CreaseAndAssist

Its probably just an attempt to create a 'race' like finish to create more buzz about the playoffs.

On a greedy perspective, since there is a good chance I'm coaching football during that time. I don't mind it, because it works well for writing. Yet it seems stupid to have such large gaps and then be compressing a 1/4th of the NHL season into the last month and a half.

I have that roster in the article.

Suter / Parise Video EJ, someone made this a while ago...about that very subject.

Double post

I get it, but he's a leader and a good example for young players to follow. He and Mayhew and to a lesser extent Rau were the workhorses on that team. More youngsters will have that chance to carry the mail, but I'd still want O'Reilly for culture / character reasons alone.

Indeed...

Did anyone notice that Matt Hendricks is now a player development coach for the Minnesota Wild?

I would agree about the ice time for the younger players. But I think as a group Donata, Fiala and Sturm could be had for $4-$5 million collectively as you likely will put them on 'prove it' type of deals.

No Cal O'Reilly in Iowa, that will be tough for them to replace.

Interesting. First off I'm a tiny bit surprised Adam Sandler would know who Jack Hughes is.

Road-tober for the Wild. March has more home games than I think we normally see given that's tournament time.

Not that I really care since this is the Flyers forum, but it seems to me like Fletcher is still "feeling Minnesota" as he adds Minnesotans Justin Braun and Tyler Pitlick to the roster. The Wild didn't have either of them, but perhaps he coveted them from afar in his time with the team.

All in all I feel pretty good about my selections. The Wild did end up taking a forward. They could've had Peyton Krebs...they took Matthew Boldy instead. As for the Ottawa Senators, I took right shot blueliner Moritz Seider here and he was off the board far earlier than anyone expected but the Senators still took another right shot defenseman in Lassi Thomson so that seemed to be a decent pick to me. The Flames didn't take a goaltender (Mads Sogaard) with their pick and instead opted for a smallish scoring winger in Pelletier. Tad bit surprised maybe they felt uncomfortable drafting a goalie in the 1st round, albeit late in the 1st round.

I covered most of those goaltenders here... 2019 Minnesota Wild Draft Preview: Goaltenders Of the ones I didn't cover, like Ethan Haider. He had a great season for the Minnesota Magicians of the NAHL. Some feel he has a ton of potential, others feel he wasn't tested enough. Although the NAHL has kind of a nice little tradition of developing goaltenders, which would include Mads Sogaard as one of its players that got some development time there before he played major junior.

I would agree. I'd be more in favor of something akin to what soccer has in VAR or college football. Not for every call, but I agree with @IllaZilla a lot of refs will not overturn their own call.

Washington Capitals' defenseman Brooks Orpik retires. Over 1,000 NHL games played...hangs up the axe.

Resistance is futile...become one with the Wild Message Borg...

I wouldn't hire Bitetto to even be an usher. He sucks.

Meh, that didn't bother me much. While Caufield seemed to be stewing pretty good by the time the Wild passed on him, I think he'll be a great power play specialist but I'm not sold on him beyond that. No doubt the Canadiens were probably not expecting him to be available so they were happy as hell to get him, afterall they seem to love drafting American-born players. Like they said on TV and everywhere else, we'll find out eventually if those teams like the Wild that passed on him made the right choice or missed on a great opportunity. It could age well or be awful pretty quick.

Ok, he played on a line with Jack Hughes. That's a ridiculously loaded line offensively. But is Boldy the driver of that line? Or is your 1st Overall pick Hughes really driving the train there. So as Boldy advances and doesn't have the elite playmaker on his line or a lethal sniper opposite of him in Caufield and opposing defenses can focus more on shutting him down how will he fare? We don't really know that, yet. I kind of felt the same apprehension a few years ago when we drafted Alex Tuch, because he played on a line with Jack Eichel and Sonny Milano. Eichel obviously was a top tier talent and the driver of the line so you ask is Tuch good or does he look good because of who he's playing with? Tuch eventually proved he could do some great things on his own. Like I said earlier in the thread, we'll see what Boldy can do when he's not surrounded by a giant collection of the best players in the league. Then we'll have a better idea of what we have and what we don't.

What is astounding is how jealous you are of our pick. You have a lot more quality in your prospect pool than we do. Even with Boldy.

Whatever. The guy who could rant for paragraphs is now the Wild's biggest fan and the rest of us are just haters right? Funny you mention trolling since you only stop by once in a while just to give people crap. Most people would call that 'trolling' wouldn't they? But I digress... I didn't hate the pick, but I thought we could've done better considering who was left on the board so thus...in your world, I hate Matthew Boldy. He's got finishing ability, he's going to a top-notch college hockey program where he'll probably have a lot of opportunity to excel right away. Great. We'll see how it plays out. Its tougher to really see how good / bad a player is when they play for a really strong team like the USNDT was. I didn't expect him to still be there, neither did the Wild. They said as much. Does that make them haters too? I pointed out his strengths, but I don't ignore or gloss over his flaws. The Wild need this kid to develop into an impact player. They need some of their later round guys to become contributors. True, I haven't been real excited about a Wild draft pick since Matthew Dumba but it doesn't mean I can't grow to like him. I liked Alex Tuch eventually, and after his strong play for Iowa in the playoffs and the World Championships I'm starting to like Luke Kunin more. Oh, he just needs to add acceleration. Ok. Maybe that can be had by adding more strength but maybe it won't. If it was easy to fix your skating as simply lifting weights / training we wouldn't have any poor skaters at all. But some of that is something you either have or you don't. The good thing about going the college route is you have more time and opportunity to work out and fill out your frame so its as pro-ready as possible. But overall, in today's age of athletics where anyone who feels they might be a big deal taking camps, personal trainers, etc especially from a player playing for the USNDT which I'm going to guess they provide a lot of that if they still have an issue like that?!?!

2019 Minnesota Wild Prospect Development Camp, roster, schedule and players to watch for Camp starts today, a little earlier than normal. In the past I've gone to the practices and scrimmages and I have always felt they're pretty cool. One interesting switch this year seems to be they're not doing the big scrimmages and instead replacing it with a 3-on-3 tournament. Enjoy and discuss.

Sam Hentges isn't at prospect camp either.