Wild 2015-16

Agreed on the trap. It seems that announcers like to gravitate to certain buzzwords and make excuses or justifications for how their team is either winning or losing.
I would say under Lemaire they were certainly a trap team which was in the neutral zone. Now, I think they focus more on pressuring the puck in the offensive zone which is just a good forecheck IMO vs a “trap”.
We still have several games in hand in comparison to those teams above us, but I don’t like how Chicago seems to be getting away from us. I would like to pass them in the standings.
I think Dallas is going to come back to the pack a bit as will St Louis.
There are only 2 teams who have fewer regulation losses than the Wild and both of whom are Division leaders. That shows that if we had a better fate in 3-3 OT we would likely be #2 in our Division even though we have played 2 or 3 fewer games than those in front of us.
Pick up a couple of those games and BOOM, we sit second.

I watch the opponent feed every time I can. Some of them are really good. Some of them I wonder if they took the job because they were fired from college lacrosse announcing. They literally sound pretty clueless about hockey in general.

I think its pretty safe to say it will be Wild, Hawks, Stars and Blues in the top 4. You might as well throw Nashville in there too. I think they have enough separation that they will be 1-5, eve with Colorado getting a little hot as of late.

@deertracker wow both of our teams are lighting it up this week! We are both in triple digits and the nearest other team has 81 points!

Koivu in. I think that news means either they lay an egg or blow them out. No middle ground.

Koivu’s laziness led to the winning goal…in OT he goes for a line change with the Flyers best player holding the puck skating into our zone, simple 3-2 and bang back door goal…game over!

How many times has he done that in OT now that leads to a loss? I haven’t read any mention of it by Russo, why do they protect Mikko? It was so obvious, I was yelling at my TV “Mikko wtf are you changing for?”

Mikko is certainly to blame for that one and I think 1 or 2 others like it in OT. The problem is the guys gas themselves in the offensive zone and then have nothing in the tank left when the other team gets possession and goes the other way. Do they play defense dead tired? That is about as good as making a bad change hoping the fresh guy can get in there fast enough while the other 2 players hold them off. I prefer them making a change while still in the offensive zone. One guy at least needs to switch if they are in the zone for more than 15 seconds.
It isn’t smart hockey that they are playing on OT and I don’t think much of that has anything to do with coaching, just the players making poor decisions.

They had 2 or 3 prime chances they should have buried before that. Not excusing what Mikko did.

My prediction was a little off. I think they played an average game.

Take a look at this line change, unacceptable…

The puck was carried in the zone in the yellow area I highlighted (couldn’t get Koivu going off the ice and the puck in the zone in the same frame)

Attachments:

1. 

   koivu.jpg
   

Lol, I don’t think that was needed. I doubt anyone will disagree Koivu screwed up.

Think Dubnyk/Granlund/Scandella are all saying “Thanks Mikko!”

Attachments:

1. 

   mikko-2.jpg
   

it’s just so bad…. if we miss out on the playoffs by 1 point, this is a good play to look at…..

I just don’t like how Yeo/Russo protect’s Mikko in the press…. If this was done by one of the “Young Guys” there would be a story about it…or Yeo would call them out in the post game presser….

Can someone tell me what Granny contributes? He doesn’t shoot, so no goals, too small to use the body, lately his stick handling has been poor at best. I just don’t see his worth.

@deertracker get those guys off your bench. Could come down to the wire. You have a nice lead, but I have a pretty full line up tonight.

I’m set for today. It has been a great back and forth match-up this week.
DT

I wish my team scored like this every week.

My hockey bobble heads are in serious need of a Zamboni.

Attachments:

1. 

   image47.jpeg
   

tegg wrote:

My hockey bobble heads are in serious need of a Zamboni.

Cripes. You need to have an energy audit. Get some window insulation, just your office alone is probably the cause of global warming.

