2023/2024 NHL/WILD Offseason-Season-Postseason Thread

Hynes looks like a lost puppy out there

jack klusa wrote:

could have used a little puck luck tonight too. man, I hate losing to our friends in manitoba

Should be used to it by now this year.

Our 13 goals scored in the last 2 games sounds great until you remember we’ve also given up 12….

Lol – this is the 3rd edit for this post..

brandmoney wrote:

Hynes looks like a lost puppy out there

Why do you say that? They made more adjustments this game than Evason made in 3 years. And I say that as a guy who liked Deano

Boldy needs a good sports therapist.

Its crazy how often Boldy whiffs on the puck, especially on 1 timers… Its fixable though…

The Preds winning in Vegas last night was not helpful either.

gim wrote:

The Preds winning in Vegas last night was not helpful either.

Are we really going to scoreboard watch 5 other teams the last 30 games? Or can we just say they need to get to 95ish points and that should get them in.

tswoboda wrote:

Are we really going to scoreboard watch 5 other teams the last 30 games?

Yes we are!

In all seriousness though, I scoreboard watch just about every night of the season…

gim wrote:

Yes we are!

In all seriousness though, I scoreboard watch just about every night of the season…

Ha I know you love it, like Basseyes loves Boldy

This team shouldn’t make the playoffs, if they do somehow happen to sneak in they are not built to have success. We know how playoff hockey works, the 1st & 2nd lines will get smothered and we don’t have the secondary scoring on lines 3-4 to counter with (which is a key factor for playoff success) and our goalie play has been way too inconsistent all season…

The PP & PK has been very encouraging lately, but they would need to break a 3+ year streak of both disappearing in the playoffs to have any success…

I honestly couldn’t tell you the standings right now…I just looked and Florida is the top team in the East?

…I’m only scoreboard watching to see how many goals Ovi gets…

tswoboda wrote:

Ha I know you love it, like Basseyes loves Boldy

And Grouse loves Gerin Gurin.

Honestly guys, nitpick it all you want. I got to see the last two periods when i got home from work last night. We could EASILY have put up more goals with the help of the puck luck god. We did not look that terrible considering who and what we have to work with. They looked waaaaaay better than I expected them to look against this team.
Always room for criticism but rarely any kudos for the boys.

KUDOS Wild boys!!

I dont think it was a terrible game last night either. Its just WPG got all the puck luck and we got little to none.
How good is old stonehands now?

Did Hynes ever give an explanation why Rossi was moved to 4c and Hartman 2c? Rossi had a very good game and could have used more minutes. I thought the 2nd line had a really good game with Hartman there too.

tswoboda wrote:

Did Hynes ever give an explanation why Rossi was moved to 4c and Hartman 2c? Rossi had a very good game and could have used more minutes. I thought the 2nd line had a really good game with Hartman there too.

LaPanther has repeatedly said on TV that Hynes is “trying to get Hartman going” if that’s his thinking, then Freddy will be 1C next game…

Rossi was their best player last night and only played 12:51! had 5 shots on goal too…

check out this awesome faceoff effort by Hartman – https://youtu.be/pclyYETtfzA?t=396

Vegas put Mark Stone put on LTIR today…. The Twitter comments on the post are gold!

https://x.com/puckreportnhl/status/1760457187980083209?s=46&t=uoRWUp28rKzoSODmtmr3Lw

Austin Mathews scoring 51 goals in 54 games with ZERO empty netters is bonkers!

Even more bonkers is that Gretzky did it in just 39 games..

Bedard had no pts in the game last night. I watched a bit of it and he has a bit of F U to his game and I like it.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Bedard had no pts in the game last night. I watched a bit of it and he has a bit of F U to his game and I like it.

I watched some of that too. The Blackhawks are hideously bad. I love it. My brother is a hawks fan and he has been full crickets for years now on the subject after beating his chest a decade ago.

All they do is drool about Bedard when Chicago is playing though. That gets pretty old.

Historically bad, and that’s why Bedard will be minus a billion and no one except Russo and Wild fans will care

Yeah they are brutal to watch and even worse on the road. Lost what 22 in a row on the road? That is pretty pathetic.
Of course I want one of our guys to win the Calder, but there is about a zero chance they do. The league wants Bedard to be the new face of the league and probably rightfully so.

