Past and present players team up with fans in the great outdoors

  [See image gallery at minnesotahockeymag.com]
Photo gallery by Nick Wosika for MHM.

Hugo, Minn. – Retired Minnesota Wild player Wes Walz suited up with gear. Not skates and hockey pads but in bright-orange hunting gear, ready for an afternoon of pheasant hunting.

Well, after a quick shooting lesson and some practice, that is. After all, he described himself as a “very novice hunter.”

Walz joined fellow Wild alum Keith Ballard, and current players Ryan Carter and Marco Scandella, Dec. 2 for the fourth annual Hunt with the Wild pheasant outing sweepstakes event hosted by Gander Mountain. Novice hunter or not, Walz was excited to finally get the opportunity to be part of the hunt.

“It’s always something that I’ve wanted to do, to knock off my bucket list,” Walz said.

They went on a guided pheasant hunt with four randomly-selected sweepstakes winners who were chosen from thousands of entries for the sweepstakes on Facebook throughout the month of November. Each winner and a guest went out hunting with the Wild players at Wild Wings of Oneka Hunt Club in Hugo. The afternoon event included catered lunch and dinner, plus an array of gifts and hunting gear.

Walz had some simple goals for the afternoon, mainly to stay safe, not hurt anybody and have fun. It’s all about getting out and meeting people.

“It’s huge because the fans are what make the organization what they are,” he said.

Walz was teamed up with contest winner Scott Nelson, of Austin, Minn., who brought along his dad Mike Nelson. An avid hunter and Wild fan, Scott was excited to find out he was one of the lucky winners.

“Not very often you get a chance to hunt with some of the Wild players,” Scott said. “That’s really nice of them to take time out to come and do this with other people and fans.”

Carter and Scandella made it out to the hunt after hockey practice. Scandella, a newbie to hunting, came dressed for the part, in dark-blue camo jeans and tan work boots perfect for tromping through the fields.

For someone that said he’s only shot a few times before, he had no problem hitting the practice targets before the hunt.

“Sweet,” Scandella said, after hitting his first target. “Honestly, that was awesome.”

After the first pass through the field, and a couple of birds in tow, Scandella smiled and deemed himself “a natural.”
“I play ‘Call of Duty,’” he said, grinning. “I don’t know if that helps.”

Contest winner and longtime hunter Jason Deiss, of River Falls, Wis., certainly thought Scandella did “pretty good for a first-timer.” Deiss brought his father Bob Deiss along for the hunt. The one-on-one time with a Wild player like Scandella was exciting for the Wild season ticket holder.

“Opportunity of a lifetime, really,” Jason said. “Can’t hope for any more.”

For Ballard, he’s been a hunter since he nabbed his first duck at age 6 or 7. He missed it during his hockey career, but he actually started hunting a lot more during the NHL lockout year in 2012, he said.

This was his third time participating in the event. He likes the small, intimate environment of the event.

“It’s not a big golf tournament, where there’s hundreds of people,” he said. “You can sit down after and talk to people… and have a more personal conversation with them.”

The post Wild enjoy time in the hunt appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Marco Scandella, Zach Parise score in their winning Wild returns

SAINT PAUL – Facing Winnipeg at home Sunday afternoon, Minnesota played its third game in four days and, with how the Central Division showdown turned out, at times Sunday felt like three different games.

Fortunately for the Wild, the finish saw the home team extend its winning ways for another day.

Marco Scandella returned from a bout with the mumps to score a dream-like first career overtime goal 1:01 into the extra period and Minnesota defeated the Jets 4-3 to earn its third straight win. Winnipeg nearly played spoiler against the Wild, which coughed up a three-goal lead over a five minute stretch in front of 18,808 fans at Xcel Energy Center.

A fast start gave way to several shorthanded stretches, which in turn became a frenzy to save face and two points from a third-period free fall against the Jets. Some stretches were full of fast skating and highlight-reel goals. Others had hatred stamped on them. Both teams went through a range of emotions fitting for geographic rivals.

“You have to win games different ways and today we found a way to win. That’s what matters,” said Minnesota coach Mike Yeo Sunday following his team’s victory.

The Wild went 8-for-8 on the penalty kill against Winnipeg in a game that featured 48 minutes of penalties. While special teams made a major difference to an already tired team that had to kill three separate two man advantages, so did a pair of fresh faces that hadn’t been in action recently.

