Game #43: San Jose Sharks at Minnesota Wild, Tuesday, January 10, 2012 at 6:30pm (CST), Xcel Energy Center [GAME PREVIEW]

I’ll admit, commercials aren’t always a good thing.  I know I am eagerly waiting for the federal law to go into effect that would prevent commercials from playing louder than the program they’re interrupting.  However, on occasion, the commercial provides a good chuckle.  As a hockey fan, I still love pulling up the old Bud Light “Hockey Falls” commercials.  Lately, I’ve been enjoying the “Unprepared Man’s Guide to …” ones put out by Gander Mountain.  My favorite of the Gander Mountain ones is where the office hack colors himself with a yellow highlighter in an attempt to get himself rescued. 

On occasion though, a commercial comes out that in a bizarre way can describe the life of a professional sports team, even though it wasn’t meant to.  Case in point, the newest by DirectTV:

http://youtube.com/watch?v=7udQSHWpL88

With the fantastic play of the Minnesota Wild during the first half of the season, we became the man in the commercial.  The team didn’t start off so well, but thankfully not as poorly as last season.  However, they seemed to get mad.  That anger turned into the amazing record that put the lowly Wild atop not only the Northwest Division, but atop both the Western Conference and the entire league for that matter.  We became the team with an eye patch.  We became the team with a target on them.  Opponents wanted to see just what we were made of, the team that continued to win even though we had dressed the most players of any team in the league.  Teams without a steady core of players on a nightly basis rarely see the success that the Wild had found.  Our record pretty much said to the rest of the league, “we can dress an AHL roster in NHL sweaters and stand a good chance on winning.”  It was like poking a hibernating bear with a stick.

Unfortunately, our recent record has made us the man at the end of the commercial.  Our record egged on the opponents so they simply worked harder to take us down.  Right now I know I feel like the team is waking up in the roadside ditch like in the commercial.  No matter what they do, the team just can’t seem to get out of that ditch.  They started out so well in Calgary, but just couldn’t climb out enough.  It’s time for some new anger and initiative by the team.  Sometimes a team needs a shakeup, and they possibly got that with the reassignment of Marco Scandella to the Houston Aeros.  No one believes this is a long-term assignment for the young defenseman, but perhaps a week or so after being sent down will bring him back to what we know he can be.  I can only hope that his demotion will inspire his teammates, especially fellow defenseman Marek Zidlicky, to get their game back.
 
So yes, it is time to get out of the roadside ditch.  This needs to happen now as opposed to waiting a few weeks.  I don’t care to be the team that the “experts” point to as a flash in the pan after the season is over.  I don’t want to hear them gloating about how they “knew” we weren’t for real.  And I don’t want them to be put back on the back burner so that they can continue to gush over the same teams over and over again or spend all their time worrying about a certain injured Pittsburgh Penguin.  It’s time to get the Wild back in the spotlight again, and as we all know, they only way to do that is to win.  Tonight is as good of night as any other to start the winning ways again.

Injury Report:

Minnesota:     Jarod Palmer (upper body), Guillaume Latendresse (concussion), and Pierre-Marc Bouchard (lower body)

San Jose:  Alex Stalock (knee), Jim Vandermeer (upper body), Martin Havlat (left hamstring injury), and Colin White (lower body injury). 

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