2022/2023 NHL/Wild Offseason-Season-Postseason Thread

Ug.

Grouse

Is Greenway going to be like Buxton?

Well that was depressing

This team is just hard to watch from last years team. Yes I know injuries and certain players are gone but its been tough to watch.

KP wrote:

This team is just hard to watch from last years team. Yes I know injuries and certain players are gone but its been tough to watch.

Yes, I get that the 2 top lines from last season have been broken up due to injury. Hartman wasn’t exactly productive even before he got hurt, but now he’s injured as well. Then the GREEF line that was just Shutdown City last season hasn’t really been together all season now and certainly not enough to regain the effectiveness of last year.

And then there were guys saying the Wild don’t need to replace Fiala’s productivity with a like number of goals. Yeah, no, it turns out we actually do.

Ironically, it was the goaltending situation that I thought was going to be the issue this season and that’s turned out to be more solid than I had hoped. Now it’s just the small matter of producing some offense and playing D…

Flower out now with an upper body injury, when it rains, it pours…

Jus fantastic! Hopefully we get through these things and are healthy the last half of the season. They cant keep bumbling along like this they need to string together some wins. They have a stretch of games at home, but they have been terrible there all year.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

Flower out now with an upper body injury, when it rains, it pours…

Is it time to start discussing the prospects in the 2023 draft?

No? Too soon?

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>JoeMX1825 wrote:</div>
Flower out now with an upper body injury, when it rains, it pours…

Is it time to start discussing the prospects in the 2023 draft?

No? Too soon?

Grouse

Dind’t sound like Flower injury is too bad (he finished the game with it last night) I won’t count this team out while Kirill is still healthy and playing, but if we lose him to injury, then yes start looking at the draft and oh what a draft it is! If you can get into the top 5 picks, you’re getting a player that would have gone 1st overall in pretty much every other draft year..

CaptainMusky wrote:

Jus fantastic! Hopefully we get through these things and are healthy the last half of the season. They cant keep bumbling along like this they need to string together some wins. They have a stretch of games at home, but they have been terrible there all year.

They are all bumbling outside of Vegas.
Grouse don’t think anyone said that you didn’t need to replace some of Fiala’s production. I think we said you will not replace it with one single player.
Honestly I am more worried about the scoring from the guys currently on the team.

Hartman had 34G currently at 1
Foligno 23G currently at 1
Ek 26 currently at 4
Greenway 0 points
Addison PP QB 0 goals.

They have been on the struggle bus for sure. Its one of the things I was really worried about. How many players had career years? You cant really count on that happening again.

Helps if they actually play however.

Ripjiggen wrote:

Helps if they actually play however.

Well of course, but Hartman has been playing a good chunk of games and wasnt producing much either and got demoted. Ek hasnt missed any time and you shared his stats too.

For sure…can you expect them to all have another career year? no. But outside of EK who’s points are not that bad the others are just not contributing offensively at all. You can throw Rossi into the mix as well. I think Addy will get his, unfortunately Rossi will have to learn on the fly so to speak because they can’t really send him down as much as I am sure they would love to for a small stretch.

Ripjiggen wrote:

For sure…can you expect them to all have another career year? no. But outside of EK who’s points are not that bad the others are just not contributing offensively at all. You can throw Rossi into the mix as well. I think Addy will get his, unfortunately Rossi will have to learn on the fly so to speak because they can’t really send him down as much as I am sure they would love to for a small stretch.

They need to tell Addison to shoot more. He has a pretty hard shot for a little guy and needs to unleash that from the point a time or two during the PP. I’m a little worried about Ek. I didn’t expect him to maintain the scoring he had from last year but he is really barely noticeable out there right now. I’m hoping it’s because his nuky blankey line isn’t in tact and all three will get going once they are back together.

As mentioned before, the defense is actually holding up pretty well right now. The offense just can’t seem to get going. I could see Billy G going after some above-average depth scoring if things don’t improve (Maybe Jason Zucker’s return?)

I think one of the biggest issues is the absence of the GREEF line. That line gave a lot of flexibility to the rest of the lineup last year, and I think it was a big reason the top line was able to score so much. Without it, that top line has a lot more defensive responsibility, which I think is limiting their offensive capability.

I think the Fiala loss hurts a lot of that too, because we really only have one scoring line right now. Boldy is really good, but just doesn’t have anybody near his skill level to play with.

brandmoney wrote:

I think one of the biggest issues is the absence of the GREEF line. That line gave a lot of flexibility to the rest of the lineup last year, and I think it was a big reason the top line was able to score so much. Without it, that top line has a lot more defensive responsibility, which I think is limiting their offensive capability.

