Minnesota Wild (17-13-4) 38pts 5th in the Central
2.85 Goals For (10th)
2.76 Goals Against (21st)
13.9% Power Play (26th)
85.4% Penalty Kill (6th)
Top 5 Scorers:
1. #11 Zach Parise ~ 13G 15A = 28pts
2. #29 Jason Pominville ~ 8G 19A = 27pts
3. #20 Ryan Suter ~ 1G 21A = 22pts
4. #26 Thomas Vanek ~ 6G 15A = 21pts
5. #22 Nino Niederreiter ~ 14G 3A = 17pts
Top 3 PIM’s:
1. #6 Marco Scandella ~ 42 PIM’s
2. #18 Ryan Carter ~ 32 PIM’s
3. #11 Zach Parise ~ 25 PIM’s
Top Goaltenders:
1. #35 Darcy Kuemper (12-10-0) 2.61GAA .903%SP 3SO
2. #32 Niklas Backstrom (5-3-3) 2.58GAA .901%SP
3. #33 John Curry (0-0-1) 3.81GAA .826%SP
Vs.
Columbus Blue Jackets (15-16-3) 33pts 6th in the Metropolitan
2.41 Goals For (24th)
3.18 Goals Against (27th)
24.0% Power Play (2nd)
80.3% Penalty Kill (18th)
Top 5 Scorers:
1. #71 Nick Foligno ~ 17G 14A = 31pts
2. #19 Ryan Johansen ~ 9G 22A = 31pts
3. #43 Scott Hartnell ~ 8G 11A = 19pts
4. #7 Jack Johnson ~ 3G 15A = 18pts
5. #21 James Wisniewski ~ 2G 13A = 15pts
Top 3 PIM’s:
1. #40 Jared Boll ~ 49 PIM’s
2. #47 Dalton Prout ~ 47 PIM’s
3. #43 Scott Hartnell ~ 39 PIM’s
Top Goaltenders:
1. #72 Sergei Bobrovsky (13-9-2) 2.69GAA .919%SP 1SO
2. #30 Curtis McElhinney (2-6-1) 3.33GAA .898%SP
3. #31 Anton Forsberg (0-1-0) 5.32GAA .841%SP
It’s New Year’s Eve dear readers. Have you compiled your futile list of resolutions that you end up breaking within a couple of weeks? I gave up long ago on making a list, because usually life gets in the way. In the absence of pointless lists, I simply try to live the best life I can. No giving up butter or wine or red meat here. Instead, I try to consume better versions. It might mean organic butter or local, grass-fed beef, but the point is to do better than completely eliminating favorite things. See, simple changes. I think if we all thought of such simple changes, we would ultimately end up keeping our resolutions than crashing and burning within a couple of weeks.
With that in mind, it would be great if the Minnesota Wild would employ the same simple changes strategy. As we’ve witnessed lately, it looks like they’re not the resolutions kind of team. They seem more prone to keeping the status quo as opposed to tinkering. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then clearly you don’t really follow this team. There are so many little changes that can easily be made, and they would most likely make a heap of difference. We saw scoring come from unlikely sources in Winnipeg. Imagine a team where a coach isn’t afraid to try some of those combinations on a more regular basis and break up the inept ones. Just thinking of those changes make my head spin with glee. Yet in the meantime, we have to sit in a bog of gloom and doom.
Let’s start with the ultimate elephant in the room, the abysmal power play. There’s a reason why we’re still in the bottom five in the league when it comes to having the man advantage. What doesn’t compute when it comes not only to the power play but to the team as a whole, is that we have the talent to score at will. However, it is how that talent is used (or misused in the Wild’s case) that has the team struggling. We’ve all talked ad nauseum about the Wild’s top power play unit. Why Mike Yeo continues to put Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise, Jason Pominville, Thomas Vanek, and Ryan Suter together for the power(less) play makes absolutely no sense at all. They simply are not producing on the power play. When the Wild does manage to score on the power play, it tends to come from the like of Nino Niederreiter who is clearly not on the top power play unit. But let’s start with the lead weight on the power play. Ryan Suter has demonstrated time and time again that he needs to be removed from the top unit. Just because we’re paying him top dollar to anchor the blue line doesn’t mean he needs to always be on the power play. Lately, he’s been unable to maintain the zone and when he does take a shot on goal, it’s either weak or completely off target. Yet in Winnipeg we did see a defenseman who needs more time on the power play simply by his play even strength. When we saw the game winning, shot from the blue line goal by Marco Scandella, every fan asked “why isn’t he on the power play?” Well we got our pathetic answer from the coach himself during the post-game press conference. Michael Russo from the Minneapolis Star Tribune asked Yeo about why Scandella isn’t on the power play. According to Yeo, it’s been tried already and it didn’t work. Well Mike, you current power play isn’t working, yet you continue to use it. Perhaps if you would apply the same thinking to Suter as you did to Scandella, you would figure out where the problem is. But alas, we’re not going to see that change.
As I said, small changes. That’s all we need to see. We’re not asking anyone to re-invent the wheel, just tinker with it to improve it. It’s like back in the day, we here in Minnesota had two sets of tires, and you made an appointment around November to have your snow tires put on your car. That small change helped you better navigate the snowy, icy conditions Minnesota is known for. Now, tire makers have improved tires so much that we don’t need a separate set for winter. Little changes make monumental differences. Time to make those changes Mike.
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