Minnesota Wild 09-10 Season Recap: The Defensemen

Hey everyone! Nathan asked me to do a season-recap article about the Wild defensemen's performances this season. Granted, this was a season of ups and downs for the Wild and admittedly, the Wild's 246 goals against (11^th in the western conference) is unfamiliar territory for us. HOWEVER, I don't think it's entirely because of bad defending. Of course we can argue that our D this year often let our goaltenders to dry, but with Richards' new system, the D were taking a lot more chances than they were used to under Lemaire's regime. I don't think it's anything to get excited about, I have faith in the fact that our D will get used to the system. As a whole, I don't think our defense protected our goaltenders nearly enough either when they fell on them or pushed them. However, in my honest opinion, I don't think we've ever had such great depth on the blue line, it's just a matter of them gelling together and getting more used to the new system, but there's only so many times that this excuse will work. I will now rate each defenseman the Wild have dressed this year. It's only fitting that a grade them since I'm currently studying to become a math teacher (Coincidence?) I also play D in soccer. Curious to see how I assessed their performances?

Make the jump.

 We've dressed 13 defensemen this year, including Johnsson who is now with Chicago. The easiest way to grade them would be to look at their stats, but stats don't tell the whole story, especially not for defensemen. Here are the stats anyway, courtesy of www.nhl.com

By no means does this chart mean that Marek Zidlicky was the best year defenseman this year. In my gradation of the Wild defensemen's performances this season, I will look at every aspect of their game, the intangibles if you will. I will also include Kim Johnsson since he played more than half the season with the Wild. Keep in mind also, that I haven't been able to watch all the games because the game links on atdhe.net seem to work only when they feel like it, so I ended up listening to a lot of the games on the radio this year. Regardless, I believe I have enough information to grade the players, if you don't agree with my point of view, let's talk about it! Let's get it started!

Grade: B-

Grade: B

Grade: C-

Grade: Z (Zupermaaaaan!)

Real grade: A

Grade: B-

Grade: B

Grade: C

Grade: C-

Grade: C

Grade: B

Grade: A-  (don't read too much into it, it would probably drop over a full season)

Grade: N/A

Grade: N/A

Well, looks like everyone graduated (except for Noreau and Falk, but let's just say they did anyway) In a sense, you might think " Well if they were all so good, why didn't we make the playoffs? " and to that, I answer that I went a bit easy on them since it's the first year of the CF + TR era, but next year, they will all need to step up and be more coherent as a group. Hope you liked my very first assignment everyone!