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Kahkonen gets SO # 1


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1 hour ago, lynxrattle said:

No idea. Seems very cautious by Evason.

Same situation happened last season during a playoffs time when Stalock have got all 5 games and Kahkonen none. And the final result for the team was horrible during that time. If that will happen this playoffs season then, it seems, Evason will lose his job. I am not sure, if Evason is able to fix a long term team's problems in PP; and now we found out in shootouts as well - players are not able to perform a quality shots in SO. I am not even saying that in a last 6 games the opposite teams were outshooting us in shots ( some of them badly, which is Colorado and St. Louis teams). Those are not good  traits for entering playoffs. The team is definitely missed Foligno as a nice leader too. And why we are not trying our scoring prospect Connor Dewar, who already has 7 goals; 4 assists in 14 played games in AHL. Interesting he was here in a taxi squad and wasted his time without any tryouts, but we have seen Cramarossa for 3 games with 0 points; and 15 PIM already.

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Agree there. He seems to prefer the the low risk option. That is what he did all the time in his playing years as well. The NHL is changing. Why not emphasise offense right now? The Wild has always had problems scoring, but the defending has always been ok, even a strenght, if the goalie has been good enough. Strive for offense, and let the defense part be sorted out later. It's much easier to defend than to score or set up scoring plays. They'll get there in time, but will they find the offense part of the game? I sure hope Evason knows what he's doing.

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  • 3 weeks later...

C&A had a section on Kahkonen's struggles:

 

https://thesportsdaily.com/2021/04/14/wild-power-play-strikes-3-times-in-minnesotas-5-2-win-over-arizona/

 

It's a confidence issue for sure when a goalie with his puck handling skills doesn't use them. I'm not sure if the confidence is shaky because of a technical issue bothering him, or the confidence issue bothering his actions.

 

I really don't like it either way. If all goes well we might get a run at the Cup in a few years time. We can't have a goalie then who has issues on raising to the occasion. The Cup run might be a one and done occasion, the way we never get high picks. Difficult to build when the picks are always late picks. The goalie must be at top level just when the pressure is at its absolute highest, not the other way around.

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On 3/30/2021 at 9:47 PM, lynxrattle said:

Agree there. He seems to prefer the the low risk option. That is what he did all the time in his playing years as well. The NHL is changing. Why not emphasise offense right now? The Wild has always had problems scoring, but the defending has always been ok, even a strenght, if the goalie has been good enough. Strive for offense, and let the defense part be sorted out later. It's much easier to defend than to score or set up scoring plays. They'll get there in time, but will they find the offense part of the game? I sure hope Evason knows what he's doing.

Good post. We were talking for years how is important for us offense when we had Dubnyk. And fans talked that we must to place more than 3 goals per game into opposite net to have more consistent success when Dubnyk is in our net. An example was the game yesterday between Avalanche and Blues. We know that Grubauer now on Covid protocol list and Dubnyk is replacing him as a backup goalie who was recently traded from the Sharks team. Colorado team is a superbly offensively minded team, which was able to beat St.Louis team yesterday with a score 4:3 in regulation. So far he is a decent goalie for that team.

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12 hours ago, lynxrattle said:

C&A had a section on Kahkonen's struggles:

 

https://thesportsdaily.com/2021/04/14/wild-power-play-strikes-3-times-in-minnesotas-5-2-win-over-arizona/

 

It's a confidence issue for sure when a goalie with his puck handling skills doesn't use them. I'm not sure if the confidence is shaky because of a technical issue bothering him, or the confidence issue bothering his actions.

 

I really don't like it either way. If all goes well we might get a run at the Cup in a few years time. We can't have a goalie then who has issues on raising to the occasion. The Cup run might be a one and done occasion, the way we never get high picks. Difficult to build when the picks are always late picks. The goalie must be at top level just when the pressure is at its absolute highest, not the other way around.

I have an idea to find more regarding Kahkonen confidence. We should give him more games at the end of the season when our playoffs spot will be unreached to other teams below the division's list. Maybe that way we will be able to get his stronger confidence? From my observation in AHL he got his confidence when he played more often on a regular basis. Same happening now with our rookie goaltender there Jones.

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40 minutes ago, Alexandron said:

I have an idea to find more regarding Kahkonen confidence. We should give him more games at the end of the season when our playoffs spot will be unreached to other teams below the division's list. Maybe that way we will be able to get his stronger confidence? From my observation in AHL he got his confidence when he played more often on a regular basis. Same happening now with our rookie goaltender there Jones.

That would probably help. Even if he wasn't our future number one goalie, or even the backup, the Wild would need him pepped up a bit to make him worth more in a trade. Not that I would be selling him right now, but it is worrying.

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11 minutes ago, lynxrattle said:

That would probably help. Even if he wasn't our future number one goalie, or even the backup, the Wild would need him pepped up a bit to make him worth more in a trade. Not that I would be selling him right now, but it is worrying.

 

As this board's resident Finnophile 🇫🇮, I keep an eye on a lot of Finnish goalies. It seems like there's an exchange program where everyone in Finland gets to be an NHL goalie at some point.

 

Also coming in as a Flyers fan* where our "franchise goalie of the future" is having some significant issues and a FHL owner where Juuse Saros had an awful start to the season, I'd say give Kahkonen some patience.

 

Goalies are legendarily head cases and this is a weird season (at best). I think Kaapo showed some things worth a longer look.

