Classic WCHA alums blow away Hurricanes

SAINT PAUL – Early on in the Wild’s 6-3 victory over the Carolina Hurricanes Saturday night, a hat trick appeared inevitable.

Instead, the lone mention of hats might have been a reference to the Gophers’ “Minnesota, hats off to thee.”

Former University of Minnesota star Thomas Vanek scored two goals in the first 8:17 to spark a Wild offense that got goals from ex-Gophers Jordan Schroeder and Erik Haula as well as Elk River native Nate Prosser and Bloomington native Zach Parise.

With the Gophers men posting a 2-0 win over Michigan at Mariucci Arena, it was a good evening for Minnesota hockey fans.

“They need to win; we need to win, so it’s a good day for all of us,” Vanek said.

The Wild’s six goals, coming on just 24 shots including one into an empty net, were backed by another strong effort from Wild goalie Devan Dubnyk.

Dubnyk raised his record with Minnesota to 10-1-1 and the Wild, much to the delight of 19,220 at the Xcel Energy Center, raised their record in their past 10 games to 8-0-2 to tie the franchise mark for longest points streak.

With points in 12 of their past 13 games, the Wild have climbed to a 28-20-7 record for 63 points with 27 games remaining. The 63 points temporarily tied Minnesota for eighth place in the Western Conference, just three points behind sixth-place San Jose, although Calgary and Vancouver played late.

The timing of this streak has been terrific: The Wild now head on the road for games at Vancouver, Calgary and Edmonton.

“At this time of year, it’s all about getting points, and we’re getting them,” Vanek said.

Vanek got the Wild started in the first period, with a bunch of help from Justin Fontaine.

Fontaine’s forecheck created a loose puck, and Mikael Granlund found the puck and an open Vanek to make it 1-0 just 1:15 after puck drop.

Seven minutes later, Fontaine slid a perfect pass to an open Vanek to make it 2-0, and after Schroeder banged a shot past former Wild goalie Anton Khudobin at the 15:31 mark, it appeared Minnesota was in control.

But the Hurricanes outshot the Wild 13-4 in the second period to push back.

“We got the win, that’s the bottom line,” Schroeder said. “And that’s 10 consecutive games with a point, so that’s pretty cool, too.”

Carolina cut deficits of 3-0 and 4-1 to 4-3 in the second period before goals by Haula and Parise made things more comfortable.

“Unflappable,” was the word chosen by Wild coach Mike Yeo to describe his team, noting that a strange embellishment penalty called against Mikko Koivu seemed to give the Hurricanes life.

But, as Yeo said, the Wild did not wilt.

“I think we’re just kind of building our game,” Prosser said. “Each and every game we’re building our confidence, and everyone’s feeling good about their games. We’re doing all the little things right: Making sure we’re paying the price, blocking shots, taking hits to make plays. I think everyone can feel that positivity on the bench.”

Yeo tipped his hat to the play of Fontaine and Schroeder, who have moved up because of injuries to Jason Zucker and Ryan Carter, commenting that both did things “the right way.”

Fontaine picked up two assists and Schroeder one, while Granlund and Jared Spurgeon each added two assists and Vanek one.

Yeo was obviously relieved to add another win to his team’s record – the Wild will likely need to pick up 31 or 32 points over their final 26 games to make the playoffs – but Yeo was in no mood to celebrate.

“One win doesn’t mean we’re there,” he said, “and one loss doesn’t mean we’re not there. This is all just part of the process right now. We’re finally back in it. We’ve gotten ourselves closer, and there’s still an awful lot of hockey left this year.”

The post Wild win has Minnesota flavor appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Minnesota’s sixth straight win a costly one

Though they may no longer be division rivals, bad blood runs deep, and tonight certainly had that old rivalry feel to it as the Wild topped the Canucks, 5-3, for their sixth win in a row.

It was a hard-hitting, chirp-filled affair and while the Wild walked away with the win — and made up some ground in the playoff picture — the Canucks left a crucial mark as both Ryan Carter and Jason Zucker left the game early due to injury. Wild head coach Mike Yeo noted after the game that both sustained upper-body injuries and will not return to the lineup in the near future.

Playing with only ten forwards, guys stepped up as needed, including Nino Niederreiter who saw a significant up-tick in ice time and made the most of it. Niederreiter gave the Wild a 3-1 lead in the first, firing home a Mikko Koivu centering pass in the slot on his first shift with the jumbled lines.

“When that happens you need guys to step up,” Yeo said. “We had a number of guys step up tonight.”

