Wild Power Play Strikes 3 Times in Minnesota’s 6-3 Win Over Detroit

Professional sports ownership can really dictate the direction of an organization in more ways than just winning.  They can affect the mood of the fans and their values are reflected in just about everything from the look of the arena / stadium, fan-friendliness, and of course a commitment to your respective community.  Are they owners who are looking to profit and wins be damned?  Are they owners who bring a fan-like passion to the team?  One owner who was determined to bring a winner to his city was recently departed owner Mike Illitch, who bought the Detroit Red Wings in 1982.  Illitch turned a sad-sack Red Wings team into a perennial playoff and Stanley Cup contender and led Detroit to have such pride in their team they’d boldly (and incorrectly) call themselves Hockeytown.   In the State Of Hockey we know Hockeytown is Warroad, Minnesota, but he truly was one of the great owners in all of professional sports.

Minnesota is blessed to have a pretty decent owner in Craig Leipold and I’d be shocked if the Wild didn’t have some sort of heartfelt tribute during the game for Mike Illitch during the game this afternoon.  The Wild are just classy that way and since its a nationally televised game I think they’ll give it more than just a brief moment of silence.  Despite the sad feelings there is still hockey to be played.  Will the Red Wings rally in their 2nd game of a back-to-back or will Minnesota keep applying pressure on Chicago with another home victory?

1st Period Thoughts:  The first period started out with about as much action as you’d normally expect in the first moments after eating Thanksgiving dinner.  It was catatonic as the Wild kind of sleepwalked for the first few minutes of the game, late to one puck after the other.  Detroit wasn’t much better, although it was mostly out of a lack of confidence or the fact they may actually be a bit wary of just how good Minnesota is.  The slow pace would finally pick up as the Red Wings’ Mike Green hauled down Jason Zucker.  It didn’t start out too pretty as Minnesota seemed to be handling the puck like a live hand grenade, but they’d eventually control it and the Wild would cash in as Mikko Koivu threaded a pass out front and Mikael Granlund was able to tap it home behind Jared Coreau.  1-0 Wild.  A few minutes later there was some controversy as Jared Spurgeon gave a small cross-check to the back of Gustav Nyquist who was unhappy with the hit and he intentionally high-sticked Spurgeon to the face causing him to collapse to the ice.  Minnesota rallied to their teammates defense but when the smoke cleared Nyquist amazingly only received a scant 4-minute double minor for what was clearly an intent to injure.  Chris Stewart would get 2 minutes for roughing as he tried to defend his teammate.  The replay clearly shows Nyquist eyeing up Spurgeon and then turning his stick up and underneath Spurgeon’s visor a few inches beneath his left eye.  It was a very dirty and dangerous hit.  Minnesota would make Detroit pay on the man advantage as Nino Niederreiter would hammer home another Koivu pass to make it 2-0.  With the crowd still upset at the weak call to Nyquist, the Wild would draw another Detroit penalty when Danny DeKeyser would hold up Zucker.  Minnesota’s power play again looked hungry as they nearly cashed in on a great pass by Zucker out front to Granlund who tipped a shot just inches wide Red Wings goal as the buzzer sounded.  It was a good finish to a period after a slow start.  Thankfully Spurgeon only seemed to suffer a small cut from Nyquist’s spear.

2nd Period Thoughts:  The 2nd period was not a good one for the Minnesota Wild.  Minnesota was in sort of a coast mode most of the period and as they stopped moving their feet the Red Wings were able to create some offensive pressure in a way they were unable to in the 1st.  Too many times Wild players were leaning and reaching instead of skating to loose pucks and so the Wild wasted lots of time chasing it around their own zone.  Detroit would cut the Wild lead in half, after winning a few board battles in the Wild zone which let Anthony Mantha find some space and the gifted rookie buried it by Devan Dubnyk who hadn’t had much work to this point.  Mantha was so open because for whatever reason Gustav Olofsson drifted to the top of the faceoff circles giving Mantha a clear lane to the net.  The goal seemed to wake up the Wild, but only marginally.  Too often the Wild were a bit sluggish on the backcheck and in their own end.  Even Dubnyk seemed to be a bit numb mentally as he sat and watched a puck just set a few feet in front of him and just waited and stayed in his butterfly instead of taking his paddle to knock it aside.  The result was Mantha pounced on the loose puck and nearly cashed in.  Minnesota would get a bit lucky a few minutes later as Jason Pominville sent a flip pass down the ice that Rogers, Minnesota-native Nick Jensen struggled with and an alert Charlie Coyle swept up the loose biscuit and skated in for a breakaway where he beat Coreau with a sweet backhand to forehand move.  3-1 Wild.  Unfortunately the Wild would again take its foot off the gas and Detroit would cut the lead back to one on a play where Xavier Ouellet sent a shot that caromed off sticks and legs to start bouncing and Dubnyk tried to punch the puck away but he sent it right out front to Henrik Zetterberg who tapped it in.  3-2 Wild.  The period would end, but I think you have to think Detroit has the momentum going into the 3rd.  The Wild need to step it up if they expect to win this game.

