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

Interesting they had Darby drawing up the empty net zone faceoff play instead of King..

Devils 5 of 7 on pp. Incredible.

Time for a closed door team meeting….Wild knew they couldn’t take penalties and yet 3 Devil ppg’s later and another loss. Ranger’s come in Saturday with the #2 PP in the league, so it could be more of the same… PK coach Mason must be out of ideas, but he can’t draw anything up for Middleton to not get beat back door twice..

Devil’s owned the Wild in faceoffs all night and thus controlled most of the play…

Another great game by Rossi…

Not sure you can blame the penalties as much as the kill. Basically took 3 until the empty net desperation stuff. The PK is just so leaky, and they coulda used one more big save from Gus on the Bratt goal.

New lines were cookin

I wonder what goalie the Devils will pickup for their cup run?

Come on Billy, work your magic on a Flower for Holtz trade…

at least the Wild PK wont have to deal with Adam Fox next game, unfortunately it looks like he might have a serious knee injury…

Another game, another 5 goals allowed. Nothing but swiss cheese on defense here.

gimruis wrote:

Another game, another 5 goals allowed. Nothing but swiss cheese on defense here.

3 were ppg’s but I hear ya…5-5 play has gotten better and the new lines played pretty well in periods 2&3 so there’s some hope… at least were not the Sharks…

JoeMX1825 wrote:

at least were not the Sharks…

Did they lose again last night? I checked the scoreboard and it said they were 0-8-1 through 9 games.

Meanwhile, Vegas’s record was 8-0-1 through 9.

Vancouver got a TD and a FG last night. Impressive.

Had almost the exact same start last year and then GMBG made the blockbuster trade to bring in the key player who turned the season around. So how long until they trade for Reavo again?

They’re coming out flat and getting behind. Then when they’re buzzing and making a come back in the 3rd the goalies can’t make the big saves to keep them in it. PK has been debilitating, really miss Freddy and also Shaw there. Boldy should be tried on the PK, Kirill too.

watched the game recap video and Middleton and Mermis were absolutely exposed this game, the Devils PP knew exactly what it was doing the entire time, they would pull the Wild players away from the crease and then beat them to the scoring areas with well timed puck movement…Go rewatch the Bratt PP snipe, it was purposely setup about 10 seconds before the actual goal accured, it was masterful…

Wild PK over extends itself and then either gets outworked and beaten back to the net or is not willing to block shots resulting in outmanned rebound goals in the crease…These SHOULD be fixable issues (stay in a tighter box and get in front of shots) yet they keep happening game after game…I agree they might as well just switch up thier PK rotation because the current guys can’t get it through their heads what to do…

all that said, there’s a reason why the Devils have the #1 PP in the league (certainly the 2 games against the Wild help that stat)

JoeMX1825 wrote:

Interesting they had Darby drawing up the empty net zone faceoff play instead of King..

Anybody else notice that on the telecast? King was just standing against the back glass looking pissed off, not involved at all with Darby whiteboarding the play…has Deano lost confidence in him already?

Vancouver moved upto the #2 PP in the league now, so they apparently aren’t missing him…

I noticed it too. If he is supposed to be PP guy (or man advantage), why is Darby drawing up the plays?

As others have said, it was the PK what done it. The way NJ moved the puck absolutely at will with no resistance should have told all that needed to be said, they were going to score, it was only a question of how many.

Can’t really fault Boldy at the end, he had to take that empty net interference and hope he could get away with it or it was game over anyway. But there were certainly some stupid stick penalties that you just can’t have against a PP like NJ.

The D just isn’t good. Middleton got cooked on several plays last night and was lucky to only give up 1 goal because of it.

Re King being sidelined, the writing is on the wall for that clown. Sorry, but he ain’t the guy. The PP was THE issue going out of last season and if all he’s managed to do is what we have now, then it’s time to move on.

CaptainMusky wrote:

I noticed it too. If he is supposed to be PP guy (or man advantage), why is Darby drawing up the plays?

it’s possible Darby is tasked with end of game strategies, but you’d think King would at least be involved in the discussion…

tswoboda wrote:

Had almost the exact same start last year and then GMBG made the blockbuster trade to bring in the key player who turned the season around. So how long until they trade for Reavo again?

They’re coming out flat and getting behind. Then when they’re buzzing and making a come back in the 3rd the goalies can’t make the big saves to keep them in it. PK has been debilitating, really miss Freddy and also Shaw there. Boldy should be tried on the PK, Kirill too.

I was at the game and this is mostly how I saw it to. Short side under the blocker goals hurt them last night.
KK looks pretty pissed off out there. Several signs of frustration when skating back to the bench.

I think there was three body checks the whole game.

Crowd was super flat getting scored on so early.

Ripjiggen wrote:

KK looks pretty pissed off out there. Several signs of frustration when skating back to the bench.

I think the good part of this is that he’s pissed off at HIMSELF and not others…his post game presser was all about the mistakes & turnovers HE’s making out there and how HE has to be so much better… That’s just the kind of person/player Kirill is…ZERO whining about other players making mistakes…at least that’s what fans can see/hear publicly, who knows what he’s texting on the team group chat

interesting, Joe Smith reporting at practice that PP1 unit is Kaprizov-Rossi-Boldy-JoJo-Ek (5 forwards!)

JoeMX1825 wrote:

interesting, Joe Smith reporting at practice that PP1 unit is Kaprizov-Rossi-Boldy-JoJo-Ek (5 forwards!)

I like it!

No Zuccy too. Wonder how he looks if separated from 97 for a while.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

interesting, Joe Smith reporting at practice that PP1 unit is Kaprizov-Rossi-Boldy-JoJo-Ek (5 forwards!)

And now they will have a completely left handed pp.
Opponents won’t have to worry much about anything coming from the right of the goalie. That should really help with their faceoffs, not.
That should really help the pp

tswoboda wrote:

No Zuccy too. Wonder how he looks if separated from 97 for a while.

Probably not too good.

Uhoh Jack Hughes hurt…

I don’t know if he didn’t this last game because I couldn’t watch because Bally sports app was crashed for the third game in a row but, I saw a tweet from Russo saying the top line was KK Rossi and Boldy for the entire practice today.

Yeah that line scored 2 goals last game. After the first period they rolled:

Kirill-Rossi-Boldy
Zuccy-Ek-Jojo
Foligno-Hartman-Maroon
Letteiri-Dewar-Duhaime

I liked the lines a lot and thought they controlled the game at 5v5

At practice yesterday the had Ek and Hartman swapped.

I like jumbling the lines but really worried Zucc will be completely lost on another line. He has been kind of lost all season but this might make it even worse.

Macklin Celebrini would look great in a Wild jersey next year….

Oh my aching ass. 3 to 0 Rangers after 5 shots.