Kunin trade with Nashville. Cole was acquired from the Colorado Avalanche in January and entered this season motivated to put himself in a position to host his latest Stanley Cup party back in his hometown of Ann Arbor, Mich.
During the pandemic, Cole became addicted to watching NHL Network.
“They showed a bunch of the old playoff games actually from our runs in ’16 and ’17, and I was fortunate enough to watch quite a few of them,” Cole said. “It was really fun. It was remarkable how well we played as a team. To win the Stanley Cup it takes all four lines, all three D pairs, often two, if not more than two goaltenders. You need everyone to be contributing and everyone to be playing well. Nobody wins with two good lines and three good defensemen. It’s not going to happen. The other team is just going to roll lines and you’re not going to have the energy to continue to play at that level for that long. You need everyone.
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“Watching those games and seeing how well a Minnesota guy Matt Cullen played for us, Chris Kunitz, Ben Lovejoy. Just how great guys that weren’t considered Hall of Famers or weren’t considered stars in the league but how great they played for as long as they did was pretty remarkable. It’s just one of those things where everyone has to do their job and then take it to the enth degree for the playoffs. And do it consistently and do it every shift. It’s a war of attrition. You know, however long it takes to win the hockey game that’s how long you have to play well. There’s not really any secret to it. It’s just a matter of doing it.”
These are the type of things Bonino and Cole try to convey to their teammates because they know better than any of them how scintillating a feeling it is to hoist Lord Stanley over their battle-tested shoulders.
When Cole won his first Stanley Cup, he said to his mom, Connie, “Mom, I just want to have a party at our house.”
That turned out to be a bit of an ordeal after the Coles invited 100 people.
“A Stanley Cup party is the only thing where more people show up than the number of people you invite,” Cole’s father, Doug, said, laughing. “Like weddings, you got a 20 percent attrition rate or people simply don’t come. We invited 100 figuring we’d get 70, and we probably had 230. People brought friends, aunts, cousins, neighbors. We didn’t have enough room, enough food, but it turned out great.”
Well, other than the weather.
During a mid-summer day in 2016, it was scorching hot with high winds and rain causing the power to go out. Hence, Party No. 2 a year later was at a friend’s event venue barn.
“I never thought I’d say this, but if Ian ever gets a third, as lovely as the second was, home is where the heart is,” Connie Cole said.
After Cole’s 5:30 skates as a mini mite, the family used to go to a breakfast place called Angelo’s. It’s a family-owned business in Ann Arbor, so Ian wanted to bring the Cup there in 2016.
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“It was sort of surreal because they just came walking to the restaurant with the Cup and put it in the room with us and it was like you’re looking at the most treasured trophy in all of sports,” Doug Cole said.
“Yeah,” Connie Cole added, “You just look at it and know, ‘This is something that’s really special.’ It went around town to all these places that Ian had grown up going to, that he wanted to take it to. The second time he won it, they brought it and the doorbell rang and it was sitting on the doormat when we opened the door. … We brought it in and put it on the kitchen table and we all sat around and had pancakes.
“So we were a little more chill about it the second time.”
Doug Cole’s favorite memory of the two Cup parties was chatting with the Keepers of the Cup – Mike Bolt, Bill Wellman and Mario Della Davia – who escort hockey’s crown achievement around the world.
“They’re just fascinating to talk to,” Doug Cole said. “The stories they can tell are really interesting. It makes me smile thinking about how cool it would be if Ian can do this again with the Wild.”
Bonino, in a lot of ways, has become the Wild’s utility man.
Sure, at even strength, he has mostly played on the fourth line the past several weeks and even at wing. But since late March, he has been a fixture as the net-front guy on the top power-play unit, often moving up in the lineup when the Wild need a big draw, and first over the boards on the penalty kill and in crunch time whether up or down a goal.
To be blunt, though, Bonino wasn’t overjoyed by his usage early this season but he had the confidence to walk into coach Dean Evason’s office and ask for more responsibilities.
“Coming from the situation I came from, I have been a center my whole career and played every situation on the ice,” Bonino said. “I can’t remember when it was or how it went, but I just said, ‘I feel like I can contribute more. I feel like I can do more. I want to do more for the team and help the team win.’ And I think everyone in the room feels that way about their own game. I just want to do whatever the team needs. If it’s a faceoff, a kill, a goal, if it’s a power play, a shift to protect the lead, those are the things that I pride myself in.”
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Similarly, Cole did a terrific job helping stabilize the third pair since he arrived in Minnesota and playing alongside the Wild’s most inexperienced defenseman Carson Soucy. The two had a strong year. Unfortunately, Soucy looked to sustain a serious upper-body injury late in Game 4.
In need of a replacement, the Wild turned to rookie Calen Addison for his playoff debut during Monday’s 4-2 win in Game 5. He recorded his first career point, and Cole and Addison were arguably the Wild’s best defense pair in Vegas in large part to Cole being a comfortable person for Addison to lean on.
Evason lauded the communication the two had with each other during Monday’s game but also on the bench where Cole can often be seen in the ear of his defense partner.
Evason just loves the intangibles Bonino and Cole bring.
“They’re saying the right things and doing the right things,” Evason said. “That experience factor is huge and clearly why Billy went out and got both.”
Added teammate Marcus Foligno, “They’ve been really big for our team. You see the way that they help solidify some areas with the way they play and compete. They do a lot of the little things that are necessary to win a game. That’s what they’re here for. Just great guys in the locker room and awesome people off the ice.
“More importantly they know what it takes to win and the attitude we have to have to win. Bones, he’s probably not playing a lot in terms of minutes, but when he’s out there, it’s crucial. And Coler, he’s a guy that every time he’s out there he’s going to do whatever it takes to shut down the opposition. He’s a smart puck mover as well and makes a good first pass to get out of our zone. ”
Foligno insinuated that the two are almost an extension of the coaching staff.
“When they talk, people listen because of the resumes that they have with the Stanley Cup,” Foligno said. “They are smart with the game and they study the game.”
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During Game 6, whether you’re watching on TV or in the stands at Xcel Energy Center, pay a little extra attention to Bonino and Cole, whether it’s during warmups or during game action. Their love for this time of year is so apparent with every move, with every word, that it can be infectious inside a dressing room full of playoff-experienced players but many that crave taking that next step, experiencing what Bonino and Cole have twice before in lifting the Cup.
“It’s the best time of the year,” Cole said. “The regular season is great. You obviously want to win games and finish as well as you can as far as standings go. But as soon as the regular season ends and the playoffs start that’s when the real season starts. That’s what you play for. That’s when the intensity gets turned up. That’s when everything matters more. That’s just when it’s the most fun when you’re really competing against the other team’s best. Everyone is on the same schedule. There’s no, ‘Oh, this team is tired. Oh, this team is rested.’ It’s a ton of fun.”
Cole hopes he can say this for three more rounds after this one because, to be frank, it’s hard to see a gap-toothed, usually full-bearded playoff warrior and shot-blocking, penalty-killing wiz as clean-cut as he is so far this postseason.
He hopes to rediscover and unveil “that homeless lumberjack look” later in the postseason.
“You know, as professional athletes, we’re here to win the Stanley Cup every single year,” Cole said. “I’m going to let (my beard) go from here on out and see how much it can grow in the next two months. Hopefully we’re playing the whole time. The longer it gets, the longer you’re playing hockey, which is the goal.”
(Top photo: John Russell / NHLI via Getty Images)