3rd Period Thoughts:  I must admit the first few minutes of the 3rd period kind of scared me a bit.  The Wild seemed to still be in a bit of a haze and it looked a bit sloppy and lethargic.  Luckily for Minnesota, Detroit would serve up the game with a costly mistake.  As the Wild dumped the puck deep in their zone, Jared Coreau left his crease to play the puck only to have it blocked by a forechecking Pominville who gathered up the puck and then passed it out front to Parise for an easy empty-net tally while Coreau looked on.  4-2 Wild.  As nice as that goal was the Wild would again let up defensively and result was another quick strike goal as Nick Jensen found Andreas Athanasiou just 35 seconds later for a quick shot that beat Dubnyk cutting the lead back to one.  Minnesota would re-focus and they’d again benefit from another bad play by Coreau who gave up a soft goal to Christian Folin on an unscreened shot from the point.  5-3 Wild and could Minnesota prevent Detroit from having a quick response goal?  Minnesota almost seemed compelled to allow their focus to drop and disturbingly it was Dubnyk leading the way.  As the Red Wings dumped the puck deep, Dubnyk left his crease to go play it but he seemed to get caught in indecision and Detroit gathered up the puck and looked to score but Dubnyk skated out front and made a strange kicking motion to stop a goal and then moments after that got lucky with a save off the shaft of his paddle.  With Minnesota having dodged another bullet they’d go back on the attack and a tripping penalty to Ouellet gave the Wild a power play.  Minnesota would bury their 3rd power play goal as a missed shot by Eric Staal caromed off the boards and out front where Parise batted it down out of the air and then tapped it in to seal a 6-3 victory.

Devan Dubnyk was not that great, making 31 saves in the victory.  I felt Dubnyk’s rebound control was kind of suspect most of the game and I felt his overall focus level left a lot to be desired.  He seemed to almost want to flirt with disaster from his attempt to play the puck or the decision to just sit and watch it sit a few feet in front of him, waiting for a Red Wings player to pounce on it just seemed way too passive for what we’re used to seeing from Dubnyk.  In many ways I felt Dubnyk was doing a lot of the things that many fans accuse Darcy Kuemper of (sitting too far back in his crease, bad rebound control, etc).  I thought Gustav Olofsson may have made some better outlet passes, but in my opinion he really needs to hit the weights hard because he’s not strong enough for the NHL right now.  Overall I felt the Wild were guilty of being a little lazy in their own end of the ice.

Offensively the Wild took full advantage of a weak Detroit penalty killing unit.  I liked their simplified approach and I felt they were rewarded for it.  Zach Parise is really feeling comfortable and that is bad news for opponents as he’s going to the net and playing with the fire he didn’t through most of the 1st half of the season.  I am sure Charlie Coyle is feeling a lot better after scoring for the first time in his last 16 games and hopefully that gets him going offensively.  Minnesota’s depth continues to overwhelm opponents and its good to see players step up their game.