Yep, Deano could rely on them to shut down the other team’s top line night in night out. We’re stumbling along right now, get that offense going and we will be just fine. Hopefully Flower isnt out too long. A little bummed they didnt bring up the Great Wall of St Paul, but not surprised either. Would’ve been fun to get a look at him.

I don’t know why Deano just doesn’t keep Ek and Foligno together and put Duhaime in there when Greenway is out, keep that lines identity intact! Stop thinking Foligno is an offensive player, he’s a grinder and his offense last year was mostly generated from the forecheck & turnovers that line created…

I have to say, i’m dissapointed in Deano’s decision making this year sofar, lots of his moves just don’t make sense when you consider the skillsets of the players he’s been moving around…other things like the faltering powerplay seems like he’s done nothing in terms of changes made to try and get it going again, he can threaten splitting players up (Kirill and Zuccy) but how about make some actual changes (KISS – Keep it simple stupid) to at least get some shots on net and then go to work on getting rebounds…

Brodin and Addison looked great for the few games they were playing together, then he puts Dumba back with Brodin and Addison’s game since then has been falling with Merrill…

The silver lining to these problems if they don’t get resolved is they equate to a high draft pick in a generational draft and Boldy’s next deal becomes alot more manageable through the next 2 cap pain years…

Lastly, other than the Bruins, Golden Knights and Devils, it seems like every NHL team is struggling to find consistency sofar this season…so if you can go on a run, you can makeup for whatever losing streaks you had….

Beyond The POD is a great weekly vidcast – https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rKhZBjd3kHs

Goudreau on the first PP? Really Deano? Good lord…

Sweet Goudreau coasting backcheck/stickcheck on the 2nd Penguins goal… dont worry, Deano will hold him accountable right??? (Nope)

This team is brutal to watch right now.

Gustaffson literally a statue on that first goal. Never even moved.

mahtofire14 wrote:

This team is brutal to watch right now.

Gustaffson literally a statue on that first goal. Never even moved.

They’re in trouble…. and what’s worrying is there’s really not much else that can be done with the current roster, they’ve tried every friggin line combination (except Rossi at 1C) and it’s the same stale hockey… I guess our only hope left is that Greenway is the straw that stirs the drink, get the GREEF line back together and maybe the others fall in line? (that’s a scary thought)

The team is just playing so soft, they’re losing every puck battle along the boards…alarms sounding everywhere right now…

Defense needs to friggin get pucks to the net, I counted like 10 times in the 1st period where the puck went back to our defense and they make 2 stickhandles and shoot the puck back into the corner (where we cant win the puck battle to get it back)

Well, that was a nice recovery.

Yeah I started watching the football game. Guess they could tell.

with as bad as we play at home and the good teams we play in the 6 games remaining in this homestand, this season could get away from the Wild by December… these players will need to pull themselves out of this funk as there’s really no more levers for Deano or GMBG to pull…

mahtofire14 wrote:

This team is brutal to watch right now.

Gustaffson literally a statue on that first goal. Never even moved.

You talking about the goal where Sid came in 1 on 2 and both defenders stood there with there thumb up there butt not doing anything when the rest of the penguins team was changing.

Not saying Gus was good by any means but he is the easy scape goat in this one. The whole team played terrible.

Players only meeting in the locker room after the game… problems solved, winning streak starts Saturday! Lol

Tough game to watch. Will anybody have a career year this season?

Ripjiggen wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>mahtofire14 wrote:</div>
This team is brutal to watch right now.

Gustaffson literally a statue on that first goal. Never even moved.

You talking about the goal where Sid came in 1 on 2 and both defenders stood there with there thumb up there butt not doing anything when the rest of the penguins team was changing.

To be fair, BOTH defenders literally just stepped on the ice due to a bad neutral zone turnover by Zuccy, you can see Middleton actually push Spurgeon over to get some defender gap as Crosby was skating full speed and they were flatfooted….Any High School goalie would call a wrist shot from that far out a bad goal…

The McGann goal might have been deflected but Merrill should have poke checked/blocked it that far out, but Gustafson needs to stop it. Merrill has had a stretch of terrible defensive games lately, he’s so susceptible to cross crease passes (Guentzel to Crosby goal)

But add his bad play to the list of 10 other players… and the next 6 home games (minus the Coyotes) are against much better teams…

This season could go very sideways quickly!