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I would agree with that point. It takes a longer time to develop a solid NHL goaltender than other players. We gave a chance for 5 seasons to Darcy Kuemper to be developed in the Wild club, but it was not enough time for him. He became more valuable later when he started to play in Arizona. Sincerely, I have more trust to Kaapo than I had for Darcy. Still, I do not accept the coach decision to keep the goalie in the not the best game for him when he is losing 0:4 and by the end of the game 1:9 because the goalie's confidence is drown down in geometrical progression. The coach should learned how to avoid these mistakes too which are very important for the playoffs time. Same happened last playoffs season when Stalock confidence was badly drowned/chocked too in 4 games in a row out of 5. 1st game we were able to win. And Kahkonen was available then and did not get any time (0) during playoffs. I just do not want that repeated scenario this season. The coach must to replace the goalie when is necessary for giving a chance to change a team's confidence during the game towards the win. 

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2 hours ago, lynxrattle said:

That would probably help. Even if he wasn't our future number one goalie, or even the backup, the Wild would need him pepped up a bit to make him worth more in a trade. Not that I would be selling him right now, but it is worrying.

Please, do not worry too much. Kaapo is only 24 y.o. , and still has more time to grow up as a valuable goaltender for the Wild team. 🙂

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Radoran's comparison to Saros is an intriguing one. Saros was absolutely worthless at the start of the season and is now playing lights out. We'll just have to hope Kähkönen gets to play, and then gets his game back.

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53 minutes ago, lynxrattle said:

Radoran's comparison to Saros is an intriguing one. Saros was absolutely worthless at the start of the season and is now playing lights out. We'll just have to hope Kähkönen gets to play, and then gets his game back.

 

I think it's really hard to compare this season to any other.

 

There has been no training camp, and has been no opportunity to prepare as a goalie.

 

We've seen more than one goalie start of looking like complete crap that has emerged as an effective keeper.

 

I'm definitely one who will lean towards giving a Finn the benefit of the doubt, but I do think Kahkonen has some promise.

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  • 5 months later...

Here is an info regarding Kahkonen:

As pointed out by

@RussoHockey

the NHL sent out a press release and #MnWild G Kaapo Kahkonen is technically Calder-eligible again this season. Kahkonen is in his 3rd year of his ELC. This is because Kahkonen hasn’t played in more than 25 games in 1 season. Last season? 24 games.

 

Last season Kahkonen was able to win 9 games in a row and entered to 10 best rookies goalies in NHL history who won 9 + games in a row. BUT if he will play like he did tonight (1:5) then he will miss that Calder trophy opportunity this season when we will play 82 games and will play in the most toughest division.

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I just watched the goals against. Ugly. The whole team, Kahkonen as well, just watching the Hawks pass the puck all around the rink, quite out of it. We got rid of The Pylon and now the whole team looked like a bunch of pylons. It needs to get a lot better and fast.

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On 10/9/2021 at 11:53 PM, lynxrattle said:

I just watched the goals against. Ugly. The whole team, Kahkonen as well, just watching the Hawks pass the puck all around the rink, quite out of it. We got rid of The Pylon and now the whole team looked like a bunch of pylons. It needs to get a lot better and fast.

Especially during 2nd and 3rd periods it was like a game between professional NHL team's level(Chicago) and a high school team's level ( Minnesota).  Kahkonen did some nice good saves during the game but 5 goals in our net were kind of a lot. He played 4 out of 6 preseason games ( 2 wins and 2 loses). In those 2 loses only the last game was on him, and the other one loss was more on Hammond. 

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22 minutes ago, Bear said:

Preseason or not they looked bad the Hawks shut them down. That was just about the open night roster. 

I agree, they did shut us down. That was practically our the open night roster with only 2 players missing (Talbot and Brodin) which did not fly to Chicago. Like Lynxrattle said, we have first 7 games of the regular season that are not too bad for us. And we should win most of them just to build initially a good amount of points as well as winning team's mentality at the beginning. That means we should take first all 7 games very very seriously. After that the 1st toughest game is going to be against a Colorado team on October 30 on a road.

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30 minutes ago, Bear said:

Hopefully they will get it together a lot of new players better start to gel. 

 

Especially, our defense, which I am slightly worry already. Besides of providing a solid defense, they should start to think more about offensive production as well. 

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Defense sure looked bad against the Hawks as far as offence they couldnt get the zone out of our end and when they did seemed like it was right back in. Only one game and it was preseason. Didnt get to watch the game so its hard to say how soft the goals Kahkonen let in.

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10 hours ago, Bear said:

Defense sure looked bad against the Hawks as far as offence they couldnt get the zone out of our end and when they did seemed like it was right back in. Only one game and it was preseason. Didnt get to watch the game so its hard to say how soft the goals Kahkonen let in.

Goals were not too soft but a lot. Hartman netted 1st goal and then Hawks were able to place 5 unanswered goals during the game. I would accept our loss if we were competing and will show less final score (like 1:2; 2:3 for example) with our full main roster who is going to start the new season very very soon (on Friday). From the other but positive side at least no one was injured during that game in comparison to previous game against Hawks when Boldy and Addison were injured. I have feelings that  Chicago team will give us lots of problems during the season - nice team in front of Fleury. We should be prepared mentally and physically to play well against them. It is not a simple team in comparison to the last 2 seasons, IMO.  Their 2nd goalie Kevin Lankinen is pretty good too when I watched their 1st game against us.

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