MN Wild 2017-18 Official Thread

mplspug wrote:

Koivu locked up for 2 more years!

I don’t understand his detractors. He’s as solid a 2 way player as there is and he is the reigning face of the franchise. This is his 12th season (if you include lockout years)

My issue was always with the $$ amount of his contract, he was being paid #1 scoring center money (at the time) because Gaborik just left for nothing and the Wild needed to keep a face for the franchise, his agent knew that and bullied the Wild into a lopsided contract. I’m ok with the 2 year extension, although I think $4-5 million per year would have been more than fair…. We’ll need every bit of cap space to sign Dumba and Zucker long term next year…

I didn’t expect much from the team last night since the only regulars or even somewhat regulars were Coyle, Reilly, Olofsson and Stewart, and they were playing against the Jets best players, but they found a way to win in Shootout. Not sure what purpose shootout or overtime plays now. Pretty dumb if you ask me.
Michalick looked fantastic in net. He didn’t allow a goal in the period, OT and shootout that he played.
The Wild had like 12 penalties. I think Quincey half of them. LOL
Coyle looked like an animal out there! Boudreau was impressed with his Skate Day effort too saying he “breezed through it”. I’m looking for big things from him this year.
Ennis looks like he could be dynamic.
Malone on his PTO scored the shootout winner! He actually had another one where he was camped out in front of the net in the 3rd and swatted the puck out of mid air hitting the post. He is a big guy.
Foligno got in a fight and held his own. Otherwise not much to take away from what I saw, which is expected with the patchwork team out there.

I caught the end of the 2nd and the rest of the game.

Coyle really stood out both on offence and defence. I think the only other guy that stood out to me was Reilly.

Ennis and Foligno looked good. I was surprised to see that Coyle looks bigger than Foligno.

The players better learn these new slashing calls or the preseason is going to be long and worthless games where guys trying to show themselves have little chance too because of all the special team time.

mplspug wrote:

Coyle really stood out both on offence and defence.

Well, at least in the offseason Coyle didn’t forget how to miss a wide open half of the net. At least he got ‘er the second time. Give Coyle a couple of looks that a freaking bantam could score on and he’ll bury one of ’em for sure maybe.

Too much weirdness going on last night with the whistle-o-rama to be able to tell much about anything. When you spend 1 period on the PK, it’s not a good simulation of a normal hockey game.

Reilley looked good. Goaltending was good and that’s a pretty fair test with the Jets playing most of the A team. That’s about all I could tell.

Totally agree, don’t get Koivu’s detractors. Look at the stats. If you can’t call Koivu a #1 center I’m not sure who else qualifies.

Grouse

Have you guys been watching any of the other NHL pre season games?

I watched the Avs play Vegas last night and the comedy that is this “enhanced enforcement” continues! Both teams had NOT ONE, but TWO 5-3 situations in a single game because of a combo of faceoff circle minors and slashing minors. Wow.

The players are going to have to figure this out because I don’t think the NHL is backing down. And IMO why should they? I’ve complained for years about the dozen or more hand slashes that go uncalled every game because the refs for some reason had chosen to ignore ONLY hand slashing.

Same thing with faceoffs. Rule states D zone player must go stick down first AND THEN the O player must also touch stick to ice. How the refs started dropping the puck with the O player’s stick still up is beyond me.

This is going to be a wacky start to the season.

Grouse

It used to be they would address enforcing a rule for a while and then go back to being lax on it. Not sure if that is going to happen with the wrist slash though. The thing is it’s not like they never called a slash on the gloves, but now it appears just a tap on the mitts is going to get you 2. One of the sides better figure it out, because if a regular season game is going to be like this it will be unwatchable.

I am all for the slashing rule change because that was just ridiculous, but the faceoff rule change has me shaking my head.
Clearly like you noticed Grouse the teams are having a tough time adjusting to the rule changes. The Wild had like 12 penalities in the first game. I think Quincey had a “Polish Hat trick” with 4 himself (I always called those Polish hat tricks for some reason).

it’s pre-season, they are trying to force feed the new rules to the teams by over-calling it…All will be fine once the season starts for real….players will adapt…

So I missed the faceoff deal. Is that a penalty now?

mplspug wrote:

So I missed the faceoff deal. Is that a penalty now?

