Fixing the Wild: The Powerless Power Play

This week I am focusing on the succubus known as the Wild power play. The Wild finished the season with an awful 17.9 percent (27 for 151) clip on power play conversion. What's worse than what the stats show is that many times in game the power play had very little cohesion and almost no momentum. It became so bad that fans everywhere across that State of Hockey and in the Wilderness were clamoring for the Wild to decline the penalty.

Let's fix the power play for the 2013-2014 season. First off, let us look at personnel. The first unit comprised of Parise-Koivu-Coyle up front with Suter and Spurgeon holding down the fort on the blue line. This of course changed after the Pomminville trade at the deadline. The second unit had Setoguchi-Cullen-Heatley/Bouchard with Brodin and Gilbert/Stoner on the back end. This needs to be slightly tweaked to improve production. We should see Parise-Koivu-Coyle Pomminville-Suter for the first unit and Zucker-Granlund-Neiderreiter Brodin-Scandella/Spurgeon for the second unit. The Wild needs players that move the puck and needs players that can, and will, shoot from anywhere on the ice. I believe that this power play alignment solves that problem as Parise shoots and so does Zucker.

The Wild needs to swarm the net and pick up the trash. Simply put, the Wild absolutely need get shots on net and then be around the net to put away the rebounds. Goalies in the NHL are too good to get beat cleanly on the first shot. Their reflexes are quicker than they have ever been, they are bigger in size than that have ever been, and now they know when and where they have to be to make the save. To make a big improvement in the power play convergence (and the goals-for category, for that matter) the Wild must be potting more rebound goals.

Hopefully, with a full offseason and training camp these fixes (or some version of them) can be implemented. I don't know if it can get worse. I hope to never have to say, "Wild succubus brought to you by..." at any point this next season. With the new division, special teams are absolutely going to be a major deciding factor in which teams make it to the playoffs and which ones are watching hockey in May instead.