Wilderness Walk: Wild Get Shutout In Vancouver

As long as it doesn't become a streak the other way, a loss is fine.

Four in a row is a good new coach bump. Not the eight in a row the Canucks reeled off for Boudreau but the Wild will take the desperately needed eight points. Edmonton is not going to be the pushover they were a week or two ago much like the Wild were. Should be a good match up of two teams who are in the same spot right now. Dallas, Nashville, Jets and even Chicago won last night so the Wild lost ground. 

Going to be extremely tough for this team to claw their way back in.  They are going to have to reel off four or five wins in a row, lose one and reel off three again to climb the ladder. Providing of course the other division teams are losing more than the Wild are winning which they do not seem to be willing to do. 

Acceptable loss to a good/great VAN club.  We controlled the play for long stretches, but VAN's superior talent/system/coaching/et al came thru in the end.

Wild were not lifeless and sloppy so I'm not calling for Hynes head yet.

Last night looked sloppy as hell.  A little chaos is great and we do have the speed and agility to play a that game but margin for error is slight and we exceeded that last night.

I would like to see a contrasting counter punch to throw in there as well with a strong physical deliberate forechecking bruiser line to put into the mix.  

When it's not clicking let's bring a hammer.

9 minutes ago, Will D. Ness said:

Last night looked sloppy as hell.

I must admit i dozed on and off in second, and missed 3rd entirely but thought we won the first period even though scoreboard didn't prove it.

1 hour ago, Pewterschmidt said:

I must admit i dozed on and off in second, and missed 3rd entirely but thought we won the first period even though scoreboard didn't prove it.

2nd and 3rd was disjointed mayhem in the O zone with a few good chances after we started selling out late in the 3rd.

Defensively we maintained mostly until a sloppy turnover on our own blue line with our 3rd D pair too slow to stop the puck. 

1st was good but I think we got discouraged.

I’ve written several times that the Wild will get burnt when they can’t close on plays. Not scoring when you’ve had the play most of the period will haunt them. It did against Vancouver. We also saw them get out of their game again, like P3 in Calgary. This is a lack of leadership and discipline. When you win you can call it a little adversity. When you lose, you lack discipline and leadership. 

Not an ugly loss but MN needs wins across the board. Losing close fought games isn't gonna get MN into the playoffs.

So, now we've lost 2 in a row. I thought we still played the right way in Vancouver, but Edmonton is a different animal. Our tired legs showed (as it will with an older team) and I thought Edmonton had a lot of jump. 

My 1st thought was Jimmy. Jimmy got run hard into the boards in Vancouver and it looked like he wasn't expecting it. I didn't think he was right after that for the rest of the game. Backs taking the brunt of that when not braced tend to get put out of place. In Edmonton, Evander Kane finished the injury. I thought it should have been boarding as he could see Jimmy's numbers. You can usually get away with it if you don't hit full force which Kane did. While Hartman took a penalty, a costly penalty, right afterwards, he had to stand up for his teammate. 

When Jimmy limped off and didn't come back, to me, it looks like a lower back injury and he will either try to play through it significantly less than 100% (because a less than 80% Jimmy is probably better than anything else we've got) or just may not be able to go until the lower back solidifies itself and restabilizes so it won't get pushed back out of alignment. My bet is his chiropractor will need to be working with him a lot these next few weeks. 

My 2nd thought was just keep playing the right way. We've got to be better at taking undisciplined penalties (like holding the stick in the neutral zone). This team has got to realize its limitations. I would suggest a lot of practice and catching up on practices we haven't had under Evason. 

Hynes also seems to have picked a few younger players that he thinks he can trust. Faber and Dewar are high on that list. I think Rossi has impressed him. Boldy looks like he's out of his slump and is getting trusted. I found it to be interesting that Mermis drew in, and I wouldn't play Goligoski in b2bs this season. 

One thing was fairly evident in the Vancouver game, Goligoski has really slowed down and if he's in a foot race, it's over. A small player who is slow is not a good combination. His partner, Jon Merrill, has also slowed down and at least he can be moved to Iowa if need be. The problem is, the cavalry isn't ready yet. To me, Mermis looks better than Goligoski in all phases. I do think Daemon Hunt is ready to take a place on the blue line here. His offensive game seems to have clicked in Iowa suddenly. To me, Goligoski should have retired this offseason, and this will be Merrill's last year here. 

I like a steady 3rd pairing. Our current 3rd pairing is slow but not steady. We've got veterans making rookie mistakes and have no speed with which to recover. I'll take the rookie mistakes from the rookies please.

In the Edmonton game, I also thought that the Edmonton coach did a nice job of managing McDavid against our team. He managed to keep McDavid away from Brodin (until hurt) and not against Ek. I thought Faber made some nice plays against him. Their coach deserves a little credit since Edmonton has not faired well historically against us. 

Also, looks like Charlie Stramel had a hat trick of assists the other night, jumping his points to 4. Nice job Charlie!

That's about all to report on the farm.

36 minutes ago, mnfaninnc said:

Also, looks like Charlie Stramel had a hat trick of assists the other night, jumping his points to 4. Nice job Charlie!

That's about all to report on the farm.

Good to hear he’s on the scoresheet.  I watched first 10 min of badger game last night looking for a stramel update. Liked his size/length.  Skating/edges are his weakness.  Not greenway Foligno bad, but definitely room for improvement.  Stramel made a heady pass from behind goal line that created a one timer on net that was encouraging

14 minutes ago, Pewterschmidt said:

Skating/edges are his weakness.

One would expect this from a large bodied kid at his age. The good news is that he can come back home during breaks and take lessons from Andy Ness to get that skating cleaned up. I would have to believe that an offseason spent with them would do him wonders.