No, not “booze,” although that was perhaps a pregame (and postgame) focus for many Minnesota Wild fans taking part in St. Patrick’s Day weekend festivities on West Seventh Street in downtown St. Paul.

First, fans directed boos at the scoreboard Saturday when the starting lineup for the visiting St. Louis Blues was announced, notably when former Wild defenseman Ryan Suter’s name came up. Then Wild fans – among the 800th sellout crowd at Xcel Energy Center – let the boos rain down when the Blues went up 3-0 on the Wild in the second period.

The Wild got on the board 25 seconds later, but it was an overall lackluster and sloppy effort from Minnesota as it fell 5-1. The loss dropped the Wild to 1-2-1 on this seven-game homestand and 3-6-1 in the last 10 games.

March Madness? More like March Sadness for Wild fans this season.  

“We definitely need more jam in our game, especially at this time of year,” said defenseman Jake Middleton, who scored the Wild’s lone goal Saturday. “We were just kind of waiting, I thought.”

Waiting for a hero to save them? No, Chad Kroeger. Middleton said they’re waiting for the next guy on the team to score. But it takes a team effort.

The Wild are obviously missing its superstar Kirill Kaprizov, who’s played only three games since Dec. 23 and is out for an unknown timetable with a lower-body injury that required surgery. Jonas Brodin and Joel Eriksson Ek are out injured, too.

“The guys we got in the lineup, we just got to figure out a way to bring it every night and compete,” Middleton said. “I think we have more than we had tonight.”

But in its most grueling part of the schedule late in the season, the Wild are floundering and failing to put pucks in the net. Getting a goal a game as a team isn’t going to cut it (that 1-0 victory, no doubt a solid win, March 2 in Boston aside).

Next man up?
Earlier in the season, the Wild preached the cliché of a “next-man-up mentality” when they were consistently shorthanded in the lineup because of injuries. They’ve had their fair share up and down the roster since October. For a while, the Wild weathered that storm by getting wins, points and goal production from guys not named Kaprizov.

It’s just not happening lately. In six of the last 10 games, the Wild have scored only one goal through regulation time. They’re 2-4 in those games. There’s the 1-0 victory against the Bruins and a 2-1 shootout victory against Colorado on March 11.

The Wild had to rally for a pair of third-period goals Thursday against the New York Rangers, or it would have been four consecutive games with just one goal. That Rangers prevailed 3-2 in overtime. Marcus Johnasson scored in that game, marking his first goal since Jan. 7. The Wild played strong defensively in that game, leading coach John Hynes to give his players credit in his postgame comments Thursday.

“I think we’re playing extremely hard and strong attention to detail, playing the way you really need to win this time of year there,” Hynes said, after the loss to the Rangers. “They’re highly competitive games.”

Top-line drought
But despite the playoff-type atmosphere that some of these games take on, there are other goal droughts on the team. Matt Boldy and Mats Zuccarello have played on the first line with center Marco Rossi. They’re just not producing.

Boldy hasn’t scored since just after the break in the Feb. 22 game at Detroit, a 4-3 overtime victory for the Wild. That’s zero goals in 10 games for him, and only five assists. He still leads the team this season with 21 goals and 55 points.  

Rossi’s goal drought pushed to nine games after Saturday, with only three assists in that span. He had the overtime winner in Detroit in that Feb. 22 game. The Wild had just 18 shots on goal Saturday, one each for Boldy and Rossi.

Zuccarello snapped a 10-game goalless streak with a goal Feb. 28 at Colorado. He has three goals and two assists across his last eight games.

“That’s no secret that we’re struggling to score goals as of late,” Zuccarello said. “We got to find a way to do it. They score on their chances, and we don’t.”

Zuccarello also acknowledged that losing 5-1 at home is not acceptable, adding “everyone in here knows it’s embarrassing for us to play like that, but what are we going to say? You’ve got to take it on the chin right now, and it’s not good enough.”

The Wild have consistently been a better road team this season, going just 15-15-2 at home. They’ve had some rough losses, lopsided ones, on home ice this season. A 7-1 loss to Edmonton on Dec. 12 that started a five-game homestand. A 6-1 loss to Florida later in that same home stretch. Another 6-1 loss vs. Colorado on Jan. 9.

The 5-1 loss Saturday could be added to the list, though this one comes when the Wild are playing nearly every other day throughout a busy month of March.

“It’s a competitive time of the year,” Hynes said. “Tonight, I thought there (were) some certain circumstances in the game where I think our attention to detail wasn’t where it needed to be.

“We didn’t have it tonight. … We’re in a tight race. Our team reacts, responds, works, competes all the time.”

