All aboard…
Tonight’s game feels like one between the current Wild and a Wild team of years past. If one were to hop aboard the “way back machine” you would have to go back to the Wild’s beginning to find our first long lost member. Edmonton’s Andy Sutton spent the inaugural season in 2000-01 in Minnesota, and part of the 2001-02 season until he was traded to the Atlanta Thrashers. Strangely enough, the Oilers acquired Sutton in a trade with Anaheim for former Wild player, Curtis Foster. The next year we must set our time machine to is 2004. That year, the Wild drafted Ryan Jones. Jones who never saw playing time in St. Paul, was later traded to Edmonton in 2008 for Marek Zidlicky. Now we venture to 2007, when the Wild acquired Eric Belanger through free agency. Belanger spent almost three seasons in Minnesota until traded at the trade deadline of the 2009-2010 season to Washington for a second round pick in the 2010 Entry Draft, which became Johan Larsson. Then there’s the player, that many Wild players would like to forget, because the price for him might have been too much. During the off-season prior to the 2009-2010 season, the Wild acquired Cam Barker from the Chicago Blackhawks. In order to get Barker, the Wild had to give up prospect Nick Leddy and veteran defenseman Kim Johnsson. It turns out that the loss of Johnsson wasn’t so bad, as he was injured most of the 2009-2010 season however many are still worried that the trade of Leddy could have set Minnesota a few years back in development. Time will tell when it comes to Leddy, and hopefully Barker plays as poorly with the Oilers as he did with the Wild.
In typical Wild fashion (and one that continues to grate on the nerves of the fans), it appeared that once again, tonight was not going to be a game of consistent effort for a full three periods. They started slow, and for a while, one begins to wonder if they were ever going to fully pressure Oilers’ goaltender Nikolai Khabibulin. In fact, for a few periods now, it seems like the only player who really cares, who really has a sense of urgency is Colton Gillies. As a young player, he probably feels like he still has to prove himself, and realizes that he could be sent back down to Houston at anytime, and there are players with the Aeros that would gladly take his place. In fact it is this lack of energy, that essentially created the first goal of the night by Edmonton’s Ryan Smyth. It was one of those slow-moving pucks, that you just had to wonder where the Wild’s skaters were, and more importantly where Niklas Backstrom was. In Backstrom’s defense, I’ll admit that the puck was bouncing a little bit, but still there was no reason for that puck to get behind him, and in fact defenseman Nick Schultz should have had that crease cleared out. It just seams to further demonstrate that pure lack of urgency by the men wearing red.
Another problem tonight, seems to be a lack of basic hockey skills by Minnesota. I honestly cannot remember a game with such poor passing in a long time. Either attempting passes where there’s no chance in it getting through or failing to get enough speed on the puck in the first place. The puck seemed to continually end up in the skates of the opposing Edmonton skaters, or even worse, on their sticks. And when you cannot make successful passes, it ultimately makes it difficult to get shots on goal as you get little quality time in the offensive zone. Just over four minutes into the second period, the Wild found themselves on their second power play of the evening due to an interference penalty by Theo Peckham. The passing was beyond horrible in that power play, and one begins to wonder if they realized they were actually playing a game as opposed to a scrimmage.
Thankfully, those two minutes of poor power play time served as a wake up call for Minnesota. It appears that they realized that they needed to turn up their play. While the passing wasn’t much better, the intensity in the offensive zone was certainly improved. In fact, they found themselves ahead on the shot clock. And considering the season he’s had so far, no one should be surprised that the Wild’s first goal of the night came from Matt Cullen. That goal served as a catalyst, and created some urgency that the Wild so desperately needed. Not only were the Wild finally getting more chances, they were starting to play a more physical game. Thankfully for the Wild, they were able to head into the lockerroom for the second intermission with a tied game, even though both Minnesota and Edmonton had their shots at the powerplay.
The Wild continued their offensive chances into the third. It seems that we may be seeing a bit of a rebirth of Khabibulin as opposed to recent years’ versions of Khabibulin. Of course, I’m sure his mental game is improved by the young, energetic team in front of him that is trying desperately to change the Oilers for the better. Add that to the fact, that Edmonton probably feels due to break their horrible record at the Xcel Energy Center, where they haven’t won a game in St. Paul since January of 2007. I’m sure he’d like to get that monkey off his back, and the Wild are notorious for allowing rookie players to score their first goal or to break an opposing team’s bad luck streak. However, Edmonton should feel like they’re in good company, as the Boston Bruins tend to have poor luck against Minnesota. Yet that boost of energy wasn’t enough to break the tie, and the game would continue into overtime.
I have to admit, I get nervous when the Wild have to go to overtime. It doesn’t really matter which goaltender is in net, but I will confess that I get more anxious when Backstrom has played the game. Of course part of that nervousness can be attributed to Tuesday loss in Ottawa. The Wild did come out and owned the overtime period. They had excellent scoring chances, including a power play. However, if there was an individual gold medal awarded to a player for their excellent play, it would have to go to Khabibulin. No matter what Minnesota did in the overtime period, Khabibulin was there to dash the attempts of the Wild skaters. The closer and closer the game got to the end of overtime, the nerves I was feeling were getting more and more on edge. I cringed, when we got to the end of those five overtime minutes. I felt like I couldn’t watch the shootout, but I had to. Thankfully, this time the Wild came out the ultimate winners in the two extra sessions, albeit it took four skaters on each side in the shootout to come to a conclusion. The scores for the Wild in tonight’s shootout were Matt Cullen and Devin Setoguchi. Edmonton’s lone scorer was Jordan Eberle.
With the way tonight’s game started and the much improved play of Khabibulin, I was afraid I was going to have to hop back on my time machine. I was fearing that we’d need to go back even to last season when the Wild couldn’t be beat at home against Edmonton. However, I wouldn’t dare go back to those first two seasons, where Minnesota couldn’t buy a win against Edmonton either home or away. Now, if we could somehow find some balance between the wins against Edmonton and Boston with our continual losing streak against Ottawa, we’d be getting somewhere. But that’s an issue for another day.
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