Article: Wild Want More Physical Defensemen, Go On Losing Skid

[Thomas Williams]

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[mnfaninnc]

Last night, I thought the Wild played a pretty good game. I thought they started particularly well, though the results weren't good. 

The defense engaged offensively, and the team was fairly physical. I still hate the Buium/Jiricek pairing. 

But, let's not fool ourselves about this team turning a corner. It took 3 somewhat fluky goals to get us a loser point. Maybe puck luck has started to turn, though.

[NoJoSux]

In OT when the Wild lose, you have arguably their best three players on the ice. #97, #14, and #7 have a breakdown and that's all she wrote with Connor shooting.

He took the lesser money too and is a winger who can score. The contrast after Kirill coughed it up hurt a bit. Almost like OCL shoulda kept his damn mouth shut and perhaps Kirill is only getting 12-13M like we originally suggested.

The defense is kinda jumbled and lacking identity. Getting shelled every game for 5-6 goals, they're simply not defending well enough. The pairings are questionable too. Hynes and Guerin will definitely get more and more criticism if the Wild continue to lose. Another few weeks like this and I'm saying go for McKenna. Trade for picks at the deadline. 

I just don't see the defense all of the sudden becoming a shutdown force that adds goals and does that consistently enough to recover the MN defense first reputation. There's a lot of flaws in their pairings and you're noticing Bogosian was probably more valuable to the defense group than he got credit for.

The Wild can possibly work their way back into a decent position but they just kinda look like they got what Nashville had last year. All looking around doubting and subconsciously pointing the finger around. The anti-chemistry of sorts. Soon enough will be the Thanksgiving benchmark. See where the Wild are at then.