Minnesota Wild (17-9-5) 39pts 4th in the Central
2.29 Goals For (24th)
2.26 Goals Against (4th)
20.8% Power Play (7th)
78% Penalty Kill (26th)
Top 5 Scorers:
1. #11 Zach Parise ~ 12G 12A = 24pts
2. #9 Mikko Koivu ~ 6G 17A = 23pts
3. #29 Jason Pominville ~ 14G 6A = 20pts
4. #22 Nino Niederreiter ~ 5G 10A = 15pts
5. #20 Ryan Suter ~ 0G 15A = 15pts
Top 3 PIM's:
1. #28 Zenon Konopka ~ 37 PIM's
2. #4 Clayton Stoner ~ 31 PIM's
3. #39 Nate Prosser ~ 19 PIM's
Top Goaltenders:
1. #37 Josh Harding (15-4-3) 1.52GAA .935%SP 3SO
2. #32 Niklas Backstrom (2-4-2) 2.91GAA .897%SP
Vs.
San Jose Sharks (19-5-5) 43pts 2nd in the Pacific
3.34 Goals For (3rd)
2.34 Goals Against (9th)
18.2% Power Play (15th)
81.7% Penalty Kill (17th)
Top 5 Scorers:
1. #19 Joe Thornton ~ 5G 27A = 32pts
2. #39 Logan Couture ~ 10G 18A = 28pts
3. #12 Patrick Marleau ~ 12G 15A = 27pts
4. #8 Joe Pavelski ~ 9G 18A = 27pts
5. #48 Tomas Hertl ~ 14G 9A = 25pts
Top 3 PIM's:
1. #10 Andrew Dejardins ~ 42 PIM's
2. #42 Matt Pelech ~ 22 PIM's
3. #18 Mike Brown ~ 19 PIM's
Top Goaltenders:
1. #31 Antti Niemi (16-4-5) 2.31GAA .915%SP 2SO
2. #32 Alex Stalock (3-1-0) 2.05GAA .930%SP
Click on "Continue Reading" for the rest of the article…
After Friday night's debacle, I'm afraid of what we're going to see tonight. In a normal world, when you get man-handled like that, you come back stronger. And when you're slated to meet one of the best teams in the league, you should come out ready to play. However, with this being the Minnesota Wild we're talking about, anything is possible. We might see that more dedicated team, that's ready to play. But then, we just may see more of what we saw Friday night. I'd like to think they learned something from Friday's game and that they treat today as a new day, a fresh start. With that in mind, it takes me back to my childhood.
Okay, for the guys reading this, I'm afraid I'm going a bit to the world of "chick lit." One of my favorite books of all time, is one from my childhood. This book comes to us from Canadian author, Lucy Maude Montgomery. If you haven't guessed by now, it's Anne of Green Gables. If you haven't read the book (and you should, or at the very least read it with your children), it's about a young girl who is adopted by an elderly brother and sister on Prince Edward Island. The young heroine, Anne, is prone to mistakes (which makes sense, as her adoptive family thought they were getting a boy to help on the farm). Her mistakes range from dying her hair green (she wanted to make her red hair "a beautiful raven black"), getting her best friend drunk (she thought she was serving her juice instead of homemade wine), and making cake with salt instead of sugar. With the mistakes that met her at every turn, her school teacher gave her a valuable bit of advice, in that "tomorrow is always fresh, with no mistakes in it…well no mistakes in it yet." Anne took that to heart, as we see she never repeats the same mistakes again. She takes valuable lessons from her mistakes, everything from what vanity gets you to how important it is to pay attention to what you're doing.
Today can be a fresh start for the Minnesota Wild, if they choose to do so. The first lesson they should take from Friday is that every goal scored is worth the same number of points. Instead of continually looking for the pretty, highlight reel goal, they should be looking and trying for any goal available. An ugly goal counts just as much as the pretty one. The pretty goal can sometimes be called a heroic one as well. But a gritty, ugly goal that comes out of a scrum in front of the net can be just as heroic if not more so. Just like Anne whose vanity lead her to end up with green hair because she wasn't satisfied with her red hair, the Wild's vanity in looking for the pretty goal led them to getting shut out in Columbus. A goal is a goal is a goal.
The Minnesota Wild can also afford to pay a bit more attention to the game, and stop making the same mistakes over and over. On Friday, Minnesota slipped into a dump and chase game, a style of game that has never worked for them. I'm sure someone will tell me "well they were tired from Thursday's game, so that's all they had the energy to do." Chasing after a puck doesn't conserve energy, in fact it looked like it drained the Wild early in the game. We also didn't see the same kind of puck control and some odd passes. If you're not paying attention to where your teammates are and your opposition are on the ice, you're going to make some boneheaded passes. Teams will look for those errant passes and take advantage of them. If you've followed the Minnesota Wild since the beginning, you will remember that back in the early days we'd wait for the opposition to make a mistake, even a small one, and take advantage of it. It's what helped keep the team competitive, when in all reality our team really had no business competing with some of the star-studded teams out there. Of course no game is ever 100% perfect. I'm not asking for that. What I'm asking for, is having better awareness and dedication on the ice. When you have that, you are going to have far fewer mistakes.
Anne loved to daydream. And sometimes that got her in trouble. Sometimes however, it helped her to chase her dreams and make them a reality. She just had to learn when it was acceptable and when it was not. The same goes for the Minnesota Wild. The team needs to have a dream, a dream that will give them some direction and something to strive toward. Ultimate, every NHL team has the same dream and goal. They simply need to focus those dreams into the determination to get there.
Today is a new day with a new team. Start fresh and do something with that fresh start where no mistakes have been made yet. But don't forget the mistakes that were made and try not to commit the same mistakes again.
Add The Sports Daily to your Google News Feed!