While Nino stepped up when called upon, Jordan Schroeder made an impression early against his former team. The Canucks were buzzing from the drop of the puck, jumping out to a 4-0 lead in shots on goal. But it was Schroeder who scored first at the 5:05 mark, registering the Wild’s first shot on goal, and swinging momentum heavily in Minnesota’s favor. The goal was the first the former Golden Gopher netted in a Wild sweater and he finished the night plus-2 with three shots on goal and 12:30 TOI.

“It was great,” Schroeder said. “I was really excited, especially to pop one early against them.

“I saw (Charlie Coyle) down the middle and I knew I had a lane to the net. I yelled at him to give me the puck. It was a great play, a great pass, and I was fortunate enough to finish it.”

Overall the win allowed the Wild to keep climbing the ladder in the playoff picture, sitting in ninth in the Western Conference with 58 points, just three behind Calgary in eighth. The Wild get right back at it tomorrow night against the Jets, who currently hold that top wild card spot with 64 points.

“That’s a huge game,” Yeo said. “Now we get to look forward to another huge one tomorrow.”

The post Shorthanded Wild top Canucks appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Back-to-back trouble, Schroeder stars, Rechlicz wrecks

DES MOINES – Since John Torchetti took over at the helm for the Iowa Wild 12 games into this regular season, the improvement is noticeable in their record and he said he likes their performance “a lot” so far.

Before Torchetti took over, the team was 2-10. Since then they are 9-9-1-1, winning four out of 11 road games and five out of nine home games after finishing last season as the second-worst team in the league at home behind only the Portland Pirates, winning just 11 games at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.

Despite the improvement, Torchetti specifically mentioned one area his team could improve upon and that is their consistency when playing on consecutive nights.

“That, to me, number one is being in shape,” Torchetti said. “That’s the focus in the physical and the mental part of the game, I feel that being in shape gets you there because our back-to-backs haven’t been very good.”

The Wild have played back-to-back games 11 times this season, including three games in three nights back on Nov. 21-23. They are 6-17 in those games and 5-8 in those games under Torchetti’s leadership. In their last three sets of back-to-back games, the Wild won the first game and lost the second.

On Dec. 26, the Wild beat the Rockford Ice Hogs on the road 2-1, only to get blown out by the Grand Rapids Griffins 9-2 the next night in Grand Rapids.

In the first games of two-game back-to-back weekends since Nov. 14, the Wild are scoring 4.2 goals per game on average and allowing just 1.8 goals per contest. In the second game of those weekends, they are averaging just 2.2 goals scored while allowing a troubling 5.4.

“We’ve got to find ways to win those games and we’ve got to be mentally ready moving forward,” Torchetti said. “That’s why we put a little challenge into the guys of being ready for this back-to-back that’s coming up with Rochester and Utica so I’m looking forward to watching.”

The Wild hit the road this weekend for a pair of games out in New York beginning with Rochester on Friday and concluding in Utica on Saturday.

The Americans (12-19-1-0, 25 pts) are in last place in the North Division while the Comets (25-5-5-0, 47 pts) are the top team in the league and are in first in the North Division.

Schroeder delivers again

In the Wild’s most recent game, they took on the Milwaukee Admirals without the help of their leading goal scorer, Tyler Graovac, who was called up to Minnesota on Dec. 28 and made his NHL debut the next night against the Winnipeg Jets. It didn’t matter for Iowa as they made a comeback against the Admirals and won 2-1 in overtime behind two goals from Minnesota native Jordan Schroeder.

The Wild were outshot 15-5 in the first period but closed the gap to 32-26 by game’s end.

“The first period wasn’t great,” Schroeder said. “A lot of action in our end a lot of shots on (Johan Gustafsson) so we wanted to get pucks deep and stop turning the puck over. When we get pucks deep and use our speed and get behind their D we can create things.”

With under five minutes to go in the overtime period and a power play for Iowa, Schroeder took a pass from defenseman Danny Syvret and put it past Marek Mazanec for the winner.

The goal was Schroeder’s second of the game and his ninth of the season as he is now the third-highest scorer on the team with 22 points (9 goals, 13 assists) and is the second-highest goal scorer on the team.

Rechlicz takes on tough guy role

A big part of the comeback attempt was physical play by the Wild in the second period, including a fight by 6-foot-4 defenseman Joel Rechlicz with Milwaukee forward Michael Liambas.