Now for the issue everyone will be talking about for the next few days, the high stick / spear by Gustav Nyquist to Jared Spurgeon.  While you can watch the incident in question for yourself, this is a very dirty play.  In my opinion, it is clear that Nyquist’s intent to was to hurt Spurgeon by the fact he turned his wrist to drive the blade up underneath his visor as he made contact.  The puck wasn’t there, it wasn’t some follow through gone bad, he was annoyed he got cross-checked so he retaliated with intent.  The NHL hasn’t shown much of a history to punish players severely that have taken liberties on Wild players in the past.  Keith Tkachuk‘s cross-check to Wes Walz‘ larynx comes to mind that I think if memory serves me correct that cost Tkachuk 2 games total.  Right now, combined with the fact Jared Spurgeon was not severely injured from the dangerous play will mean that the league will be very light on first-time offender Gustav Nyquist and I expect he’ll only receive a fine.  I am not saying that is what I think he deserves, I just think the league will take into account he got a double-minor and with Spurgeon returning to the game they’re going to give Nyquist a firm warning and that’s it.  The NBC broadcast with Mike Milbury and Keith Jones were saying they felt it was worthy of 5-6 games respectively but I’d be shocked if the NHL Department of Player Safety will go that harsh on a skill player like Nyquist.  I mean this is the same group that continues to let Brad Marchand get away with slewfoot after slewfoot, so why would they throw the book at Nyquist?  I’d give him 5 games without hesitation but I have common sense unlike the NHL Department of Player Safety.

The good news of course is that Spurgeon is healthy and the Wild earned another 2 points to keep their 5-point cushion with Chicago.  The bad news, is the Wild made this game against Detroit more of a game than it should have been.  It was Minnesota’s mental mistakes and lapses in effort that allowed Detroit to hang around.  Its one thing to let a hapless team like Detroit hang around, but you don’t want to do the same with Central Division foes Nashville and Dallas they have on their schedule this week.  Minnesota must be more focused; especially in those first few shifts after they score a goal so teams can’t neutralize momentum as well as they did today.  I am sure Bruce Boudreau will be addressing that tomorrow at practice, but its good to be able to have that discussion after a win rather than a loss.

Wild Notes:

~ The Wild roster was as follows this afternoon: Mikko Koivu, Jason Zucker, Mikael Granlund, Eric Staal, Charlie Coyle, Nino Niederreiter, Erik Haula, Jason Pominville, Zach Parise, Tyler Graovac, Chris Stewart, Jordan Schroeder, Ryan Suter, Jared Spurgeon, Marco Scandella, Gustav Olofsson, Nate Prosser and Christian Folin.  Darcy Kuemper backed up Devan Dubnyk.  Mathew Dumba was the lone scratch.

~ The 3 Stars of the Game were: 1st Star Mikko Koivu, 2nd Star Zach Parise, 3rd Star Gustav Olofsson

~ Attendance was 19,141 at Xcel Energy Center.

Iowa Wild Report:

Friday’s game Iowa 4, Grand Rapids 2

Saturday’s game Iowa 3, Grand Rapids 4 SO

Wild Prospect Report:

C – Dmitry Sokolov (Sudbury, OHL) ~ the Russian forward continues to be a bright spot on what has been kind of an up and down season for the Wolves as he registered an assist in their 4-1 loss to Kingston on Friday.  He had a 2 goals and an assist on Saturday in a 7-5 win over Ottawa.  Sokolov has 38 goals, 58 points, 4 PIM’s and is a -20 in 48 games.

D – Nolan De Jong (Michigan, Big 10) ~ the British Columbia-native had a big night for the Wolverines on Friday as he lit the lamp twice in their 4-4 tie against arch-rival Michigan State on Friday.  De Jong has 4 goals, 9 points, 31 PIM’s and is an even rating in 24 games.

RW – Luke Kunin (Wisconsin, Big 10) ~ the Chesterfield, Missouri continues to lead the Badgers in scoring and did so again on Friday with a goal and an assist in their 6-3 loss to Penn State.  He added another goal on Saturday in the Badgers’ 5-3 loss to the Nitany Lions.  Kunin has 19 goals, 29 points, 24 PIM’s and is a -2 in 25 games.

D – Louie Belpedio (Miami, NCHC) ~ the stocky defenseman is trying his best to make up for lost time as he had two helpers in the Redhawks 4-2 loss to St. Cloud State on Friday.  Belpedio has 6 goals, 17 points, 35 PIM’s and is a -7 in 21 games.

G – Ales Stezka (Chicago, USHL) ~ the big Czech goaltender stopped 23 of 24 shots in the Steel’s 2-1 win over Sioux City last night.  So far, he hasn’t committed to any Division 1 programs as of yet despite his 15-7-3 record, 2.37 goals against average and .911% save percentage with 3 shutouts.