Article: Minnesota's Undisciplined Play Undermines Their Draft Strategy

[Justin Hein]

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[IllicitFive]

I believe that the idea of the old school fighting enforcer is dead, what is needed now is someone who will toss the heavy check, cleanly, in the open ice. Take a liberty of two with an opponents skill guy trying to fly in. This was something Dumba, love him or hate him, was ok at. Look at the playoffs last year, absolutely obliterated the guy with the puck. Border line play? Yes. But this is what's needed as far as physicality goes. Our goon taking out there goon accomplishes nothing. Sitting a top end player on his butt a few times, or having them get a few cross checks in the back when fighting for a puck has way more impact. Also the hope for me is these smaller skill guys will get complimented with bigger defenders or wingers, I think that was the goal of last years 1st round pick. 

Second, if they are going to take runs and shots and go sit for 2 min the best way to stop that is not fighting, its scoring. You fill the net they will not be taking risks to give you the PP. Simple as that. Right now we are caught in the middle, leaning more to an old school way of playing in a new league. Its like having a pure running offense in football today. You can't keep up and its going to get ugly.  Punish players in the corners, cross checks aren't called so might as well use that tool on their high end players, and for the love of all that is holy and unholy at this point, SCORE. No team will fear someone who can't score.

[Justin Hein]

26 minutes ago, IllicitFive said:

Second, if they are going to take runs and shots and go sit for 2 min the best way to stop that is not fighting, its scoring. You fill the net they will not be taking risks to give you the PP. Simple as that. 

You hit it on the head here -- why would the opponents be nervous to take liberties on Minnesota's stars if our PP can't punish them? Teams love to play that old-school physical game, but they love winning more. 

Wild need to lean more into skill and less into goons in my opinion.  

[mnfaninnc]

I kind of disagree with Justin's take. Our penalties that get us into trouble are not goon penalties, nor are they aggressive penalties. They are the stupid stick infraction penalties and the holding for no reason penalties. They are not earned penalties, their stupid!

I'll swallow an aggressive boarding call. I'll take a roughing call (with good shots in, not Merrill's dropping the gloves for no reason which more appropriately should have been called delay of game) because of liberties taken, but these are not our penalties. I'll even take one where you send a guy in front of the net flying with a cross check. Those are earned.

Tripping, wimpy slashing, hooking and high sticking are the meaningless penalties that I cannot stand. These are the undisciplined ones. These are the ones that get us into trouble. These have nothing to do with playing heavy either, and they are performed by every single member on the team, except maybe Faber and Spurgeon. 

The second part of the article I disagree with are the size problems. Our problem has nothing to do with height which Justin kept providing. Our problems have to do with strength/weight where these shorter guys do not have enough strength/weight to compete.

Their center of gravity is lower and they should win most leverage battles. Because they are shorter their edges should be better as they change directions far more quickly. Using the reverse hit more would be more devastating and keep defenders aware that they shouldn't try and crush them. 

For this, Brodin needs 10 lbs. of muscle. He's been elite defensively, but he's always needed that muscle. Kaprizov is very thick for his height. Spurgeon is an exception to all things physical. All of the defenders mentioned need bulk and strength to win battles when they lose leverage. O'Rourke, to me, has been the most disappointing of these as he had that mean streak and hitting mentality we need on the 3rd pairing. He must gain 20 lbs. to be effective at the N level with his game. Hunt needs 10 lbs., Peart I'm sure needs a lot of weight, Faber could use 10 lbs., and Lambos needs at least 10 lbs. 

This is the main issue of undersized, they are shorter and they're not bulking up to win battles in the N. Dino is not ever going to be large, but if he's got the lower body to win battles and slip checks he'll be ok. Yurov at 6'1" is not small. I suspect he is heavier than listed. Ohgren is probably the right size. Stramel and Kampulainen are probably too, but could also use strength. 

And just to confirm what I'm saying, take Rossi and Addison for instance. Both worked out heavily this offseason, though it was Rossi who gained 15 lbs. Addison's claim was 7% body fat. It's not good enough to be in shape, you need the extra strength that Rossi gained and it shows in spades. 

Exhibit #2 is Ek. When he came into the league he was tall and lanky. In the course of 2 offseasons, he built himself into a beast. He doesn't have game like now if he doesn't do that! 

It doesn't matter if you're going to throw the bodychecks or not, you need the strength just as much to fend off checks as you do for throwing them. It's about the ability to win board battles, have explosion in your stride, and protecting the puck. 

