Article: The Wild Have Corrected A Longstanding Self-Inflicted Burden

[Jonathan Ryan]

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[Imyourhuckleberry]

Kaprizov, JEE, MoJo, Hartman, and all of the recent line 4 have zero penalty minutes on the season. Gaudreau has 2 from a tripping call in the October 15th game in St. Louis, which may have been on line 4.

Faber(5 minute major) and Chisholm also have zero minor penalties for the defense.

Trenin is the leader by far with 8 penalty minutes and nobody else above Faber's 5.

[Amaddeo]

If this trend continues and we keep rolling 4 solid lines, we will be in an excellent position come playoff time. But it can’t just be a short string of organized play. The real challenge is making this the norm for this team. 

[Citizen Strife]

Hartman looks to be back, so Ohgren was sent down.  It was bound to happen.  Hopefully Ohgren can figure out what he needs to do.  He'll get more chances someday.

[Patrick]

With Hartman returning so will additional penalties. Unfortunately he doesn't seem capable of playing otherwise.  I thought Trenin was supposed to fix our PK? How will he do that when he is always the guy in the box? Funny that our elite PP and atrocious PK are inverse of each other % wise.

[mnfaninnc]

Not all penalties are equal. For instance, so what, Faber had a fighting major. He took someone with him who also accrued another 2 minute infraction. It should have been an instigator, but he avoided that due to a technicality. 

I have not problem with coincidental penalties, and based upon the statistics shown above, it does not take that into account. I will agree that reducing our short handed time is a good goal, and especially working on earning penalties instead of the weeny stick infractions. To this, the Wild has done a good job this year. 

It also might be helpful to talk about drawn penalties. Certain players, like Hartman who has been called out, take a lot of penalties due to their play. However, they may be a net positive in taken vs. drawn penalties. One would expect that the defense would be a huge - in this category. It also might be helpful to compare this with their career. Is it a small sample size that could implode at any time? Or, is it part of a trend that they've been working on?

One would also think that a team that is working harder is going to draw more penalties, so looking at the team wide collective is also a good comparison (noting the small sample size). So far, I like the results.