Both Scandella and Zach Parise were highlighted by Yeo pregame. Both made an impact in their return to the lineup. Parise, missing the previous five games with concussion-like symptoms, admitted he was adjusting back to game speed. The Wild forward stated his case for being missed early with a pair of first period goals despite all that.

Neither went off his stick.

“Hopefully it will get better as we get into some more real practices and play some more real games,“ Parise said about his return.

Following Nino Nieddereiter’s nifty stickwork on the power play to score his eighth goal 2:07 into the first period, the Wild forward added to his scoring lead with a goal that went off Winnipeg forward Blake Wheeler and past Ondrej Pavelec. A large visiting contingent of blue and white jerseys making the way south to the “State of Hockey” capitol, which was previously noisy pregame, spent the following 40 minutes silent.

Parise notched a second after crashing the net and having Jared Spurgeon’s shot go off his body into the net.

“They’re both good skill plays,” Yeo said. “What I like about Zach is when you see the end result there are things leading up to that are the reason he scores those goals as well. He doesn’t take shortcuts.

“We talked about doing something before the game, draw it up on the board and then you see that first goal go in because he does exactly what we’re talking about. That’s leadership.”

Jets coach Paul Maurice pulled Pavelec, who made 8 saves on 11 shots, after the first period facing a 3-0 deficit for Michael Hutchinson. He was able to stem the tide for Winnipeg.

Penalties did the rest with 14 separate infractions called in the second period. Ryan Suter was called four times for penalties Sunday – two more times than he had all season – and the flow of play which the Wild had slowed to a trickle. Tempers were short for both teams. At the same time Minnesota spent much of the middle frame killing penalties and being at a disadvantage, which eventually caught up to the team.

“Not a lot of games you see teams kill off three 5 on 3 penalties. It doesn’t happen. The PKers did a really good job,” Parise said. “They blocked shots, they cleared the puck when we had a chance to and that’s the biggest thing. We pressured at the right times.”

The Jets were only able to muster three shots on goal in the first period, but matched that total and more with three goals in a 4:52 span; resuscitating life in the building for fans of both teams.

Michael Frolik started the barrage that sent Minnesota goaltender Niklas Backstrom from shutout to the showers 5:55 into the third period. Evander Kane cut the lead to 1 from behind with his second goal of the season while Andrew Ladd tied the game at 3 with 9:13 remaining in regulation.

“We’re a resilient group here. We worked hard and we didn’t break. That’s the most important thing,” Scandella said. “We still had confidence on the bench playing our game even though they were coming after us and making a push.”

Darcy Kuemper replaced Backstrom, who made 19 saves, for the remainder of the game. Yeo stated the move was for momentum since Minnesota had already used his timeout. “You’re looking for anything to do,” he said.

Kuemper made three saves in relief. The post was also his friend with Winnipeg twice being unable to get a bounce for the go-ahead goal. Minnesota had several chances as well – Parise came close to a hat trick while Thomas Vanek was unable to get his stick around a last minute rebound – before Scandella, set up by Jason Pominville, lit the lamp in the extra frame with his third goal.

Suddenly the defenseman who had no energy for several days thanks to mumps gave the “State of Hockey” plenty Sunday. Giving up a point or not, the win set a different tone for the Wild, and with it Marco Scandella.

“You kind of have dreams to get one like that. Especially in overtime,” he said.

Other notes:

-The Wild held a moment of silence for 14 year-old Patrick Schoonover before the game. Schoonover collapsed on the ice and passed away Friday in Brainerd playing for the Eastview Bantam AA team.

-Jason Zucker left the game 8 minutes into the first period hurt following several shots on the ice by Winnipeg’s Mark Stuart. He returned minutes later, fittingly to kill a penalty.

-Jason Pominville had three assists Sunday for his 128^th career multi-point game.

-Minnesota is second in the NHL with an 89.3% penalty kill

-Darcy Kuemper played in his 15^th game this season, meaning he now requires waivers to be sent down to Iowa.

The post Sudden Impact appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Efficient shooting and sound defense key yet another Minnesota home win.

The Wild don’t seem to do a lot wrong these days on home ice.

Heck, they aren’t doing much wrong at all.

After posting 5-0 and 2-0 home wins to begin the season, they ripped four first-period shots past an unrecognizable Evgeni Nabokov and rolled to a 7-2 triumph over the Tampa Bay Lightning Saturday night at the Xcel Energy Center.

