A trio of takeaways from Minnesota’s 3-2 win over Columbus

Winning Ugly

Following a pair of road losses to previously winless teams, Minnesota appeared poised to complete the hat trick against 0-7-0 Columbus. With new coach John Tortorella behind the Blue Jackets’ bench for the first time, having just replaced fired former Wild coach and Gopher defenseman Todd Richards, Columbus scored twice in the second half of the opening period to lead 2-1 at the break.

Minnesota coach Mike Yeo said he stressed to his team the importance of being ready for a hard game against a desperate team auditioning for a new coach and that’s exactly what the Wild got.

“Obviously the first period is not the way we drew it up,” Yeo said. “But what was important is we didn’t let that get to us, we found our game, we got to it and got a big win.”

After falling behind early, the Blue Jackets outshot Minnesota 13-6 through 20 minutes and played with a bit more jump in their step than did the Wild after another long layoff. But Minnesota revisited its early-season penchant for grinding out a win despite being outplayed for significant stretches. second period goals by Nino Niederreiter and Thomas Vanek turned out to be the difference.

“I just feel like we talked so much about how hard they were going to come out and how hard they were going to play, I don’t know if we psyched ourselves out or what,” Wild assistant captain Zach Parise said. “But it was a pretty ugly start for us.”

Coming into the game, Minnesota had played just three games in 11 days with breaks of four and three days, respectively. Yeo said the current stretch of six games in 10 nights beginning with Columbus will help breed consistency.

“There’s parts of every game that are good but we’re not playing a complete full 60 minutes,” Yeo said. “We’re not unlike 29 other teams in the league right now but we’ve had all these long breaks and we just need to get into games and we have to make sure we use these games to continue to get better.”

Dubnyk’s struggles

Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk continues to struggle to regain the form he exhibited last season through five starts, despite his 4-1-0 record which belies his 2.81 goals against average and .896 saves percentage.  Handed an early lead, Dubnyk allowed the Blue Jackets to knot the score at 1-1 midway through the opening period on a soft goal from a sharp angle.

Dubnyk got caught out high above his crease and could not recover in time and Columbus forward Alexander Wennberg’s shot from the bottom of the left circle banked off Dubnyk’s right pad and in.

“I didn’t get a good rotation, I blew my edge twice on the push,” Dubnyk said. “Those are just things I’ve got to sharpen up on and that’ll come with getting more comfortable as we go.”

Dubnyk recovered to finish with 27 saves, including a remarkable stop with his outstretched right pad on Wennberg late in the second period after saving Cam Atkinson’s original shot from the right circle. Dubnyk said the final two periods were all about positioning for him which should help in the games ahead.

“I wanted to get back in my depth a little bit as far as where I was playing,” Dubnyk said. “I kind of got back to where I wanted to be in my net in the second and third period and it gave me a chance to feel good about my game.”

$196 million duo

The Wild’s top paid players, Ryan Suter and Parise hooked up to give Minnesota the early lead, each taking advantage of a miscue by Columbus defenseman Jack Johnson, whose first impression on Tortorella was not a good one.

Johnson carried the puck behind his own net before sending the puck up the boards where Suter picked it up in stride just inside the blue line. As Johnson drifted into the slot, his eyes fixated on Suter stickhandling into the left corner, he never saw Parise barreling toward the right post behind him.

Suter did, however, and fired a pass through the crease just as Parise arrived and he buried his league-leading sixth goal of the season behind Blue Jackets’ goaltender Sergei Bobrovsky just 5:14 into the game. Suter’s sixth assist of the year ties him for second among the league’s defensemen.

Was it a case of two long-time buddies being on the same page?

“It was more luck than anything,” Parise admitted. “I’d love to say it was chemistry or clicking but he was just throwing it in front and it hit my shin pad and it was a lucky one.”

Suter was not done assisting his close friend, coming to Parise’s aid at a critical moment midway through the third period. With Minnesota leading 3-2 and pressing to extend its lead, Parise turned the puck over to dangerous Columbus forward Nick Foligno high in the Blue Jackets’ zone.

