lynxrattle

Goody goody. Now we can show our stuff! I hope PP2 get more than 20 seconds.

Bad PP. I don't know which is worse their PP, or ours.

The game is nice and slow. With a little bit of luck we might get that OT and see what is different.

According to this article, the stats show that the Wild has the league's worst goal tending after the Devils and the Kings: https://www.tsn.ca/new-jersey-devils-dealing-with-a-goaltending-dilemma-to-start-2019-20-season-1.1392257 That delta stat is supposed to be measure only the goalie performance. Team performance should not be a factor. (Stats are stats, but eyesight gives the same impression).

More atrocities: https://www.hockeywilderness.com/2019/10/31/20937184/minnesota-wild-cap-recapture-penalty-zach-parise-ryan-suter-contracts-roberto-luongo-nhl

That's a tricky decision. Both Robson and Kahkonen have good stats. Do they get frustrated looking at the Night of the Living Dead going on with Minnesota Wild and still not getting an opportunity, and if they do get an opportunity, can they handle the pressure of a losing and poorly defending team? Perhaps they could trade Dubnyk for a pick and just take the risk. If it totally fails, we might get Lafreniere. (If it succeeds, then we end up with with a mediocre pick in yet another draft.)

One can see the Blues won the cup last year. They just did they what they needed to do and nothing more. Still, the loss stings, as for once there was no question that the opponent had the worse goalie.

I think I'm going to need this to survive this game:

Suddenly I have a strong desire of seeing Fenton as a GM again!

They should only trade if the trade would help us in 4 - 5 years perspective. That's the starting point of a new window of opportunity for us. A very optimistic one.

There's huge differences in the hockey cultures of Russia and North America. The success other teams have had with Russian players shows that the differences are not impossible to deal with. The lack of success we have had with Russian players shows just the fact that this is yet another process in the organisation that is not working as well as in other teams.

A good effort but it is what it is...

I don't know what to expect from this game. Maybe they will try their best, if there is a lucky bounce or two at the start of the game, or maybe they'll crumble to bits if there happens to be a slightest misfortune. They do keep surprising me though. Bad in ways I can't even imagine, and then back to actually fighting for it. Let's hope for a good game anyways!

I don't know enough about AHL or ECHL to really comment on that. What I do wonder is, that even if one thinks about the forwards we have managed to get into NHL, that they seem to up their game when they get out of the Wild. Niederreiter had a huge end of season, Haula has been a beast for the Canes this season, Coyle was very good in the playoffs, Tuch is quite ok for Vegas. Only Granlund has been disappointing after leaving the Wild. What we see repeating in the organisation is forwards underachieving, defenders developing nicely. If I was Leipold I would assign the responsibility of developing forwards to one guy, and then kick the b..tard out, if this kind of Niederreiter/Haula/Tuch/Sokolov/Mayhew stuff would go on. Whatever has been happening with the forwards right now, that stuff risks the development of Kaprizov and Boldy as well.

Goosfraba, goosfraba... Not every day, one learns a new word. Definitely a needed one for a Wild fan! They just can't get away from any moment of not playing at a full100 %. This time it's even the defenders who sucked. Soucy with a turnover, then we start deflecting pucks into our own net.

No Mayhew. I just don't understand how this works. Why is a guy who has scored two goals with limited game time not playing? I don't see much in him, but he's scored. One should reward goals, not the opposite.

I also suspect that Koivu's lack of speed makes it impossible for him to make a cullenesque transition. The defensive hockey iq is there, but the legs are not good enough to keep playing in the NHL. Koivu's junior years team TPS is in deep trouble. He really should consider retiring from the NHL and see if he can find a role in salvaging his childhood/adolescence team back home.

The lack of forward speed makes me think of Haula, who has started very well with Carolina. I didn't appreciate him much, but who knows, maybe he has a killer season this year.

Wow, they whupped the other team! Too many turnovers, but apart from that very nice. If only the coaching team would find a way to slow the game down to this level against the speedster teams.

That one picture tells it all. The saying one picture tells the story better than a thousand words standing tall there!

The way this season is going, with a little bit of luck at the draft lottery, we might have Kaprizov and Alexis Lafreniere next season. That duo might have gamebreaker qualities.

Thanks for the write-up. I think I got a clear picture of how the game went from it. It sounds like we had a good effort in the first, but didn't have the heavy dosage of luck the Wild needs to actually score. And when you don't score there is no room for giving soft goals for the opponent. Hopefully they have the perseverance to keep trying. Every win is an achievement with this core.

Here's a Google translated (I clarified some parts) article that appeared in the Finnish Broadcasting Company's net site today (https://yle.fi/urheilu/3-11033390 "Minnesota Wild is one of the most interesting clubs in the NHL right now. The Wild's pains, who had only won one of his first seven matches, were slightly diluted by the wins over Montreal and Edmonton, but by no means is the confusing tire fire around the club ending in any way. Perhaps the most confusing thing about Minnesota has been the way the team has played. We are talking about some kind of organic ice hockey, which in many places has no structure whatsoever. And now, this is a team that has been known for years for its discipline in playing as a 5-man unit, and its defense. Although never one of the series' championship favorites, Minnesota has long been known as a truly disgusting opponent to play against. Honestly, for example, on Sunday, Minnesota probably wouldn't have won anything but poor Montreal. It also puzzles that the game is very much played by the same players as a couple of years ago, when Wild was regularly playing in the Western Conference playoffs. During Sunday's game I went through an SMS correspondence with veteran coach Ismo Lehkonen during the match and we broke the game down, and Wild's start again on Tuesday. - There was nothing at all in the Wild game in the early part. There is no structure in the offensive game, and there is no regularity at all in the forechecking game, there is no continuity in the opening game, and so on. Earlier last week, in one match, they just left all five players under the game in a vain hope that something thing nice would just happen, Lehkonen sighed. - It's not that way in the NHL. According to Lehkonen, some players suffer from a situation where the way the team plays gives no support at all. - Look at someone like (Kevin) Fiala out there, the guy's just up there with no game play support. There's no oxygen in that play. (Eric) Staal is there looking around to see if you really have to start working here. A funny coincidence, but Staal really started to rumble on Tuesday. The Canadian striker was involved in every Wild goal. Yet individual victories no longer represent anything to Minnesota. The core, which has been in the pile for a long time, is getting moldy because the club leadership was unable to renew the team in time. No 36-year-old Mikko Koivu should be playing in an NHL team's first line or running the game in the team's first power play lineup. And this is not Koivu's fault. Water should flow, but in St. Paul this has not happened for years. Standing water is the worst possible situation in such a tough professional sport and it is even embarrassing to follow the suffering of Minnesota. The game is completely messed up and the coaching team under the leadership of Bruce Boudreau seems mostly to be submissive. And at the same time, fresh GM Bill Guerin grumbles totally senseless stuff like: "This team deserves a chance to show what it can achieve." I wonder what Guerin is expecting the Wild's pystyynhomehtunut (rotten and moldy, due to it's age) core group still to show? On the other hand, there is nothing Guerin can do, because all key players in the contract have NMC's or NTC's. Slow death is the most painful. So it's no big wonder that the players are also showing some symptoms. Last week, forward Jason Zucker announced after the game that starting with a coach, everyone should be better. Of course, throwing the coach under the bus in public was an immediate scandal, so Zucker apologized to Boudreau for a couple of days. This is how working life works: you shouldn't bark at the boss in public. That still doesn't mean that Zucker wasn't right."

I'm pretty excited about this game. (I won't be able to watch it unfortunately.) I guess that the team is in a better state of mind. More realistic, and thus hopefully there's more readiness to play like an underdog needs to play.