Grouse

tegg wrote:

My hockey bobble heads are in serious need of a Zamboni.

you need to add about 3 inches of Chia beard to that Burns bobblehead face…

@deertracker I wish our league adjusted points for penalty minutes like our last league. No way a guy should get 5 points for fighting. Even worse, in the same week my opponent had Philly’s Simmonds. In that week he got thrown out twice in separate games, so his 5, 10 and game misconduct = 15 points….twice!

I’ll have to look up how many points I got when Marchand was suspended. I didn’t realize until recently that we got points for penalties.
DT

Yuck…that was snoozer. Is the mid season slump arriving late this year?

I want to keep seeing Reilly. There’ll be some growing pains, but he looks like another shot at an offensive defenseman.

Good thing I forgot to record the game I guess.
DT

I’m new to this thread and forum, and didn’t want to read way back. But, I’m a diehard fan. I’m read from Russo that we’re high up in talks for Drouin and Tampa is asking for Dumba in return. Not sure how I feel about that, but I’m starting to wonder if they are keeping Reilly up here to see if he can do what Dumba has been, because they are considering that trade. It’ll be interesting to see if the Wild make a move, and what they deem a good trade!

We would be trading from a point of strength, yes Dumba is a good player with a high potential, but look at the Defenseman we have signed for the future, and we also have potential top 4 defenseman Reilly & Olfson grooming in the minors….We literally don’t have enough roster spots to play them, so somebody must get moved…

We need an infusion of offensive skill in this organization and Druin brings that…The only thing I don’t like about him is his agent…

Defense is certainly our depth, but we are short on right-handed D-men right now. Folin hasn’t been in the lineup and I would really prefer to not see Prosser out there. Really encouraged by Reilly’s play the last two games. He should have taken a shot on a couple opportunities last night, but deferred. That will come. He was making some good heady plays though. Watching him out there you really have to think just how bad Iowa is right now because he is a -26 down there!!

I’ve seen Drouin play in juniors and he is extremely talented. But he really needs that gritty line mate that can shoot the puck from anywhere and do all the dirty work. I think of Vanek when I see Drouin. Only he’s much faster.

There have been a few scars on his resume as far as character. He took being cut by the lightning his rookie year pretty hard and didn’t handle it very well at the beginning. Hopefully that was his agents doing.

Drouin for Dumba? No way. You’d be trading away a D-man that’s outscoring the winger that you’re trading for. It’d be a huge gamble because both players are young and sure, Drouin could have lots of upside, but that’s a huge gamble.

One player is not going to fix the Wild’s low offensive production. The reason we are in as good of shape as we are is because of the stingy D that holds teams like Dallas to 1 goal. Add to that we have D men with significant offensive skills and to me that’s too good to mess up on a highly speculative trade.

Wild need to focus on getting farm talent up into the big league. They also need to draw a hard line under how long they’re going to sit on some underproducing players that have trade value.

Grouse

As it stands, I think Druin’s history makes him high risk, high reward. I am normally a gambler, but trading for him makes me nervous.

Sounds like a deal is close, but a lot of teams are in the mix, but it appears he is at least heading to the western conference.

I would prefer trading somebody like Spurgeon and toss in Fontaine or Haula, but that’s not going to be enough… hopefully they get no other takers and get desperate to get a deal done…

TheFamousGrouse wrote:

Drouin for Dumba? No way. You’d be trading away a D-man that’s outscoring the winger that you’re trading for. It’d be a huge gamble because both players are young and sure, Drouin could have lots of upside, but that’s a huge gamble.

One player is not going to fix the Wild’s low offensive production. The reason we are in as good of shape as we are is because of the stingy D that holds teams like Dallas to 1 goal. Add to that we have D men with significant offensive skills and to me that’s too good to mess up on a highly speculative trade.

Wild need to focus on getting farm talent up into the big league. They also need to draw a hard line under how long they’re going to sit on some underproducing players that have trade value.

Grouse

Graovac and Folin (who is hurt) are basically our talent in Iowa. The rest of our talent is either overseas, juniors, or college. Until they move on from there, we don’t have much down there. That’s the only negative to drafting players planning to play for a University. I don’t want to part from Dumba, but we have so much defense depth, one of them are going to get traded.