Wild have had a schedule that is somewhere middle of the pack in difficulty so far and are 3rd in the league for points percentage, behind Winnipeg and Carolina.
While I don’t think the Wild will continue at a 76.9% points percentage pace(126 standings points over a full season) for several months, even if they dropped to .625 for the rest of the year, they could finish above 105 points in the standings. They’ve given themselves a little padding in case of a rough patch.
Unlike the 2 prior years, zero teams finished with a points percentage above .700 last season, and we should expect results to lower a bit for the Wild over the course of a full year. If the Wild are able to obtain 67.5% of available points the rest of the way, however, that would put them around 113 on the year, which was right around the top of each conference last season.
Obviously the Wild are playing great, and I’d love to see them hit 120, but they would have to obtain over 70% of available standings points just to finish above 116(besting the franchise record of 113 set in 21-22), and that seems like somewhat of a stretch even though things are going really well so far.
It’s a very promising start and I imagine they’ll be more capable of sustaining a record at or near 70% of standing points(115 over a full season) once they add talent for next season, but I won’t be shocked if they cool slightly this year are finish more in the 106-111 range. That would be 2nd best in their history and likely put them anywhere from 2nd-5th in the conference.
https://hockeywilderness.com/news-rumors/wilderness-walk/kaprizov-leads-wild-to-win-over-sharks-r30338/