Alexandron

Thanks LIG. Another player who came into my mind was Guillaume Latendresse. I think he was a pretty talented player. The first season he played for the Wild team was very promising and extremely impressing by his scoring ability and his nice size always creating some tension around the net, but continuous injuries practically destroyed his talent and character as well. Wikipedia wrote about his career an interesting article including his especially initial impressing stats for Drummondville Voltigeurs team. He was noticeable as a player for the Montreal Canadiens too. Here is a link to read about him: [Hidden Content]

Sadly, our signed Alexander Khovanov is missing too at same list of our prospects in the Wild system. Wish also to see a tryout of Mason Shaw for the big club this season , who is considered an extremely nice hardworking and play-making machine. For seasons he had multiple assists (up to 43-66-67) in minor leagues. Last year he played for the 1st time a full season for the Iowa Wild team and collected 33 points in 76 games (8 goals;25 assists), which I think was a pretty good season for the rookie. Hope, he restored his strength during the summer after surgery.

The Wild link of our prospects in the system should be updated. Nesterenko is missing in that list. And many prospects pictures are missing too. [Hidden Content]

I do not know if the goalie's weight makes a huge difference in his faster almost acrobatic reaction and better sharper performance in the net, but I did a comparison in some goalies weight. A Stanley Cup winner last year - Binnington has 174 lbs (St.Louis Blues team); Tuukka Rask - 176 lbs. (Boston Bruins team actually has now 3 light goalies); Sergei Bobrovsky- 182 lbs. (Florida Panthers team); Matt Murray- 178 lbs (Pittsburgh Penguins); Marc Andre-Fleury - 180 lbs (Vegas Golden Nights team); Andrei Vasilevskiy -215 lbs (Tampa Bay Lightning); Devan Dubnyk - 224 lbs(Minnesota Wild team). It seems our Devan is the most heaviest one. IMO he needs to lose this summer at least 30 lbs. Maybe that will provide him more consistency in the net. In our Wild goalie system, Filip Linberg has 180 lbs. and Matt Robson having 190 lbs. The rest goalies are above 198 lbs.

Just looked through the weights, heights and stats of some our prospects. Interesting, that we have a couple of them (defensemen Gordeev and Falkovsky) having the same solid height and weight (6'7" and 225 lbs). I do not remember we had such a tall players in our team before. Hope to see them both at the Traverse City Tournament.

2 players out of 3 rolled regular minutes. Last year we had also 3 forwards below 190 lbs - J.T.Brown, Zucker and Granlund. The last one was traded in February to Predators, and J.T. Brown played 56 games during a regular season. We do not know yet if he is going to play for the big club this season because of his alcohol mood swings. This summer we added two more forwards Zuccarello and Hartman having under 190 lbs. And we do have in our team 2 the most valuable defensemen also having their weight under that number - Dumba and Spurgeon. I do not think it is extremely important to have exclusively heavy players in the team . Probably more important to have consistently hardworking talented players capable to move entire team to the top of the tournament. Agree that St.Louis was built for the playoffs hockey. Their Tarasenko is a consistent, healthy, hardworking, highly producing star. We still do not have that level for the last 20 years. Maybe Gaborik was pretending to that position, but not anyone else for the Wild team. We need them as many as better ASAP. Hope, we will not waste our new current promising youngsters for a nothing special like we did in a previous years. Interesting note I found out recently, Haula was traded to Carolina to join Nino.

Actually, the St.Louis team has 4 players below 190 lbs(3 forwards and one lightest goaltender Binnington (174 lbs)). Interesting, that after looking for their players height and weight, I found that Tarasenko having 6'0" and 225 lbs, and no one is talking there about his physical conditioning. And we have a promising prospect Sokolov who is also 6'0" , but his weight was a maximum 220 lbs(who is having now 216 lbs) and the Wild organization is still talking for 3 years already about his physical conditioning. Something I just do not understand. I think the most important for the team to get the best results are : -to have a smart coach with absolute freedom in his decisions; -to have an outstanding goaltender helping the team to build a solid consistent winning confidence. That happened last year regarding a St.Louis team after changing a coach and a goaltender at the mid of the season. With Yeo and Allen team was nowhere.

Nice lines. I probably would add also a defenseman Seeler to our 3rd defense line as a reserve one. I also like a lot Mason Shaw(extremely hard working player), but, unfortunately, he had again an injury of his knee during a 3rd Calder Cup playoffs game and then restoring surgery after that. Still not sure if the Wild organization will be using Greenway and Donato in Iowa. Maybe they are thinking now that those 2 players are already humbled from all the critics of our media as well as fans. Do you think Tim Army is going to involve them (Greenway and Donato) this fall at the Traverse City Tournament or will give more chances to our new younger prospects drafted during this summer and a summer before just for a better evaluation their talents?

Sincerely, regarding Sokolov and any other healthy player in our system, I will accept any physical conditions- overweight; too skinny; too fatty; extra tall; extra small and etc. if that player will be able to score 30 and more goals every season during at least 5 years in a row. We did not have those players for a long period of time, I would say never. Marian Gaborik was very close to that point in the Wild uniform and practically a single one, but still he was not a superbly consistent. Certainly, I was not happy about his kind of a consistent sickness related to his health and missed games.