Foligno broke through the neutral zone alone but Suter raced rink wide to chase Foligno down and ride him harmlessly into the boards to erase the threat.

“I don’t know what happened there,” Parise said of his turnover. “Yeah, he bailed me out on one there.”

The post Wild grind out another win appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

I vaguely remember ranting about a topic similar to the one I am about to embark on, but this was something that I just could not ignore.

Last Saturday the Calgary Flames and the Vancouver Canucks orchestrated hockey version of a bar-room brawl.

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8-misconducts were given out and a total of more than 200 penalty minutes were assessed. But this was not a ‘heat-of-the-moment, talk-about-your-mother impromptu throw-down. This was orchestrated. The fourth lines from each team started the game, which in hockey consists of guys whose strength is—well not hockey (think Happy Gilmore with a bit more talent). After the opening whistle punches were thrown, although if you watch the video it seemed that not everyone was up for this, and guys beat each other’s brains in. Fans cheered, guys got tossed and I’m fairly certain NHL Senior Vice President of Player Safety Brendan Shanahan’s phone rang off the hook … it was only 2 seconds into the game.

This was not only a train wreck and a huge black eye for hockey (see my earlier column on senseless violence in the NHL) but it was far from over.

In between periods Vancouver head coach John Tortorella tried to go into Calgary’s locker room to get into a fight of his own and keep this going. Think about this: A COACH TRIED TO GO FIGHT A WHOLE TEAM! My only regret is that one of the Flames didn’t take a shot at Torts and bust his nose.

There are so many things wrong with this series of events, so I’ll start at the top: This was orchestrated, not by a player, but the player’s coaches! The same guys who are supposed to win games, but also keep the best interest of his players at heart. In the NHL road teams submit their roster’s first which means Flames coach Bob Hartley felt like he wanted to send his guys out there to get punched in the face—all in the name of a game that hadn’t even started yet. Yes, Vancouver is a huge rival but I think it’s a little irresponsible for a coach, who by the way doesn’t have to worry about concussions, to send a group of his guys out to risk getting one. And if you scoff at the idea that fights can cause that—concussions are only the beginning. In 2009 a junior hockey player died after his head hit the ice during a fight.

Did Tortorella or Hartley consider this when they sent their players out? I certainly hope not, because in a sick way that would make this even worse. It’s a cowardly move. This is a hockey game, not war gentleman. You’re not Napoleon.

Tortorella is also a repeat offender. It seems General Tort’s did the same thing in March 2012 as coach of the Rangers, calling out Devils coach Peter DeBoer before a line brawl.

You might be thinking, “Hey Dave, these guys are grown men, they can speak up and say no”. Sure they could. And with it they’d get a one way ticket to Abbotsford, BC or Utica, NY, while being placed on the ‘not a team player’ black list. Imagine if your boss asked you to do something that you didn’t want to do and you declined. They have a term for that, it’s called insubordination and many professions see it as a fire-able offense.

Featured Image:
Vancouver Canucks head coach John Tortorella yells at the Calgary Flames bench holding players and head coach Bob Hartley in the first period at Rogers Arena.
(PHOTO: Gerry Kahrmann/Postmedia News)

For Tortorella’s latest antics he got … a 15-DAY suspension without pay while Hartley got a $25,000 fine. That’s it. Keep in mind that in our legal system this would have been the second time Tortorella had organized an assault and would face jail time. The fact that he lost just six games for this second offense is deplorable. And it undermines everything the NHL should stand for. This is not the 1980’s or 1990’s. We know now the correlation between hits to the head and brain damage and because of that there should be fewer fights, while organized brawls should have no part in the game. It brings nothing to the game, but has the potential to do so much harm. This was a teachable moment for Brendan Shanahan. The right thing to do was make an example of Tortorella and Hartley so that not only would they never do it again, but so that any other coach thinking about doing this in the future, would not.

There was a time that an old joke would perfectly encapsulate this incident: “So I went to a boxing match last night and hockey game broke out”. But there is nothing funny about what happened in Vancouver. The only punch line here were the ones that players involved were forced to throw and the only joke was the so-called discipline that came from it.

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