Preseason Gameday Thread: vs. St. Louis

Before we get to the gameday thread, a few things.

First, I apologize for the site outages lately. Our hosting company here at Hockey Primetime has been spotty the last few days and, for that, I apologize to all of my readers. We’re hoping that the issues have been resolved and that no more outages occur.

Second, for those of you who haven’t heard, Brad Staubitz will be suspended for the first three games of the regular season while James Wisniewski will be suspended for the first eight. Click the links to see the explanation videos made by Brendan Shanahan.

This is a total editorial side note here, and has nothing to do with the post today at all, but I’m glad that someone is finally taking discipline in the NHL seriously. The season hasn’t even started yet and Shanahan has already made Colin Campbell look more like a joke than he already looked, which one may not have thought possible.

Also, if you haven’t heard, the Wild signed Aaron Boogaard to a two-way deal yesterday. Boogaard has reported to Houston and will attend Aeros training camp.

Anyway, on to the game preview

The Wild made their big cuts on Sunday, as most of you probably already know, so it’s going to be mostly regulars in the line up tonight with the exception of a few banged up players. So, who are we going to see?

Per Wild.com:

The Wild’s top line returns for their second appearance. In their first, they combined for three of the four goals in a 4-3 overtime win over Columbus. Casey Wellman will take the spot of Matt Cullen, who is a little banged up after taking a hit into the boards against Pittsburgh:

Setoguchi-Koivu-Heatley
Latendresse-Wellman-Bouchard
Powe-Brodziak-Clutterbuck
Gillies-Nystrom-Bulmer

Stoner-Spurgeon
Zanon-Zidlicky
Schultz-Scandella

Backstrom and Harding

There you have it, folks. With the exception of Mike Lundin (back), Staubitz (suspension) and Cullen (I’m assuming head), that’s the Wild’s line up.

A few things I see about this.

First of all, this is a tremendous opportunity for Casey Wellman. Everyone and their mother has been saying that Wellman is the type of player that won’t be effective unless he’s playing with some top-six caliber players and that’s what he’s got tonight with Bouchard and Latendresse.

There have been questions about Cullen’s ability to be a second-line center and, who knows, maybe Wellman impresses enough tonight to give Yeo pause about sticking Cullen into that position.

Also, getting another look tonight is Brett Bulmer, on the fourth line with Nystrom and Gillies. There’s going to be a lot of energy on that line, so that could be a fun one to see.

I’ve got a couple of sick kids, so no questions today for this one. The puck drops at 7pm today and will be streamed live on Wild.com.

Enjoy!

Mid-Morning Musings: Devils and Gestures and Headshots. Oh My!

***Mid-Morning Musings is a feature that I’ll be doing every couple days (read: every day the Wild don’t have a game) during the week here at Wild Nation. It will have to do with anything and everything hockey related, Wild or otherwise, so sit back and enjoy my opinionated ramblings.***

Could things get any worse for the Devils right now?

I mean, honestly. Any worse?

First they get out to their horrific start, then they have to deal with a knee injury to Zach Parise and now Martin Brodeur is looking like he will have to miss time?

Let’s make one thing abundantly clear here. The Devils are a good team playing bad hockey. They’re much better than their 4-9-1 record indicates. But at the same time, they’re a team that’s doing next to nothing to get themselves out of this slump.

But, as much as this is the player’s and the coach’s fault, some of the blame with this has got to fall on Lou Lamoriello and the rest of the front office and ownership.

This team’s off season put them in this situation.

Lou addressed a big need on this team in bringing in Anton Volchenkov and Henrik Tallinder on defense – they were shrewd signings and very important ones at that. But then he did something very un-Lou-like.

Now I don’t know if it was pressure from the owner or a slight break in his better judgment, but the signing of Ilya Kovalchuk was not only ill-conceived, it was ill-timed as well.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Kovie. I think he’s a much better player than people give him credit for and I’m the first to jump to his defense. He was a point-per-game player for them and gave them another offensive weapon.

But the team was 13-9-5 while he was there. Not a bad record, to be sure, but look at the results. They never put together more than two wins in a row – something they did seven separate times before his arrival (four three-game winning streaks, and one five-game, four-game and six-game streak apiece). They also went on losing streaks (no matter how small) four times – something they did just five times the entire rest of the season.

Did he help their offense? Not a ton – approximately 2.81 goals for with Kovie against about 2.65 without.

The only thing that he did was come into the locker room and mix up a team that had very good chemistry prior to his arrival.

And you re-sign him?

You can say what you want about this team, but the franchise’s Stanley Cup hopes were squarely in the capable hands of Zach Parise and Travis Zajac. The two were gelling and were beginning to come into their own as players in the league.

Give them another season together and they would have been the one-two punch that the Devils needed. But instead, you bring in Kovalchuk and screw up their chemistry.

So what you are left with now is a team that doesn’t know how they’re going to get under the salary cap once players return from injury and, what’s more, a team that doesn’t know how they’re going to keep their top players after signing Kovalchuk, not to mention one whose chemistry has been drastically altered in a bad way by his signing.