The fight was initially broken up before it happened at the faceoff and both players were penalized for unsportsmanlike conduct, but the pair fought each other right out of the penalty box two minutes later.

After the game, Torchetti praised Rechlicz’s ability to take on the “tough guy” role to get the players and fans going in the second period.

“That’s a tough role to have in hockey, I’ll tell you that,” said Torchetti. “He relishes in it.”

Imports/Exports

On Dec. 27 goaltender John Curry was recalled by Minnesota. The next day Minnesota recalled forwards Brett Sutter and Tyler Graovac and reassigned defenseman Justin Falk.

On Dec. 29 the Wild signed goaltender Parker Milner to a PTO to take the place of Curry with Josh Harding still recovering from a dehydration episode he suffered in a game with Iowa on Dec. 6 in Chicago.

The post Iowa Wild Notebook appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Schroeder fuels Iowa to first win after five-game skid

DES MOINES – The home crowd went home happy after the Iowa Wild’s sixth game of the season on Saturday, as the Wild cruised to a 4-1 victory against the Charlotte Checkers behind 35 saves by goaltender Johan Gustafsson and a pair of Jordan Schroeder goals at Wells Fargo Arena in Des Moines.

The win, however, was Iowa’s first of the season as they started out on a five-game losing streak.

After losing 5-1 to Charlotte the night before, defenseman Justin Faulk said that they got together the next morning and decided that “enough is enough” before the game that night. He said they played with more desperation in the win.

“The bleeding had to stop and it was a good game for us to build on and take into Milwaukee,” Faulk said.

In the first five games of the 2014-15 season, the Wild scored just eight goals (1.6 goals per game) and surrendered 20. The team especially struggled on Oct. 18 in a 4-0 loss at home to the Milwaukee Admirals and in the next game, a 5-1 loss to Charlotte on Friday.

“Nobody’s happy about what’s going on right now,” Iowa coach Kurt Kleinendorst said after the Oct. 18 loss. “We’re not going to sit here and filter out a bunch of excuses or anything like that. We’ve got to be better.”

Kleinendorst said that he was surprised at the issues they were having at that point.

“I really didn’t think we were going to have issues like we’re having right now,” Kleinendorst said. “So I’m a little bit surprised myself, but now it’s a matter of taking a step back, just evaluate things, see where we’re at with regard to everything: personnel, systems, what we’re doing, when we’re doing it and how long we’re doing it and just move forward from there.”

In the 4-0 loss to Milwaukee Gustafsson allowed four goals on 24 shots one night after giving up four goals in the first period against Milwaukee and being replaced by John Curry.

After Friday’s 5-1 loss to Charlotte, a game in which Curry got the start and allowed five goals on 25 shots, Iowa captain Stephane Veilleux stressed the importance of bouncing back in the next game.

“We’re all disappointed and frustrated,” Veilleux said. “We have to bounce back tomorrow. There’s no other way to play better and to play a whole 60 minutes tomorrow.”

Curry is 0-2 this season with an .882 save percentage in three appearances. After Saturday’s win, Gustafsson is 1-3 with a .887 save percentage.

In the win on Saturday, Kleinendorst had made some changes in the lines which included the combination of Tyler Graovac, Zack Mitchell and Schroeder. The result was two first-period goals from Schroeder, both of which Graovac assisted on.

Schroeder is Iowa’s leading scorer so far with eight points (three goals, five assists). Graovac is right behind him with six points (one goal, five assists).

He’s (Schroeder) a little guy, but he plays fast, he plays gritty,” Faulk said of Schroeder, a Prior Lake, Minnesota native, who is listed at 5’9″, 179 pounds on the team roster. “He created a lot, made a lot happen by himself with the speed and the way he worked tonight.”

Crop Damage

Defenseman Gustav Olofsson underwent a shoulder procedure and will be out “long-term” according to Kleinendorst.

Forward Raphael Bussieres was absent from practice last week and missed both games this past weekend after sustaining a concussion against Milwaukee on Oct. 18.

Cody Almond left Saturday’s game with a lower-body injury, but Kleinendorst said they wouldn’t know how serious it is until Monday.

Imports / Exports

On Oct. 21, Iowa assigned defenseman Corbin Baldwin to Alaska of the ECHL.

Up Next

The Wild hit the road for the next three games playing at Milwaukee on Wednesday before playing two games at Oklahoma City Nov. 1 and 2. Wednesday’s and Saturday’s games will start at 7 p.m. with Sunday’s game beginning at 4 p.m.

The Wild will return home against Rockford on Nov. 6.

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