Article: It's Fine For the Wild To Play Jon Merrill Over Zeev Buium

[Tony Abbott]

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[Citizen Strife]

Regardless of how the series goes, Hynes has tried different things here and there to keep things going.  Even the Rossi headscratcher proved helpful.  Merrill is a smart choice being in Vegas 2-1.  

Buium and Jiricek have years to prove their worth.  They only have days to keep the season going.

[Patrick]

Merrill is a bum.  He was last in plus/minus despite getting the most protected minutes the coaching staff could dream up.   I don't think its a coincidence that our PK started to improve when the blue line got healthy and Merrill's time out there got substantially less.

I think they should play Zeev and tell him to go for it. You don't ask a racehorse to be a plow horse and asking Zeev to play like Merrill was a mistake.  Live and die with his talent.  We are not making the Cup anyway so may as well see what he can do.

[Willy the poor boy]

34 minutes ago, Patrick said:

We are not making the Cup anyway so may as well see what he can do.

How dare you!!

[mnfaninnc]

Heinzy trusts Merrill. This is the basic point. Bogosian and Merrill trust each other, this is the secondary point. They've played about 50 games together this season, so they know each other's tendencies and communicate well. 

Buium does not have that same trust with either the coach or partner. It's not because he has glaring deficiencies, he just does things and sees thing a little different and he's not always on the same page as Bogosian or Heinzy. 

But, if you're going to do this, which isn't horrible, give Buium an assignment to complete while he's chewing on nachos. Young players need this, need to know there is a reason why they need to watch from up top. 

Chisholm is another candidate that could also play with Bogosian. They have less time together, but they know each other's tendencies. For me, down the stretch, I think Chissy made himself trade bait for the summer and kind of played himself out of a job here. But, should someone like Brodin get hurt, Chissy can plug into a top 4 role and play along side Spurgeon with little problems. 

If I have a criticism of Buium it has been that he has played far to conservatively while in. To me, it seems the message to him was "great to have you in here kid, now don't screw up," which he did with the careless double minor to Stone's eye. I do think that Heinzy needs him to play to his strengths which includes caring the puck and contributing offensively. Unfortunately, his partner has lost a step this season and can't cover for him. 

Vegas is not the fastest team in the league, but they are one of the biggest. Merrill should be able to compete just fine. I know Karlsson is pretty fast, but, to me, it looked like he beat Buium to a couple of pucks. Buium punished him physically after sailing around him on the outside, cutting him off, but he just didn't look as fast as advertised. There are definitely some teams I don't think Merrill can keep up with, but so far, I don't think Vegas is one of those.

[Burnt Toast]

Merrill is going to get targeted and possibly exploited as he’s now the weakest link on the Wild’s D core. Hynes is going to be limiting his matchups and ice time. I think playing Merrill tonight is a 50/50 bet. I’m going to be rooting for him to play well and bring his A+ game. He definitely is rested and will be extremely motivated. It wasn’t mentioned but having Merrill in might be more comfortable for Gus as well. 

[1Brotherbill]

The only thing that playing this guy does is it balances out the rotation.  Instead of Brock or Jonas double shifting you get Merrill paired with Bogo 100% of the time.   Which means that Vegas can attack that pair.  This also means that PK1 will have Merrill on it.  Which also means Vegas's PP1 is that much better.  I could make a movie that would be 4 hours long of Jon Merrill looking at the net with the puck in it.  And I'm not saying he is scoring, it is the Wild's net and Gus is usually looking at him as if to say we worked on this in practice, dude. 

[Will D. Ness]

3 hours ago, mnfaninnc said:

If I have a criticism of Buium it has been that he has played far to conservatively

He isn't ready to play loose.  He still has Denver mindset.  I was glad he did tighten it up the last game but you are right in the idea that we don't want him out there to play conservatively.  No point in that.