[Dean]

The wild can’t get to the middle of the ice or defend the middle. It has everything to do with size. We are too small and weak to skate through the sticks and hooks . We also are to small and weak to slow other teams down or tie up there sticks.  We play perimeter with are little guys and other teams have there way with our small d . 
    The wild need to get on the other teams superstars to deter more kappy abuse . We don’t have and never have had a power play that deters anyone.  The next time kappy gets run they need to send a message or this will be an every year , multiple times a year thing. He or the team needs to send message because the league isn’t protecting or going to protect him . It should have been sent in the second game of Winnipeg.. ehlers should have been eating cross checks all night long. 

[MNCountryLife]

1 hour ago, mnfaninnc said:

I kind of disagree with Justin's take.

I actually agree with Justin's take.  Playing with fewer players on the ice then the opposing team gives them an advantage.  Yes, it does matter what type of penalty you take.  But at the end of the game you stand your best chance of winning if you spend less time in the box than the opposing team.

The Wild have some big problems right now.  Teams are not scared of our PP so they take liberties with your skilled players.  Teams want to make us angry because we take penalties and we are bad at the PK.  We have a bad reputation so any games that turn into good squad games we usually serve more time.  Our biggest bragging right is we are good at 5v5.  

Some of our best winning streaks last season were when we took fewer penalties.  

[Lovehockey]

The size matters and especially in playoffs. It does not mean all of the players has to be huge but Wild has too many undersize players. And the only way to stop an abuse is send the message. And it may not be the fight. Take a Sutter (Dallas) for example. He cross checked Wild players constantly. He would not fight. So the only way to stop him is to hit him hard. Find the moment and do it . Couple big hits from Folino or players like him will do the work

[mnfaninnc]

6 minutes ago, MNCountryLife said:

Yes, it does matter what type of penalty you take.  But at the end of the game you stand your best chance of winning if you spend less time in the box than the opposing team.

And this is my point. We're not getting penalized any more than other teams due to aggressive play which you would expect from a team playing heavy. We are, however, getting whistled for the stick infractions, and that should be something that Hynes can do something about. Evason should have too, but he probably just delegated that to someone. 

It's something you do in practice, so Evason could have corrected it.....had he had practice. You practice with referees on the ice to whistle those things.

[mnfaninnc]

3 minutes ago, Lovehockey said:

And the only way to stop an abuse is send the message. And it may not be the fight. Take a Sutter (Dallas) for example. He cross checked Wild players constantly. He would not fight. So the only way to stop him is to hit him hard. Find the moment and do it . Couple big hits from Folino or players like him will do the work

How many times did Reaves/Foligno throw the puck into Suter's corner and then hammer him? Well, Reaves couldn't catch him, and Foligno just didn't. Suter's really strong, but you can catch him in an awkward position with, say, a less than innocent play in the scrum. 

Maybe the answer is that we have some big guys but we don't really have mean guys? We need a little mean, guys who will bend the rules and make sure you get yours. OR, would it have been a little better to catch Hintz in the corner and start chopping wood?

[Justin Hein]

1 hour ago, mnfaninnc said:

I kind of disagree with Justin's take. Our penalties that get us into trouble are not goon penalties, nor are they aggressive penalties. They are the stupid stick infraction penalties and the holding for no reason penalties. They are not earned penalties, their stupid!

I'll swallow an aggressive boarding call. I'll take a roughing call (with good shots in, not Merrill's dropping the gloves for no reason which more appropriately should have been called delay of game) because of liberties taken, but these are not our penalties. I'll even take one where you send a guy in front of the net flying with a cross check. Those are earned.

Tripping, wimpy slashing, hooking and high sticking are the meaningless penalties that I cannot stand.

That's fair enough. On the other hand, cross checking is a stick infraction. If you want the league to crack down on that, they'll be calling more penalties on other stick infractions too. I think that would be good for the game, but that's a matter of personal taste. 

[Justin Hein]

1 hour ago, Dean said:

 The wild need to get on the other teams superstars to deter more kappy abuse . We don’t have and never have had a power play that deters anyone.  The next time kappy gets run they need to send a message or this will be an every year , multiple times a year thing. He or the team needs to send message because the league isn’t protecting or going to protect him . It should have been sent in the second game of Winnipeg.. ehlers should have been eating cross checks all night long. 

I don't mean to get personal but this is an ugly take. Bad for the game if the league continues to take the approach that players should police the game, because it leads straight to your line of thinking. 

[Justin Hein]

6 minutes ago, mnfaninnc said:

How many times did Reaves/Foligno throw the puck into Suter's corner and then hammer him? Well, Reaves couldn't catch him, and Foligno just didn't. Suter's really strong, but you can catch him in an awkward position with, say, a less than innocent play in the scrum. 

Maybe the answer is that we have some big guys but we don't really have mean guys? 

You're absolutely right here in that the big guy approach isn't even intimidating anymore. The problem with the retaliatory approach is that if you hire a goon to protect Kaprizov, your team isn't better. Then if Kaprizov gets hurt, injuring the opposing team's stars still doesn't make your team better. 