Any way you cut it; this was just a poor, poor decision by Lou.

*****

A lot has been made of the suspensions so far this season, and I definitely agree that the disciplinary culture of the NHL needs to be looked at in a big way.

So far, here’s what the suspensions look like (from the 2010-11 NHL fines and suspensions wiki page):

Date	Name	Team	Offense	Length
9/24/10	Nick Boynton	Blackhawks	Throat-slashing gesture	1 game
10/4/10	Mike Cammalleri	Canadiens	Slashing Nino Niederreiter	1 game
10/10/10	Pierre-Luc Letourneau-Leblond	Devils	Instigator penalty in last 5 minutes of game	1 game
10/12/10	James Wisniewski	Islanders	Obscene gesture to Sean Avery	2 games
10/12/10	Niklas Hjalmarsson	Blackhawks	Boarding Jason Pomminville	2 games
10/18/10	Shane Doan	Coyotes	Blindside hit to the head of Dan Sexton	3 games
10/22/10	Rick Rypien	Canucks	Grabbing a Minnesota Wild fan	6 games
10/27/10	Stephane Robidas	Stars	Automatic suspension for two game misconduct boarding penalties within 41 games	1 game
11/1/10	Daniel Briere	Flyers	Cross-check to the head of Frans Nielsen	3 games

So far this season, 20 games worth of suspensions have been handed out – two of which were automatic suspensions (Letourneau-Leblond’s instigator penalty and Robidas’s boarding call).

But other than that, what does this really tell us?

Well, for one, it tells us that the NHL is putting a greater emphasis on its image than on the safety of the players.

Of the 20 games, 9 were for incidents that had absolutely nothing to do with a hockey play.

Yes, we can all agree that Rick Rypien should have been suspended for what he did – no question about it. But James Wisniewski and Nick Boynton?

I guess I can see it to an extent, but to what extent are you bringing more attention to it by bringing down a suspension to the player?

I’ll be honest, I was watching the Isles/Rangers game when Wiz made the gesture and I barely caught it. The broadcast didn’t replay it over and over and over again – it was a one time thing that, odds are, if I hadn’t been paying attention at that exact moment I would have missed.

But the NHL is dead set on making sure that they keep their image up. They don’t want to be seen as the “rogue sport.”

But wouldn’t their efforts towards their image be better served going towards the safety of their players?

Boynton and Wisniewski just made an innocuous gesture. One that, if you weren’t paying attention right then, you would have missed (and if myself, a 28-year old man, barely caught the gesture, what are the odds that a kid is going to be paying attention to the game long enough to catch it?) and one that, at the end of the day, kids are likely seeing and hearing worse than on the playground?

I understand that you want to make sure that players know that this isn’t okay. I get it. But don’t we have anything better to do with our time?

So here’s a thought. Gestures, anything like that – automatic game misconduct, they forfeit that game’s salary and a $10,000 fine. There you have it. It’s over, done with. You don’t have to worry about the rogue fellatio gestures anymore.

But for plays that are dangerous to players, a suspension is needed.  So how about this?

A blindside hit to the head – automatic 3 game suspension. No questions asked, if you get booted from a game for a blindside hit to the head, you sit for three games, repeat offender or not. Heck, we can even make it reviewable by the league to ensure that the right call was made on the ice.

Sure, an automatic suspension isn’t going to quell the problem. It’s not going get rid of these types of dangerous hits immediately, nor will it likely do anything to stem the problem down the road – players who are going to be repeat offenders (yes, Matt Cooke I’m talking about you) are going to do it regardless of the ramifications – but what it will do is make sure that the players know that there’s no questions asked; if they do this, they will be suspended.

*****

That’s all for this time. Hope you enjoyed the first of many mid-morning musings. Feel free to discuss below and I’ll pipe in with my thoughts when I can.

Game Recap: Wild 4 Ducks 3

The end result definitely made what it took to get there bearable. 

But just barely. 

After two periods of some of the sloppiest hockey I’ve ever seen the Wild play, the team rebounded and in a big way. 

During the first two periods, the Wild’s play was absolutely atrocious.  They were giving away odd man rushes like candy on Halloween, to the point where they actually gave up a 4-on-1 at one point.  In fact, the only reason that the fans in the X had to cheer during the first 40 minutes of the game was when the result of the Twins game trickled down. 

But then big John Scott stepped onto the ice in the third. 

Scott was determined to stay with the team, no matter what, this season so he took boxing lessons with Derek Boogaard over the off season and man did it show.  Say what you want about fighting’s place in the game, but this fight was one of the ones that actually had a purpose. 

Scott started and ended the fight with a big right hand and the end result was pugilism specialist George Parros looking up at the rafters, wondering what train just hit him. 

The end result for the Wild?  A spark of energy that the team hadn’t had all game long. 

