Noon Number (October 16th)

Last year's PK wasn't amazing, finishing 18th in the league with an 80.7% success rate, but the drop-off this year has been quite incredible. The most obvious difference is the personnel, so I'm gonna look and see just how much it has changed:

There was a fairly large overhaul of the roster during the offseason, and as a result, 4 of the players from the list above, Gilbert, Cullen, Clutterbuck and Falk, are now no longer with Wild.

New players Cooke and Ballard have stepped-in to fill the void left by the likes of Clutterbuck and Cullen. Konopka has taken a big step forward in PK time this year, and Scandella is now playing more regularly and is chipping-in nicely. Koivu and Parise have seen their PK roles diminish slightly in an effort to give them a rest.

Theoretically, Cooke for Clutterbuck, Konopka for Cullen, Ballard for Gilbert and Scandella for Falk should make the PK a little bit better, or at least not worse. Konopka for Cullen is a bad trade-off, but should be negated by the other upgrades. Unfortunately, it hasn't worked-out that way. One wonders if Matt Cooke is the premier penalty-killing forward he was advertised to be.

A big problem this year in shorthanded situations has been the lack of pressure from the forwards. The best way to disrupt a powerplay is to be speedy and aggressive, but the Wild have been unable to do this and as a result, the opposition have been able to get set-up and make easy passes to the front of the Wild's net, resulting in several goals already this year.

The Wild are playing great 5v5 hockey, but they won't be able to find success unless they get at least a somewhat adequate performance from their special teams.

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