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TALMADGE RIVER…. The NHL All Star Game break is upon us and for the Minnesota Wild perhaps this is a good thing. Yes, they beat the hapless Buffalo Sabres last Thursday eve, and then bested the Arizona Coyotes in St. Paul on Saturday night in the culmination of Hockey Day in Minnesota. So for the first time in a short while you might say that they are building some positive momentum once again. Can they sustain it? What happens when they play a tough club and run up against a bit of adversity? That’s when the true mettle of a hockey club shows up, and at least prior to these two contests the Wilds has been MIA. 

GM Chuck Fletcher finally addressed the teams goaltending woes to an extent. Bear in mind that at this point in the season no one is out peddling real good number ones, and it might be as hard to get a solid number two. But Fletcher made a deal with the Coyotes for Devan Dubnyk. Duby kind of fits Fletcher’s goalie mold in that he has size, (6’6” and 210 lbs) and at 28 has an established professional body of work of sorts and is at that age where goalies mature and come into their own. At this juncture of the year he is also sporting stats that are better then the Wilds two other mainstays this season, Darcy Kuemper and Niklas Backstrom. 

His 2.58 GAA and .919 SV% are above Kuemps and Backy.  I’ve never been a big fan of Duby’s but I also realize that he has been buried up on the frozen Edmonton plains the past few seasons on some fairly inept teams. He played 5 seasons there, and finished up last year with 2 games at Nashville, was also traded to Montreal in early March, but got assigned to AHL Hamilton and never dressed for the Habs. 

He started this year with the Coyotes and since that is my nephews home team (although he is a big Habs fan like Fan Jr and myself) I was watching him a bit closer. I believe he really benefited from having Sean Burke’s tutelage down in the desert and it showed in his game. When the Yotays number one, Mike Smith floundered a bit, Duby came in and settled things down going 9-5-2 on a team that by and large has struggled this year. He is also playing for a contract for next year and with that as a factor, and with a goalie competition between he, Kuemps and Backy, I believe the club could get a nice push from this. At any rate, the 4 points obtained in the last two tilts have helped.

But if the goaltending stabilizes for the team a bit, can the offense and defense get back on their game too? The boys are still 18th in GF, (121) and are 14th in GFA. (2.72) They stand at 6th in the league in SOG, but are 23rd in scoring percentage. They aren’t finishing or are taking a lot of low percentage, easy to get shots. They stand at 22nd in GA, (128) and are 24th in GAA at 2.88 per game. The PP is still anemic at 26th in the league and the PK is still strong at 8th in the league with an 84.1% rate. 

Aside from all of that “stuff”, what are the club realities at the midway point? I am going to put forth my opinion about that and not worry about some of the hot topics I might opine about on occasion (fighting, violence, etc) As team star Zach Parise said recently, the Wild are easy to play against. This is due at least partly to the fact that the team lacks any real large, real mean battleship type forwards. The team has some nice forwards, don’t get me wrong. But I have seen some of them get pounded this year, cleanly and dirty, and receive no pushback or beat downs from anyone wearing Green & Red. You can’t advance in this league without that respect. You must protect your own.

Experience. It is everything or it is nothing. If you are an 18 year old with the skill set of a Sid Crosby, it’s nothing. If you don’t have that, it’s everything. Out of the 27 players that have dressed for the team this year, 14 of them have 4 years or less of experience in the NHL. And for the most part, the young guys who showed much promise in last years playoffs have settled back into the realities of a long grinding NHL regular season. All other NHL players now know their tendencies, and they don’t have the experience yet to overcome that. 

Lethargy. This is a coach’s worst nightmare. Why can some teams play like they will bite the hind end off of a skunk on some nights and look like they are on sominex the next? In particular, during the Wilds recent losing malaise, featuring two of the worst performances in team history, the 7-0 drubbing by the Dallas NorthStars and the recent 7-2 paint brushing by the Pengwah, the team looked non-existent on the ice. The team and individual play looked that bad. Then again, can you really be on top of it every night in an 82 game season? 

Hope. The post All Star break can be a re-set for the team. The team only has one rep going (Ryan Suter) and before they play again, hopefully they can get in some meaningful practices, get Duby settled in and make a charge. My fear is that because of the quality of the teams in front of them in the playoff race, and because of the pace they will have to win at in order to return the playoffs, they are going to face a challenge they can’t overcome. 

They are last in the Central, and Nashville at 64 points (goaltending) has played the same number of games as the Wild (44) who have 45 points. I don’t expect them to catch the Preds. But with Winnipeg solidifying the 7th spot (1st Wildcard) with 58 points, no one else will catch them either. So, there is one spot available with 5 clubs after it. CAL, and LAK are tied for it right now at 51 points, then the N-Stars at 49 and COL at 48. With a now .500 home record and a 9-13 road record, I am not feeling it for the Wild this year. One spot for 5 teams is just plain messy, kind of like the Wild season…. PEACE

Marc Elliott is a sports opinion writer who splits his time between his hometown in Illinois and Minnesota