Suddenly, it just clicked.  It was one of those moments when, all of a sudden, you could see everything just make sense to the team.  After two periods of playing tentative, sloppy hockey, suddenly the team was loose, they were going out and actually just playing hockey instead of worrying about who needed to be where. 

It started after Joffrey Lupul went off for hooking.  Just over a minute into the powerplay, Mikko Koivu got the Wild on the board, and the team took off.  Just under six minutes after that Petr Sykora notched his first goal in a Wild sweater and the crowd began to stir — there was something special in the works.  Then, when Ryan Whitney went off for tackling holding, the X began buzzing.  Could we be seeing yet another spectacular finish to a Minnesota sports game? 

Eric Belanger would give the fans their answer just over a minute in as he beat J.S. Giguere on a goal that you could barely tell made it in the net it came out so quickly. 

So, why not.  Let’s go to overtime. 

It didn’t take the Wild long in OT, as Kyle Brodziak took a page from the Cal Clutterbuck notebook and goaded James Wisniewski into taking a penalty after the whistle.

That set up Andrew Brunette, who knows a thing or two about game winners, to be the star of the night and cap the team’s comeback with a goal on the powerplay 3:02 into OT. 

“Backs” to Basics
Despite what the stats indicate, Niklas Backstrom played a relatively solid game.  All three goals were a direct result of a defensive lapse by the team and only one of those three goals Backstrom had any sort of chance on. 

Don’t let the stat sheet fool you.  Backstrom is a top flight goalie.  But your goalie can only do so much. 

On Lupul’s goal, there is absolutely no reason why Lupul should have been standing, untouched, in front of the team’s net.  The result?  An easy tip in for the young sniper. 

On Artyukhin’s, it was a significant lack of back checking that resulted in the Russian forward being wiiiiiiiide open in the slot with an empty net in front of him.  The extra “I’s” are to emphasize just how open Artyukhin was.  Let’s just say that my one year old daughter could have buried that shot with no problem. 

On Koivu’s goal, the only one that Backstrom had any chance on, he was left untouched in the slot.  Give any NHL player that much time in the slot (except for maybe Derek Boogaard) and they’ll kill you. 

The bottom line is that the Wild have a world class goalie behind them, but they need to give him the chance to make the save.  On only one of the Ducks’ three goals, Backstrom had that chance and, on that one, Koivu had to bounce it off the pipe to get the goal. 

Rivalry Renewed
I’d equate this game to the first time you see an ex-girlfriend in a few years.  You start out amicably, but by the end of the night, you remember why the two of you broke up. 

This was a lot like that. 

The teams started out relatively calmly.  There was some physical play, but nothing that wasn’t to be expected. 

But by the end of the second period, these two teams looked to be back to flat out hating each other again.  Even to the point where the two teams were looking to extend the extra curricular activities after the game had ended. 

I’d tune in the next time these two teams face off on the 14^th. 

Time to Shine
Here’s the deal, and I can’t believe I’m actually going to say this. 

When he wasn’t trying to avoid rogue goalies last night, Benoit Pouliot actually looked pretty good. 

He didn’t get onto the score sheet and he didn’t play a big role in the game with only 5:11 in ice time, but one thing is for sure.  In that 5:11 that he was on the ice, you noticed him — and not in a bad way either. 

He was throwing his weight around and he honestly seemed to be buying into the checking role that he was playing. 

In fact, watching from up above, I got the sense that people might just think that he’s not trying hard out there because he just skates so darn effortlessly.  The man looks like he’s actually skating above the ice instead of on it. 

With Bouchard out indefinitely with an injury and the team not calling up any more forwards as of yet, Pouliot has a golden chance that he needs to seize. 

Bottom line, he needs to make it impossible for Richards to remove him from the line up — something that I think he is more than capable of. 

Flipping and Flopping
It became painfully obvious in the third period that Richards may have to re-think his line combinations. 

First, Havlat and Sykora looked like two peas in a pod playing together.  As much as I love having Bruno on Koivu’s wing, putting Koivu between Havlat and Sykora would give us a bona fide scoring line. 

Brunette has proven that he can play with nearly anybody, so why not put him on a line with Sheppard and Miettinen (of whom Bruno has already displayed a fair amount of chemistry with)? 

It would give the team a great, gritty, second line with Nolan, Belanger and Clutterbuck and it would also give the team three lines that could be fairly dangerous. 

3 Stars

1. John Scott - No goals, no assists, 5 PIM.  Scottie was the reason for the turn around.  His fight against Parros energized the crowd and energized the team.
2. Andrew Brunette - Bruno managed to turn what was a pretty bleh performance into a pretty good one with his overtime winner.  How does the saying go?  Winning heals all wounds?
3. Martin Havlat - Havlat was all over the place, assisting on the first three Wild goals.  He looks like he’s getting comfortable with the system, so it’s only a matter of time now.

Coming Up…
Check back here tomorrow for our pregame report for the team’s game against the LA Kings and be sure to check Hockey Primetime for my Central Division Notebook tomorrow!