It’s not a new rule, they are just now focusing on enforcing the existing rules alot more…The ones I’ve seen called this preseason are obvious infractions (Home team center goes in aggressively with his stick before the away team gets their stick down) You won’t see the back & forth hacking and slashing before the puck drops in the faceoff circle anymore… again they are over-calling it in preseason so players get the idea…

A good way to think about it is in previous years you would see a player blatantly cheat and the ref would stand up and talk to the player, perhaps even throw him out…now they have the choice to give a penalty instead if justified…

I can’t wait to see Mikko with the new enforcement. He has to be close to the most tossed centerman or maybe his glaring and muttering to the linesman just makes it feel that way.

I wouldn’t count on the league backing off on these rule changes. They have a motivation here. Surprise! It’s money!

All this jerking around in the faceoff circle is burning up game time. When you’re live airing a bunch of faffing around in the faceoff circle you can’t be showing commercials. Guess what makes the money for the league?

If they stick to the new faceoff rule in a strict way they could free up 3-5 minutes of airtime per game. Split that into 15-30 second spots and what you got there is free money for the league.

Koivu is no worse than any centerman in the league who has a +50% win ratio. You get that win ratio by positioning and anticipation based on the ref’s motion. The complaining is almost always about those 2 factors and every top faceoff guy does it Koivu may have a slight disadvantage because by most accounts I’ve heard/read, he’s crabby and all Mr. Serious Finnlander all the time.

Grouse

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Koivu may have a slight disadvantage because by most accounts I’ve heard/read, he’s crabby and all Mr. Serious Finnlander all the time.

Grouse

It’s called Sisu.

tegg wrote:

It’s called Sisu.

Apparently, the Finland National Tourist board did some research in the early 2000s and found that international tourists largely avoided Finland because, well, all that sisu gets to be kind of a downer. Despite a very high level of overall happiness in the country, Finns don’t LOOK happy, like ever. That’s bad for tourism.

The solution, of course, was an ill-fated ad campaign that encouraged all Finns to look happy more. More smiling, more laughing, more of the warm and cuddly Finlander that we all know and love if there was such a thing, which of course, there isn’t.

Predictably, they didn’t move the needle much with that effort.

Grouse

The face-off enforcement is awful, no one is paying to watch a linesman hold the puck while he yells at the players for twitching their skates wrong. Just a classic move by the NHL to fix a problem that wasn’t broken.

It’s good that they’re cracking down on the slashing, though, that got really bad over the last 3-4 years. Hopefully they’ll start enforcing interference a bit more, too.

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

<div class=”d4p-bbt-quote-title”>tegg wrote:</div>
It’s called Sisu.

Apparently, the Finland National Tourist board did some research in the early 2000s and found that international tourists largely avoided Finland because, well, all that sisu gets to be kind of a downer. Despite a very high level of overall happiness in the country, Finns don’t LOOK happy, like ever. That’s bad for tourism.

The solution, of course, was an ill-fated ad campaign that encouraged all Finns to look happy more. More smiling, more laughing, more of the warm and cuddly Finlander that we all know and love if there was such a thing, which of course, there isn’t.

Predictably, they didn’t move the needle much with that effort.

Grouse

From personal experience, instead of being grumpy I would say no interaction of any kind with tourists is more likely. I remember dropping some change on a city bus one time. Might have even been in Turku which is Koivu’s home town. It sat there on the floor for the entire bus ride until I picked it up when we reached our stop.

The penalties don’t effect commercial time. There are tv time outs at set times.

“TV timeouts are two minutes long, and occur three times per period, during normal game stoppages after the 6, 10, and 14 minute marks of the period, unless there is a power play, a goal that has just been scored, or the stoppage was as a result of an icing.” Source: NHL

That’s a Facebook cover photo for Wild fans if I ever saw one.

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1 faceoff violation call lastnight, maybe 2 slashing penalties? Players evolve….

Coyle looks like he stepped up his game..using his size all night, Nino was trying to do too much…I liked Soucy’s size, man he’s a big boy…it was pretty obvious how much “bigger” our team looked on the ice (at least when Ennis wasn’t out there..he looks like a Hobbit out there…)

I’m liking what I am seeing from Kunin so far. That kid plays with fire. Similar to Parise.