A better PP and a better rep with the refs would make it much scarier to try something on Kaprizov. NHL players hate losing more than they want to play that heavy/dirty hockey. 

[Will D. Ness]

I wouldn't give refs a pass on this.  Regardless of what Lapanta thinks and any sort of narrative driven conceptual bias parlayed out in the hockey ether, there is no excuse that referees are justified in holding bias.  

It is their job to not hold bias and if they cannot, then we have just identified the most important thing to fix in the NHL.

[Imyourhuckleberry]

Minor quibble here.

Quote

Even Jonas Brodin, who has missed 14 games, is only 6-foot-1.

Jonas Brodin is listed at 6'2" and 196 pounds on NHL.com, Hockey-reference, and HockeyDB.

Average NHL defender is around 6'1.6", and 202 pounds. Brodin would only need to consume "the Ol' '96er" to reach average weight.

Edited January 12 by Imyourhuckleberry

[Justin Hein]

36 minutes ago, Will D. Ness said:

I wouldn't give refs a pass on this.  Regardless of what Lapanta thinks and any sort of narrative driven conceptual bias parlayed out in the hockey ether, there is no excuse that referees are justified in holding bias.  

It is their job to not hold bias and if they cannot, then we have just identified the most important thing to fix in the NHL.

That is true but it's also their job to know who is a repeat offender. Frankly, Minnesota has developed a pattern that the refs have adapted to.

I don't think it's as much a matter of "the refs don't like the Wild" and "the Wild need to clean up their discipline." Koivu constantly barked at the refs, but his play spoke for itself and he didn't often find himself in the box. 

[Justin Hein]

39 minutes ago, Imyourhuckleberry said:

Minor quibble here.

Jonas Brodin is listed at 6'2" and 196 pounds on NHL.com, Hockey-reference, and HockeyDB.

Average NHL defender is around 6'1.6", and 202 pounds. Brodin would only need to consume "the Ol' '96er" to reach average weight.

Good catch here, and a fair point. On the other hand, it's likely below average for a top pairing defenseman, which would be harder for me to investigate properly without devoting a few hours of research. 

My numbers came from Brodin's Wikipedia article, which is likely out of date (although teams sometimes fudge the numbers on height/weight on their rosters too). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Brodin

[mnfaninnc]

1 hour ago, Justin Hein said:

That's fair enough. On the other hand, cross checking is a stick infraction. If you want the league to crack down on that, they'll be calling more penalties on other stick infractions too. I think that would be good for the game, but that's a matter of personal taste. 

I like cracking down on the cross checking, but if you're going to crack down on it, do it consistently, don't watch someone maul our star and then get surprised when another player intentionally high sticks the opponent. That should have been called "attempt to injure" and followed with a match-5 minute major. There is no other explanation for it, Dillon was pissed off that Kaprizov caught him with a reverse hit and exacting his revenge on the guy. DoPS should have suspended Dillon for the shot. 

But, this will happen again simply because Middleton fought Dillon later and according to Foligno that was the end of it. Very docile. A better way to deal with it was to embarrass those officials for not making that call and going full meltdown mode on Winnipeg. The officials would have the full game reviewed by NHL officials, likely noting the point where the turn of loss of control happened with the crosschecks on Kaprizov's back. They would also note that this hurt the player, and was the 2nd time he was injured due to Winnipeg targeting him. The referees would have had to answer for their actions or inactions. 

But, this won't happen because much like Morrissey crosschecking Staal in the neck, the team responds with an "oh well, I guess the referees missed it." There is absolutely no fear that referees might lose control over a Wild game because they simply won't do what is necessary and the referees know that.  Other teams with preferential treatment do have this fear, and they get slightly pandered to by officiating crews that do not want to lose control. If you want this narrative changed, you must do the unpleasant thing, which is go full meltdown mode and get everyone's attention, especially the internet's. Not doing this, to me, stinks of gutlessness from the team leadership and I am looking directly at Marcus Foligno on this who was present for the Morrissey incident. 

I don't know, perhaps frustration will boil over against the Flyers and we'll get to have '80s night tonight?

[mnfaninnc]

2 hours ago, Justin Hein said:

A better PP and a better rep with the refs would make it much scarier to try something on Kaprizov. NHL players hate losing more than they want to play that heavy/dirty hockey. 

Part of the problem is that even if the Wild had a scary PP, Kaprizov would play such an important part of it that if they run him, our PP becomes less scary. I have commented that we are missing one key on the PP, and it is Guerin's fault because he does not value handedness. We have absolutely no threat of a player in Ovechkin's office, meaning, opposing PKers do not have to honor that spot on the ice. This makes our PP less effective and the PK of opponents more effective. This should be a priority for Shooter if he even sees the problem. Solving this problem makes Ek, Kaprizov, and Boldy that much more effective. This guy is more important than having a PP QB.

