Game #6: Minnesota Wild at Edmonton Oilers, Thursday October 21, 2010 at 8:30pm (CDT), Rexall Place [GAME PREVIEW]

As fans, we usually hope for fireworks against divisional opponents, however as a general rule, we prefer said fireworks to happen on the ice and not in the stands.  You also hope your national media attention comes from spectacular play and not from something off the ice.  That has not been the case in the past few days.  As well all know, the incident between Vancouver’s Rick Rypien and now named Wild fan, James Engquist has brought more notoriety to Minnesota than the land of “Minnesota Nice” would like.  It also isn’t helping the situation that Engquist is seeking legal advice.  A word of advice to Mr. Engquist.  You weren’t injured, you weren’t ejected from the game (in fact you were relocated to some nice seats on the glass) and you now have a once in a lifetime story to tell your future grandchildren.  Get on with your life and forget about a financial settlement.

With this story and the video associated with it having gone viral, what people seem to have forgotten is how well the Wild played on Tuesday night.  Everyone was waiting to see if Sunday’s much talked about “bag skate” that head coach Todd Richards put the team through would affect the effort put forth by the team.  The much quoted statement by John Madden of “message sent, message received” seems to have come true.  In fact the story surrounding the bag skate and Madden’s comments was discussed on yesterday’s episode of NHL Live on the NHL Network.  Yesterday’s hosts of Deb Placey and Billy Jaffe were essentially forced to talk about the Wild at the top of the show simply because of the incident between Rypien and Engquist.  I don’t know about you, but I would have preferred them talk about the Wild simply because they came out firing on all cylinders and took down the team that many have pegged to win the Stanley Cup.  I also would have preferred to hear Jaffe discuss more on how he thinks the Wild are a borderline playoff team.  It’s simply unfortunate that it took an incident in the stands to make the national hockey shows to stand up and take notice.

The true test for the Wild now comes on this small road trip to Edmonton and Vancouver.  We won’t fully know if the message that Madden talked about has truly been received until these two games are complete.  It will take a consistent show of effort for everyone to know if the message has been received and more importantly believed and followed.  As we all know, actions speak louder than words.  The players can say all the right things to the media, but if they fail to show true actions they’re going to even more confidence in themselves and the fans will lose confidence in the team.  One player with a usually interesting perspective on the team, Cal Clutterbuck, is giving somewhat canned responses as the team heads west.  He is well aware of how important these two games are.

It is completely up to the players on that bench to decide the direction of this team.  It would be nice to see them turn themselves into a team that the media wants to talk about.  Not because of what happens off the ice, but for turning themselves around.  Just looking at the team stats alone, one would think that their record would be better than it is.  For once, they have the stats that say they can score.  Defensively, the numbers could be worse but they can certainly be better as well.  The definitely need to keep the scoring trend going and work on preventing goals against them.  Yes, it’s still early in the season, but it is to vitally important to make the needed changes now.  The season is long and will only get harder to get points when everyone else has their respective games on the right track.

Here we go.  It’s put up or shut up time.