Grouse, I have to disagree with you. I got to watch a lot more of the game last night(1.5 periods) and I thought Coyle was a stud out there. Maybe it’s just the preseason guys playing, but he was always in the action. I was impressed. I am sure you will blast me for this cause you are such a Coyle hater, bring it on

I obviously did not see the game last night. I liked what I saw the previous game from Coyle, but I have to temper my enthusiasm because he shows signs of being a force in the game for stretches, but then dials back. I hope seeing it in the preseason is a good sign. He is still 25 and has gotten better with each season, so maybe this year will be a breakout year of sorts.

I like seeing that Foligno had 8 hits last night.

I still see the big 3 Nino, Zucker and Coyle coming into their prime. The best is yet to come from those guys. Any given year from now on we legit have 3 guys who could all score 25+ goals in the same season.

Take Ennis and Spurgeon out of the team photo and we’re starting to look like the Ducks from a few years ago…huge team that won’t get pushed around anymore…Foligno is a good skater for his size, but I really didn’t see any sort of skill with the puck…I agree with what you’re saying about Coyle, I think it was last year when he was a force early on they started to really fade away, hopefully it was just a learning moment and he can sustain it all year…he was bulldozing D trying to step up on him against the boards, fun to watch…

Foligno probably has more goals off his body that his stick blade. I wouldn’t count on him breaking 10 goals, although he does have a pretty damn good wrister, especially top shelf glove side (goalie with glove on left hand).

He’ll be important on the PK and putting some hits on some guys.

Even though the team has gotten bigger, the best part is that all those guys can still skate really well.

Besides having Crosby healthy for two straight years, the biggest reason that Pitt repeated is all those guys can really fly – Sheehan, Bonino, Kessel, Sheary can all really get up and down the ice.

It’s also the main reason Cullen is still playing at 40, he’s a fitness freak who’s still a great skater. Size will help the Wild a lot but you need to skate in today’s NHL and they can still do that.

Look, all you Coyle fans out there in Wild Land, JoeMX summed up perfectly my issue with Coyle: The maddening INCONSISTENCY.

JoeMX1825 wrote:

I agree with what you’re saying about Coyle, I think it was last year when he was a force early on they started to really fade away, hopefully it was just a learning moment and he can sustain it all year…

I know, I know, it’s easy for Wild fans to have a man crush on Coyle because he’s a big body, and as we all know, the Wild are basically a team of total midgets.

I just want Coyle to be a big body that actually puts up points with some regularity! What was it last year, he had multiple 10+ games in a row with 0 points? And what was the streak with no goals? I think he had over a 20 game stretch where he had just 1 goal in 20+ games! Come on, we need more than that from a FW on lines like he’s playing on. Those are D-man numbers.

Now in fairness, I believe last year WAS Coyle’s best year ever in a Wild sweater, so yes I agree maybe the signs are there that it’s SLOWLY starting to happen. So maybe this will be the year. I’d love to see it happen.

Grouse

Help us all, they are trying to bring the politics of last week into the hockey arena. Don’t these people know that for somethings, if you ignore them they do go away. If you address them you open a damn can of worms when all I did was stop in for a beer.

I like the new offsides challenge rule this year. If you lose the challenge it doesn’t effect your time outs, you get a delay of game penalty, which is exactly what it is.

Goalie interference remains the same. You lose a timeout.

Are Stewart’s days in MN numbered? He had a fight in the first period. Kind of pointless in a preseason game. His stats are terrible, clearly worst person on team. We have Winnick on a PTO, but would need room to sign him. Winnick would be an upgrade over Stewart. I like Stewie, I just think to get better we need to move on. I believe the wild could send him to ahl and not all of his cap would count on nhl roster, but they still have to pay his full salary for playing in nhl. That’s another option besides a trade.

CaptainMusky wrote:

Are Stewart’s days in MN numbered? He had a fight in the first period. Kind of pointless in a preseason game. His stats are terrible, clearly worst person on team. We have Winnick on a PTO, but would need room to sign him. Winnick would be an upgrade over Stewart. I like Stewie, I just think to get better we need to move on. I believe the wild could send him to ahl and not all of his cap would count on nhl roster, but they still have to pay his full salary for playing in nhl. That’s another option besides a trade.

for sure with the logjam of forwards we already have and his $1 million chunk of the cap…we need draft picks in return, we have no room for meh players coming back…