Game #80: Minnesota Wild at Nashville Predators, Tuesday April 3, 2012 at 7:00pm (CDT), Bridgestone Arena [GAME PREVIEW]

Well my friends, it appears we can give up all hope of a good draft pick in June.  It seems that the Minnesota Wild are finally interested in building a culture of winning these days.  I don’t know about you, but this ticks me off.  I just want to know where this culture of winning and desire to play ones best was about a month ago when the team still had a chance at the playoffs.  Instead when the struggles started happening, we got the almost trite intermission and post game interview with players with how hard they were working but the bounces just weren’t going their way.

Unfortunately, it appears that there’s no hope for a tanked season.  First off, coaches are paid to win.  Coaches keep and lose their jobs based on their records.  As a first year head coach, Mike Yeo has a little more leeway than the other coaches who found themselves without employment throughout the season.  However, what he accomplishes now just could help him keep his job in a couple of years when the team faces another set of struggles.  Now it won’t help much, but with a sympathetic general manager, it just might give him some extra wiggle room.  In today’s Minneapolis Star Tribune, Yeo has pretty much stated that the team is going to focus on winning.  By doing so, he hopes what he accomplishes now, will ultimately teach his roster how to win in less than ideal situations.  Heck, this entire season has been nothing but less than ideal situations.  One can only hope that the lessons learned this season will last into next season.

The other day on the Wild message boards, someone mentioned that why don’t we just scratch the skilled players and bring up players from Houston.  While that is tempting, I thought to myself that I was sure there was a rule regarding that very thing in place.  Thinking back to those first two years of the Wild, a similar discussion occurred another a message board that I was on at the time.  This rule was brought up.  Thankfully, Michael Russo of the Star Tribune brought up this very idea.  Not only did he mention it, but he explained various reasons why the league put such a rule in place.  You can read it at http://www.startribune.com/sports/blogs/145931875.html and in particular look at point number 3.  He sums it up so well, I won’t explain it any further.  I will thank him however for such perfect timing. 

After the win against Los Angeles on Saturday night, one of my fellow fans on the message board stated that we’d probably go 0-4 the rest of the season.  In my snarkiness I said, knowing our luck we’d go 4-0.  I wouldn’t be shocked if we won again tonight.  If that’s the case, we’ll most likely take those last two games as well.  If we’re not going to get a prime draft pick, we might as well win.  And considering how few wins we seen in the past two months, I guess we should take them when we can.  And who knows, those top free agents that every team is hoping to nab, just might view us as a team that is committed to winning, even in those less than ideal situations. 

Injury Report:

Minnesota:  Warren Peters (pinched nerve, questionable), Matt Cullen (finger), Mike Lundin (lower body),  Guillaume Latendresse (concussion), Pierre-Marc Bouchard (concussion, groin),       Matt Kassian (groin), Jared Spurgeon (concussion), Marco Scandella (upper body, questionable),     

Nashville:  Brian McGrattan (upper body)

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