Agree LIG, Sokolov should play more playoffs games than just the last one out of 11 games. Maybe he should play at least 5-6 games to replace unmotivated Greenway who did not have any goals during that playoffs run. I am not sure 100% , but I think Sokolov played with Hendricks in the 4th line last regular season and knows him pretty well. Any thoughts about our lines in the big and the minor club this coming season?

I do not know if anyone at the Wild forum had a chance to see our 2nd round #42 overall 2019 pick Vladislav Firstov highlights. Here, I found some of his highlights from the USHL 2018-2019 year and who had for the Waterloo Black Hawks in 62 games 58 points(26 goals;32 assists; +/- +11): [Hidden Content]

Here are nice highlights 2018-2019 of our prospect Matvey Guskov on YouTube, who has a very strong one timer shots and a smart play reading during the game : [Hidden Content] Not much agree about a kind of diminishing article of KyleHattrick regarding of Matvey Guskov play, especially when he based on Dominic Tiano OHL writer who said Matvey does not have an excellent one-timer shots. I do not know what he was watching - Guskov does have a perfect one timer shots, which will be valuable for the Wild team, having a lack of those. That was proved also during our Development Camp this summer. He could be at least a second-line center in the future for the Wild team, but not only a forth-line center as article was predicting. He will grow physically; he also will get more experience; and his father was always a nice example how to play professionally well. We just do not need to loose him because of those destructing articles. He has a rare talent, which we must to keep in our organization. Here is that questionable article: [Hidden Content]

Why I liked the “Wild” team and why this team rolled undefeated during the tournament? Because it had a nice balance of scorers, playmakers and offensively minded defense. I was not impressed about the goalie play in that team, because it was Baribeau and agree, he had too many softies/ goals he definitely should take. From Sturm, Lodnia, Khovanov, Gordeev I liked their individual skills on the puck control and shots from the close and far distances. Sturm is more a playmaker and Lodnia and Khovanov are more a goal scorers(both I would say similar to a Panarin style of play). Interesting, that Panarin congratulated Lodnia through the tweet as soon as Lodnia was drafted by the Wild organization. Maybe they have a good relations. Special words I would like to say about Matvey Guskov – extremely nice center forward, having a very strong shots. His one timer goal was just a beauty. I also discovered from the eliteprospects.com about Guskov that his father Alexander Guskov was a long term professional defenseman for the Russian team at the World Championships ,as well as Russian Federation and KHL famous teams there, who won a silver medal at the World Championship and 2 golds at the Russian Federation Championships. Alexander actually was drafted in 2003 by Columbus Blue Jackets, but never had a chance to play in NHL. That means we have now 2 dynasty players(Lodnia and Guskov) in our system which fathers were Russian professional hockey players. Besides the”Wild” team I also noticed the “Fighting Saints” team which had 2 trio players (Boldy,Dewar with a defenseman Warren and Sokolov,Nesterenko with a defenseman Filip Johansson). It seems Nesterenko could be developed into a smart solid playmaker. Sokolov had a couple nice goals when he played together with Nesterenko and Johansson in that trio. Hope also, we will be able to see and evaluate our second round #42 overall Vladislav Firstov play performance during a Traverse City tournament this fall if he will get a visa by that time. Wish that our prospect goalies Jones and Lindberg as well as Kahkonen will be involved too into that tournament. With our talented promising roster this year, I think, we have a chance to win that tournament for the first time if we will be prepared mentally and physically well to it. In general IMO, as more our prospects will be able to participate in a short term competitions (tournaments) including international one as more valuable players we could develop in a future for the Wild organization.

It would be better to give him more minutes in Iowa and help the team to reach Calder Cup finals. But I do not exclude that he could be used in the top lines of the big club as a Center player with a line, for example, like Zucker (LW)-Sturm(C)- Zuccarello (RW having a left shot).

Thanks IllaZilla for all those data. Conclusion - We need in our team more talented high scorer players capable to put above 3 goals per game into opposing net. Or to have a decent consistent production from all 4 lines, which we do not have because of the luck of talent in the big club at this moment. An indication of that weak record - we were at the 28th place in goals production out of 31 NHL teams last year. Or we need to have a better goalies with all our current offense just to boost a confidence to our team. Aggravating factor was also, that a pretty solid players IMO were replaced by a nothing special players at the mid of the season and not sure about their future progress here. I am still impressed how the same team (St.Louis Blues) by replacing in the mid of December only 2 persons of the team( a head coach and inserted just a simple ,motivated for the win every game, young rookie goalie Binnington) won a Stanley Cup last season after coming from a deep bottom of the Central Division to the top of the Stanley Cup finals. Everything is possible in our life. It seems, Dubnyk and Stalock are not able to carry such a mental pressure during a playoffs season, and even were not able in helping last year during the regular season. Maybe Hammond was a good option(who carried all 11 playoffs games for the Iowa Wild team) or even Kahkonen (who had the most shutouts(6) in AHL) last year, but those options were not tried for the big club. If I remember Philadelphia tried 6 different goalies last season, and we tried 0 additional goalies. Maybe we were more focused to get for the first time to the Calder Cup playoffs participation? I do not know, but Motte was not bad too for the trial.