The league doesn’t choose the Calder, it’s the writers. And yeah there’s no question the writers desperately want Bedard to win it. Bedard content gets clicks

I know who chooses the winners, but just watch anything from the NHL and all they do is pump up Bedard. Its quite obvious, though I have seen a few things lately regarding Faber and Rossi.

It’s easy to blur the line between the NHL and the media covering the NHL and I do it all the time. Like thinking Canada teams or Toronto get special treatment or whatever when reality is they just get way more media time and a lot of bias takes from their media fanbois.

Like when Grouse was going off about how Rielly wouldn’t get a harsh suspension because the league caters to the Leafs. Reality is the Leafs are the most suspended team since the DoPS started. And the even crazier part is they also have the least amount of suspensions called against the opposing team as well. That blew my mind when I first heard it. So the narrative the “Leafs get special treatment from the DoPS” is 100% false and actually the polar opposite of what has actually happened over the last 20 years. But it’s easy to think that was the case when all we heard was the media going off about how Rielly shouldn’t get suspended at all, and that’s just one example.

I see alot of entitlement/cockyness in Bedard’s game and you’re starting to see it get exposed in games where he has run-ins with players and goalies…some of that is expected for an 18 year old kid who’s been the best player since he started youth hockey and has been worshiped ever since, but some of that just feels like he’s playing to get points imo (He’s already been talked to/benched a couple of times by Luke Richardson to include his teammates more and attempt to play some defense)…
I find it most strange to watch defenseman play him when he skates into the zone, it’s almost like they are scared to make a mistake and get exposed so they give up way too much gap (watch his OT goal against the Jets from a month or so ago, what in the world was Morrissey doing giving up that much gap?) (kudos to Bedard for having that skillset) but once guys start playing against him more and film comes out on his tendencies, I think you’re going to see alot of big open ice hits on him (forcing Bedard to change his game)

I said this a few days ago, I don’t understand why teams aren’t being overly physical with him (Is Foligno really that scary?) The past few Chicago games I’ve watched guys weren’t finishing their checks on him at all…

I’ve said all along the kid has one of the best shots in the game already and his offensive hockey sense is off the charts (my 7 year old is trying to mimic his shot in the driveway every night) but he’s going to learn that those moves that worked in Juniors won’t work in the NHL and he’s going to learn that the hard way…

John Buccigross did a web interview yesterday and said he felt Faber had a slight edge over Bedard at this point in the season and it would take Bedard playing at a ppg the rest of the way to get his vote… oh the comments from Blackhawks fans afterwards…lol

The part that tends to bother me is the “sucking your way to success” model that Chicago is trying to follow (again). They were embarrassingly bad before their dominant stretch started 15 years ago. The United Center averaged about 6000 fans/game in a 22,000 capacity arena. Their model paid off handsomely for about 5 or 6 years and then the bottom dropped out again. They’re right back to where they were before in terms of success. And the bad years heavily out number the good ones too.

People in Chicago know almost nothing about hockey either. Most of the “hockey” fans there don’t even know the difference between offsides and icing.

tswoboda wrote:

It’s easy to blur the line between the NHL and the media covering the NHL and I do it all the time. Like thinking Canada teams or Toronto get special treatment or whatever when reality is they just get way more media time and a lot of bias takes from their media fanbois.

Im talking directly from the NHL official twitter accounts not folks like TNT or ESPN.

gim wrote:

The part that tends to bother me is the “sucking your way to success” model that Chicago is trying to follow (again).

That is really the only recipe for success though. The Wild have never bottomed out and were too competitive too early in their existence to garner a ton of high draft picks. Their highest pick in decades I think was Rossi and wasnt that like 10?

tswoboda wrote:

Historically bad, and that’s why Bedard will be minus a billion and no one except Russo and Wild fans will care

While that’s true, he’s also constantly floating the zone looking for homerun passes (just last night he did it several times)
His coach has talked to him several times this season about the need to play better defense…so yes the team is bad, but he’s also earning those minuses with lazy defensive play…

he’s not paid to play defense, but the NHL requires it played by everyone or the team gets exposed because most everyone on the ice can score if presented with an optimal opportunity…