Nabokov came into this match with a 16-8-3 all-time record and a 2.09 goals-against record versus Minnesota, but he played less than 18 minutes before Lightning coach Jon Cooper put an end to his nightmarish evening.

Now the Wild – they were 3-0 at home in exhibition play – have won eight of their past nine starts at the X including playoffs and are 34-11-5 at home in games that count since the beginning of the 2013-14 season.

It doesn’t hurt that young goaltender Darcy Kuemper raised his Xcel Energy Center record to 14-3-2.

Before the season began, Wild fans sometimes kibitzed about their team’s offensive talents and defensive prowess but felt obliged to also address what appeared to be an uncertain situation in goal.

Kuemper, one of four Wild netminders that included Niklas Backstrom, Josh Harding and Ilya Bryzgalov last season, did not emerge as the official No. 1 goalie until the day before the opener.

Now he has a 4-1-0 record, a goals-against average of 0.80 and a .966 save percentage.

The 24-year-old from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, seems to have a stranglehold on the starting job, and his play has quieted many of the doubters.

But the 6-foot-5 Kuemper will be the first to tell you he’s getting tons of help.

Indeed.

Minnesota has outshot its first six opponents and on Saturday the Wild defense did not allow a shot on goal when the Lightning had a five-on-three power play for 29 seconds early in the third period.

“Our ‘D’ is great,” winger Thomas Vanek said. “I’ve never seen a group that gaps up as well as they do, and them doing that gives the forwards confidence that, ‘Hey, they’re going to give us a chance to get the puck back,’ so we’ll help them out. It’s a two-way street, and right now it’s going pretty good.”

Coach Mike Yeo says his defensemen carried the day in a 2-0 win over Arizona Thursday night and followed that up well on Saturday, adding, “They’re playing to our expectations.”

The offense, meanwhile, has 19 goals in six games and spread it around Saturday: Six players scored and 13 players picked up at least one point, led by two goals from Jason Zucker.

“We had production from every single line,” said winger Erik Haula, who scored his first goal of the season. “That’s huge.”

Part of that production came courtesy of captain Mikko Koivu, who netted his first point of the season with a goal in the first period.

Koivu said he had been getting chances and wasn’t overly worried about his scoring drought, but paused and admitted, “You’re starting to think — let’s be honest – that you should be scoring.”

Koivu’s left wing, Thomas Vanek, also came into the game without a goal but chipped in his third and fourth assists of the season, one on a pinpoint pass to Jared Spurgeon at the corner of the net for a tap-in.

“I’m thinking, ‘Shoot! Shoot!’” Yeo said. “Then he makes that pass and I’m: ‘Good play.’”

The final shot total was 22-19 and Minnesota has limited its opponents to 133 shots through six games, leading the NHL by yielding an average of 22.2 a game.

That’s nice, Koivu said, but pointed out that “it’s only six games.” Still, he added, all five guys on the ice are playing with confidence, especially defensively.

“We’re trying to be in their face,” noted defenseman Marco Scandella, who recorded a Gordie Howe hat trick with a goal, an assist and a fight against the Lightning. “We have defensemen that can skate and that’s a big advantage for our team.”

And the 18,884 customers, who represented the third consecutive sellout for the Wild, could sit back and enjoy another easy one.

“We’ve played good on the road, too,” Koivu said, “but we didn’t win, and that’s what it’s all about, so yeah, when you do good you get that confidence at home.”

The post Brothers: Wild Ground Lightning appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

The Wild must at least contain Nathan MacKinnon and company to get back in the series at home.

Ten months ago the Colorado Avalanche were faced with the most delicious dilemma a National Hockey League team could have thrust upon them. Seated at a table in Newark’s Prudential Center on June 30, the Avs brass had their choice of any draft-declared prospect on the planet as possessor’s of the No. 1 overall pick in the 2013 NHL Draft.

Conventional wisdom at the time said the choice was between flashy Halifax Mooseheads forward Nathan MacKinnon and Portland Winterhawks defensive phenom Seth Jones.

The Avalanche, at least in the short term, made the right decision.

Jones is sitting at home after a respectable 25-point season—to go with a minus-23 plus/minus rating—for the Nashville Predators, a non-playoff team. MacKinnon, on the other hand, is destroying Minnesota with seven points (1-6–7) and is a plus-5 in leading Colorado to a 2-0 lead in its first-round Stanley Cup Playoff series against the Wild.

