Jesse Pierce

He refuses to talk about himself.

You saw it play out in that interview after the first intermission yesterday.

He will never take credit.

Lucky play, teammate this, teammate that.

But when you get to know Matt and when you're around him every day like we are and you travel with this guy, he is an extremely confident young man.

That serves him very well.

The hard work and the confidence come together.

And we're seeing a player right now start to realize, and I think it happened last year at the Four Nation where the light bulb went on and Matt Boldy realized that not only can he go out there and survive,

Best on best, with the best players, facing the best players, but I'm one of the best players.

And from that point on, to me, he's been a completely different player.

And the neat argument right now for all of us as Wild fans, forever, in the last five or six years, every conversation was Kirill Kaprizov is the best player on the Minnesota Wild.

Open and shut, mic drop, it's over.

Now you get Quinn Hughes, and oh, maybe Quinn Hughes is the best player, and you can make the case.

I will tell you right now, if I'm picking the best player, even the MVP so far of this season on the Minnesota Wild, it ain't Kaprizov, it ain't Quinn Hughes, it's Matt Boldy.

He might be their best player, and that really says something to me because I couldn't have said that a year ago.

I think if you're going to make a run at a cup in this league, you can't be a one-man band.

You can't have one line that tries to carry the offense.

Teams are too good with the video work now.

They're prepared.

They can shut down basically one line anywhere.