The Wild have 79 points and are still in the first Wild Card spot for the postseason.

The Wild have another shot to right the ship, which keeps taking on water at Xcel Energy center this season, on Monday when Los Angeles visits.

“We’ve got to continue to have the belief that it’ll come,” said defenseman Zach Bogosian. “You know, we’ve had our share of looks in these past few games. Unfortunately, they’re not going in right now. But we have to continue to keep directing pucks at their net and you know eventually they’ll go in.”

The post Wild Scoring Woes appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

It was a day before Thanksgiving last year when the Minnesota Wild general manager decided he had seen enough of his swagger-less and lethargic team and acquired winger Ryan Reaves from the New York Rangers for a 2025 fifth-round pick.

Reaves, now with the Toronto Maple Leafs, is known for fighting, but Guerin said the decision to make the move was more about Reaves’ “big personality” than it was about his ability to use his fists.

“He’s got a lot of energy,” Guerin told Michael Russo of The Athletic. “He’s got swagger. We’ve been missing that. The energy he brings is really good. … He’s going to help us get our identity back.”

Reaves provided the Wild with a spark, even before he arrived. On the day the trade was announced, the Wild cruised to a 6-1 victory over Winnipeg to improve to 9-8-2 on the season. Reaves gave the Wild plenty of swagger as the team finished third in the Central Division with 103 points.

The Wild replaced Reaves with a more skilled, big-body presence in winger Patrick Maroon this offseason and a plan to keep their swagger for 82 games. But since shutting out Florida, 2-

Ryan Reaves against Winnipeg in 2022. He helped give the Wild some swagger last season. (MHM file photo)

0, on opening night at Xcel Energy Center, the Wild have gone 2-4-2 and are coming off an East Coast trip in which they lost to Philadelphia, Washington (in a shootout) and New Jersey.

Oh, and the swagger that Reaves brought with him? That’s disappeared. Wild center Ryan Hartman told reporters after Sunday’s loss to the Devils that, “When we’re playing well, we play with that swagger.”

An argument can be made that it’s too early for anyone to panic, but Guerin knows what got his team out of its funk last season and you have to wonder if he is again willing to wait until Thanksgiving before making a move?

Injuries have sidelined defenseman and captain Jared Spurgeon since the start of the season and wingers Matt Boldy and Frederick Gaudreau also are out, although Boldy is expected to return soon.

But the Wild’s early-season issues go beyond injuries.

The power play and penalty kill both struggled in the Wild’s opening-round playoff loss to Dallas last season and not much has changed, even though Minnesota brought in former Vancouver Canucks assistant Jason King to run its power play.

The Wild are 5-for-36 on the power play and their 13.9 percentage is ranked 22nd in the league. The Wild’s penalty kill is worse. Much worse. That unit ranks second-to-last in the NHL, giving up nine goals on 28 chances for a 67.9% kill rate. Last season the Wild surrendered nine goals on 24 chances in six games against the Stars in the playoffs.

The Devils, whose power play is the best in the NHL at 42.4 percent, toyed with the Wild on Sunday in going 2-for-3. The Wild had six power plays and only scored once.

One of the biggest surprises is that newly appointed alternate captain Kirill Kaprizov has yet to show the consistency expected from a superstar. He had no points and was a minus-4 on the road trip and has only two goals in nine games.

The Wild’s first line of Kaprizov, Mats Zuccarello and Hartman each have nine points — tied for second on the team behind Joel Eriksson Ek’s 10 — but they also are a combined minus-10 and their performance in a brutal loss against the Flyers left coach Dean Evason infuriated.

Marco Rossi against the Florida Panthers in this season’s home opener. (MHM Photo / Rick Olson)

The idea has been floated of replacing Hartman with third-line center Marco Rossi, who is finally delivering on what was expected of him when he was selected with the ninth pick of the 2020 draft.

Rossi spent the offseason getting bigger and stronger and now looks like he belongs in the NHL. He has three goals and four points in nine games and would give the first line a more skilled player than the hard-working Hartman, whose six goals lead the Wild.

Putting Rossi with Kaprizov and Zuccarello could present Evason with an opportunity to inform Zuccarello that his need to overpass the puck to Kaprizov can end. Rossi also could replace Zuccarello on the power play, especially since the veteran has yet to score with the man advantage this season.

Of course, Evason could look to Guerin to shake up things if they don’t improve soon. Spurgeon’s return will help on the blue line, but to think he will give the Wild their swagger back is a stretch.

The Wild’s salary-cap situation makes any type of major move nearly impossible, but obtaining Reaves a year ago did the trick without causing any issues. If the Wild’s play doesn’t pick up soon, it won’t be surprising if Guerin decides a repeat performance is in order.