MacKinnon notched a goal and three assists on Saturday night in the Avs 4-2 win over the Wild in game two after a three assist performance in the series opener. His combination of speed, skill, and rink awareness has given Minnesota fits in the Mile-High City this week.

Through two playoff games MacKinnon has already accumulated one ninth of his 82-game regular season numbers (24-39–63). But he is far from doing it alone.

The chemistry between MacKinnon and linemates Gabriel Landeskog and Paul Stastny was explosive throughout the night, repeatedly pinning the Wild deep in their zone with power-play efficiency at even strength. The trio combined for a pair of pretty Landeskog goals in the second period, each set up by spot on behind-the-back passes, first by MacKinnon then by Stastny and Colorado led 3-1 after 40 minutes.

“Whether you score or not, you can still create momentum down in their zone and making sure we’re not in our end,” Landeskog said. “My line certainly made some nice plays tonight.”

“That line was on fire tonight, they played really well,” Colorado coach Patrick Roy said. “Landy (Landeskog), Pauly (Stastny) and Nate, they had an outstanding game.”

Wild starting goaltender Ilya Bryzgalov, although helpless on both plays, was mercifully lifted by coach Mike Yeo after Landeskog’s second goal at 11:59 after allowing three goals on 14 shots. He was replaced by Darcy Keumper who stepped onto game ice for the first time since March 27 and stopped all 14 shots he faced the rest of the way.

But if his teammates can’t find a way to limit the MacKinnon line’s speed on the rush and take away its space, Kuemper could channel his inner Patrick Roy and even that couldn’t earn the Wild a return trip to Denver. The three head to Minnesota for Monday’s third game having compiled an astounding 17 points (6-10–17) in just two games.

Is that sustainable? So far, the Wild have yet to demonstrate it isn’t but they said the right things after the game.

“For me, I think you see, we’re backing up a little bit too much as far as I’m concerned right now,” Minnesota coach Mike Yeo said. “We’re allowing them to build speed, so we’ve got to do a better job.”

“We are going to have to be harder on them and be a little more physical on them, take away time and space and you know, we didn’t do as great a job as we wanted to tonight,” Wild defenseman Marco Scandella said. “I feel like they are getting a lot of speed in the neutral zone and we got to find a way to slow it down.”

Minnesota was the beneficiary of an early power play just 1:07 in when Colorado’s Cody McLeod took a run at Jonas Brodin long after the Wild defenseman released the puck. Despite buzzing the Avalanche net for nearly the full two minutes, the Wild came up empty on four shots and had at least that many blocked.

But just 1:11 after McLeod was released, Wild captain Mikko Koivu busted up the left wing boards and into the Colorado zone before feeding the puck to the crease where it deflected off the net-crashing Charlie Coyle behind Avalanche goaltender Semyon Varlamov for a 1-0 Minnesota lead. Varlamov finished with 30 saves on the night.

Coyle’s goal gave the Wild a 7-2 lead in shots on goal through just 4:18 of play but Minnesota’s grip on the game began to loosen shortly thereafter.

The Avs bounced pack two minutes later on an eye-opening goal by MacKinnon.  The 18-year-old Halifax, Nova Scotia native flew into Wild zone and took Minnesota defenseman Jared Spurgeon out of his skates with a nifty lateral fake and ripped a wrist shot past Bryzgalov’s blocker to knot the game at 1-1.

“I wanted to kind of shake to the middle and I kind of jumped to the outside,” MacKinnon said. “I didn’t know I’d have that much room. Obviously, I’m pretty fortunate that he bit on it I guess and I just fired it at the net and it went in.”

“I thought, after they scored their first goal, that certainly gave them momentum and I thought that we got on our heels a little bit from that time,” Yeo said.

Eleven seconds after Ryan Suter was assessed a cross checking penalty with 1:30 to play, Minnesota drew within one when Scandella jumped into the rush and rerouted a Koivu pass between Varmalov’s legs. The shorthanded goal is the sixth such tally in Wild history.

But Colorado sealed its win with 15 seconds on the clock and, fittingly, it was Stastny depositing the puck into an empty net after receiving it from MacKinnon who could have put the puck away himself just as easily as he appears to be putting away the Wild’s season.

The post Unstoppable? appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.