[mnfaninnc]

49 minutes ago, Justin Hein said:

My numbers came from Brodin's Wikipedia article, which is likely out of date (although teams sometimes fudge the numbers on height/weight on their rosters too). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jonas_Brodin

Never trust Wikipedia, even schools don't see them as a reliable source.

[mnfaninnc]

Justin, do you have access to the Wild PIM breakdown. Not just minors, majors and misconducts, but the minors broken down by type of penalty? 

I think that might help our discussion. Every team gets high sticking penalties, but it seems like we get more than our fair share of tripping, hooking type calls.

[MrCheatachu]

I agree with the thesis of this article.  The NHL game has changed and there's no longer a place for the Derek Boogaards or John Scotts.  Instead you need the Brad Marchands, Tom Wilsons and Matthew Thakucks.  Guys who are absolute pests, not afraid to get into your skin with a hard hit or a lick to the cheek, yet once they get you on tilt and focused more at getting your revenge on them the expose you for not playing hockey and put the biscuit in the basket.

That said, reading this comment section reminds me of the famous Shorsey line "It's not that they don't love winning, it's that they don't hate losing'

[Imyourhuckleberry]

1 hour ago, Justin Hein said:

Good catch here, and a fair point. On the other hand, it's likely below average for a top pairing defenseman, which would be harder for me to investigate properly without devoting a few hours of research. 

Outside of the Wild, the average defensemen who are playing the most minutes for their teams, based upon average TOI, average roughly 187.5 centimeters, just shy of 6'2", and 204 pounds, so the average top pairing type of guys seem to be fairly in line with the overall averages. If the Wild were included, it could lower the averages slightly. I didn't count anyone playing less than 20 minutes per game(limiting a couple of teams to just 1 guy being included) as that doesn't align with my view of a top pairing player.

There are a number of high skill top pairing defensemen who are below average in size, like Makar, Adam Fox, or Quinn Hughes. Guys like Roman Josi and Heiskanen are slightly below average as well. On the other end Victor Hedman is skewing the results up, as not only the tallest, but the heaviest guy, by far, that I included. At 244, Hedman is 9 pounds heavier than the next guy on the list of 61 defensemen.

These results were primarily pulled from hockey reference, but I grabbed size information from hockeyDB for 2 or 3 guys that were not listed on hockey reference.

[Will D. Ness]

2 hours ago, Justin Hein said:

That is true but it's also their job to know who is a repeat offender. Frankly, Minnesota has developed a pattern that the refs have adapted to.

I don't think it's as much a matter of "the refs don't like the Wild" and "the Wild need to clean up their discipline." Koivu constantly barked at the refs, but his play spoke for itself and he didn't often find himself in the box. 

Maybe I'm being too idealistic here, but patterns and repeat offenders should be dealt with by the league in the form of suspensions and fines.  On the ice officiating and determination of penalties should be clear of bias.

If there is a penalty... call it.  If there is not a penalty... don't call it.  Be consistent.  Don't put a thumb on the scale.  

That is all I want from the refs... I know it's probably a pipe dream.

 

[Mateo3xm]

11 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

The second part of the article I disagree with are the size problems. Our problem has nothing to do with height which Justin kept providing. Our problems have to do with strength/weight where these shorter guys do not have enough strength/weight to compete.

I disagree with this statement. The taller the player is the longer the reach and the more area they can usually cover.

I absolutely think height has a huge impact on the game.

both height and weight matter together.

if you have two players equally as fast but one has a longer reach, he’s most likely going to get to the puck first.

weight matters in some instances but I don’t think it trumps height.

i think height and weight together is most important on defense.

Vegas is a great example of that.

[mnfaninnc]

12 hours ago, Mateo3xm said:

I disagree with this statement. The taller the player is the longer the reach and the more area they can usually cover.

I absolutely think height has a huge impact on the game.

both height and weight matter together.

if you have two players equally as fast but one has a longer reach, he’s most likely going to get to the puck first.

weight matters in some instances but I don’t think it trumps height.

i think height and weight together is most important on defense.

Vegas is a great example of that.

This is a fair take, but I still believe weight is far more important than height. Reach is a definite advantage to a taller player, but leverage, I think, counters that with the shorter player. I also believe that the edge work on the smaller player, and the stockiness trumps height. 

It would be better to have the tall and heavy player, everyone probably agrees with that. Another concern with just the taller player is bodychecking. Just by physical characteristics, a heavy check by a tall person on the shorter guy will lead to head hunting, especially if the shorter guy drops down a little. 

But, those are my preferences, as well as paying attention to handedness balance. Many don't have those same opinions.