In the coming days, the Minnesota Wild will face two of the Western Conference’s most talented teams in the Anaheim Ducks on Friday and the Los Angeles Kings this Sunday. The matchups are fitting for a Wild team establishing its place in the pecking order of the NHL.
The Wild enter the season with considerable hype after a solid regular season and an impressive postseason run. Couple that with the signing of free agent forward Thomas Vanek to a three-year, $19.5 million contract, and for arguably the first-time in franchise history the Wild will begin a campaign as legitimate Stanley Cup contenders.
Vegas oddsmakers Bovada set the early line for the Wild to be crowned kings of the NHL at 14 to 1, or seventh-best in the league.
The Wild dumped gasoline on those optimistic flames when they swept last year’s Central Division champions and archrival Colorado Avalanche in the opening week of the 2014-15 regular season.
Minnesota shot out of the blocks in the Home Opener and bum-rushed the Avs, overwhelming Patrick Roy’s team with unabashed energy. The Wild’s dominance at the Xcel Energy on Thursday was best emphasized statistically, not by the 5-0 scoreline, but by the shot margin of 48-17. The near-50 flings on net broke a Minnesota franchise record held since 2002.
Veterans of the media contingent that chronicled the Wild last season, including their epic 7-game playoff series with the Avs, were flabbergasted by the result. Think about that for a second: The men and women paid to watch this team and retain the most knowledge about them were absolutely stunned.
The two team’s rosters closely resemble last year’s renditions that met in the postseason apart from a couple major moves. The Wild signed Vanek, while Colorado lost Paul Statsny but in turn signed Jerome Iginlia and Alex Tanguay. That’s what makes the win all the more striking: If anyone should have known what Minnesota can do on the ice it’s the Avalanche.
After the game, Wild players said as much and played down their impressive showing at every turn. Ryan Suter sounded as if the team had lost due to his somber tone.
"This was one of 82," said the alternate captain. "No matter, win or lose, you reset and you get ready for the next game.”
Zach Parise was quite easily the player of the game, scoring one goal, setting up two more and firing eight shots on net. He along with his linemates Jason Pominville and Mikael Granlund were the stars of the show by scoring four of the five goals.
In fact, the first line combo was so impressive that head coach Mike Yeo said after the game that he doesn’t plan on splitting them up anytime soon. That’s a marked difference from the coach who not only juggles lines from game to game but sometimes from shift to shift. Yeo and Parise both maintained this would remain the status quo throughout this fall’s training camp and preseason. That’s how dominant they were.
Still, Parise was less than enthused after the game, too.
“It was great but we're not going to put up five every night," he said. "We caught Colorado on an off night, let's be honest, they are much better team than that. It was kind of a combination of us being pretty excited for the home opener, and I think they were pretty flat. It's going to be a much better team that we're going to play against on Saturday."
But then it happened again. The Wild picked up right where they left off in the rematch in Denver, taking the lead within the first few minutes and going on to shutout their division foes twice in two games.
At the age of 24, Darcy Kuemper, who got the nod in the opener ahead of Niklas Backstrom, is the youngest goaltender in NHL history to post shutouts in each of his team’s first two games of a season, according to the Elias Sports Bureau.
Despite having his future in limbo over the summer, Kuemper told the media on Tuesday that he prepared hard during the offseason.
“[I] was training hard and making sure I was in good shape physically for the kind of workload that it takes to play at this level and just trying to prepare my body,” he said.
It was originally believed that the two goalies would split duty to begin the season, but with Kuempers quick start expect to remain in goal, at minimum until he allows his first goal of the season. The No. 1 job between the posts will be his if he continues down this path.
Being thrust into the postseason pressure cooker has helped Kuemper.
“I think that experience is something that you can really use to grow on,” he said, “and it kind of makes a base that you want to build off of and just been trying to get better every day and keep improving my game.”
I contended in the elevator on the way down to the locker room on Thursday that the Avalanche should have been better prepared for the Wild, especially since they were the team that eliminated them from the playoffs. A fellow media member responded, “Maybe. But this is not the same Wild team from last year. I don’t recognize them.”
It’s worth noting that the Wild only snuck into the playoffs in the first year of the Parise-Suter era. They are the cornerstones of this franchise, but there’s more there. The youth movement, general manager Chuck Fletcher and, maybe most quietly, head coach Mike Yeo deserve ample praise as well.
Yeo has the big picture in mind.
“But for us, we’re two games into the season, let’s not get too excited here,” he said. “We have to be pleased with the start, but we can talk about our start more after four games than after two.”
Colorado did try to adjust on Saturday with one clear strategy in mind: physicality. Roy’s message to his team must have resembled, “hit them every shift and finish every single check,” because that’s what the Avs tried to do. It did seem to slow the Wild, who have been accused of vulnerable to bruising teams, a little bit.
The bullying-nature of the Avs gameplan was never more apparent than when Erik Johnson lunged into Erik Haula at full speed while egregiously leading with his elbow. The collision of the two former Gophers left Haula on the ice clutching his face and Johnson ejected from the game.
The Wild are a skilled team no doubt, but it’s a known fact around the league that they lack size up front. It’ll be worth monitoring how the Wild maneuvers this throughout the season as injuries could threaten to derail this promising squad.
With a chance to reflect on the immaculate start, Parise actually attributed the Wild’s defense as the key cog.
“I thought the best part was the way we played away from the puck, when we had our forwards back-check, the way we held gaps and made smart reads and took away a lot of Colorado’s speed,” he said. “That was probably the best part of those two games.”
Possibly the lone negative for the Wild coming from the first week of the season was the play of rookie defenseman Matt Dumba. The 20-year-old excited in preseason with his offensive upside, but looked severely out of his depth in both games. Dumba seemed to particularly struggle with the physical side of the game.
Dumba begin last season with the Wild, but played briefly and was eventually sound down the AHL affiliate in Iowa after 13 games. Yeo said before Saturday’s game that the team doesn’t have room “to hide any players.” The young defenseman’s spot on the team is as questionable as anyone’s right now.
In contrast, fellow rookie defenseman Christian Folin upped his stock by making a few plays but primarily doing what he does best and what most defensive players hope to do: go unnoticed. His smooth style doesn’t always catch the eye but its effectiveness is all that’s needed.
The first games of the year also marked Vanek’s return to Minnesota and the first in-person look at the multitalented forward in a green sweater. The Austria native hasn’t grabbed headlines in his first few contests but earned his first point as a member of the Wild when he provided a silky assist for Jason Zucker’s nail-in-coffin goal on Saturday.
Watching Vanek it’s clear he will be a handful in front of the net all season. The forward’s go-to position is to circle the opposing team’s goal like a shark around its prey. One of his best yet more subtle skills is his ability to deflect the puck on goal, an attribute of his that ranks among the best in NHL. In addition to Vanek, only Rick Nash and Alexander Ovechkin have had nine-straight 20-goal seasons since 2005.
It’s no wonder his arrival has an already cup-crazy city drifting into the realm of hysteria.
The teams ranked ahead of the Wild in those Vegas betting circles include the Ducks and the Kings as well as the Chicago Blackhawks and the St. Louis Blues – all teams Minnesota will have to surpass to even have a shot at the cup.
The Ducks are pegged as the second-best bet while the Kings hoisted the most coveted trophy in sports for the second time in three years last summer.
This weekend provides the first chance for the Wild to show they deserve to be mentioned among the high rollers.
| Nicolas Hallett is a staff writer for 105 The Ticket. He recently graduated from the University of Minnesota and has written for the Murphy News Service, the Minnesota Daily and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Follow him on Twitter @NicolasHallett |