The post Slow start appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Wild trying to pull out of a March slide

A Wild team that often looked unbeatable through the early days of February has gone sledding in March.

Look out below…

On Feb. 18, Minnesota led the Chicago Blackhawks by nine points, but after the New York Rangers dumped the Wild 3-2 in front of 19,337 on Sunday at the Xcel Energy Center, the Hawks led Minnesota by five.

Holy cow.

“Thank God we get to play again tomorrow,” Wild center Erik Haula said.

Here’s the tally: Going into their game against the Jets Sunday in Winnipeg, the Wild had lost four in a row and had won just two of their previous nine.

And, as Haula and center Eric Staal both said after the loss to New York, no one can get things back on track except the people wearing Wild sweaters.

“This is a tough league,” Staal said. “They’re not easy games every night. We have to continue to play as a team. This is a tough stretch for us right now, but no one’s going to help us out but us.”

Coach Bruce Boudreau said over and over after the game that all his boys can do is simplify. Some are trying to do too much, to make a big play when one isn’t probable, rather than sticking to basics.

Then, too often, things fall apart.

“When things aren’t going good for you, that’s what happens,” Boudreau said. “You get no puck luck, you get no bounces.”

Trying hard to make the right play too often goes awry, he added, and Saturday was an example.

“There were so many turnovers out there it’s ridiculous.”

Boudreau’s team went 35-12-5 through its first 52 games, but since then the Wild are 8-9-1.

“What worked will work again,” he said Saturday. “For 40 games, you’re making those little mistakes, they’re not scoring goals — they’re bouncing off the goalie or hitting the post or shooting wide. Now the mistake you make from the faceoff on down is going in the net.

“It’s going to be a battle of mental toughness. When you get out of it you’re going to be a better team and better players for it, because you’re going through it right now for the last two and a-half weeks.”

The Wild took a first period lead on Staal’s 24th goal, but former Gopher Brady Skjei tied it late in the period. It was 1-1 in the second period when Haula set up Charlie Coyle in front of a wide-open net and Coyle knocked the puck into the back wall.

“It was right there,” Coyle said. “I don’t know if it bounced or what.”

That led to second-period Rangers goals from Oscar Lindberg and Jimmy Vesey, enough of a cushion to overcome a third-period tally by Matt Dumba of the Wild.

“I think for the most part we were playing with pretty good jump,” Haula said. “We had a lot of chances. When things aren’t going your way… I don’t know, when it rains it pours, I guess.”

As Haula pointed out, however, another game loomed less than 24 hours later and with that and a few more ahead.

Said Staal: “We’ve just got to get back to simplifying our game, get back to the way we found so much success early in the year.”

The post Tough Sledding appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Captain’s three points propels Minnesota over the Rangers

On a frigid Thursday night in St. Paul, 19,090 customers showed up to watch the Minnesota Wild play the New York Rangers.

It was the 11th crowd of more than 19,000 in 16 NHL games at the Xcel Energy Center this season, where the capacity was officially reduced to 17,954 a few seasons ago. They continue as the biggest wintertime draw in the Twin Cities for one reason: Their product sells.

The reasons are multiple.

Goalie Devan Dubnyk has recovered from a groin strain and the Wild list zero injuries.

Their captain, Mikko Koivu, is 32 but is playing like a man in the prime of his career.

And, after steaming to a 5-2 triumph over the Rangers, the Wild have a nine-game point streak and 40 points in 30 games. Only seven teams in the NHL have more points, and three of those have played at least two more games.

Life is good in St. Paul.

“Everyone’s having fun,” defenseman Matt Dumba observed, adding that the 11 goals scored in Minnesota’s two most recent outings were dividends earned by a stifling defense. “We’re just doing a lot of little things right, right now. We’re not stressing each other. When we can play like that, it’s awesome.”

During one of the most moderate Twin Cities winters in recent memory, the Wild extended a hot streak even as wind-chill temperatures dropped into the single digits Thursday.

Contributions are coming from everywhere – Dubnyk and Darcy Kemper are playing well, Zach Parise and Mikael Granlund each have 19 points, while Thomas Vanek and Ryan Suter each have 24.

Then there’s Koivu, who tallied two goals and an assist against the Rangers to give him seven points in his past two games. He leads the way with 28 points in 30 games and was stoned by Rangers goalie Henrik Lundqvist on a breakaway in the final minute or he would have had a hat trick.

Koivu shrugged it off.

After netting 67, 71 and 62 points from 2008-09 through 2010-11, Koivu’s numbers slipped along with his status among Minnesota fans. Parise had become the go-to guy on offense, with help from Jason Pominville, Nino Niederreiter, Jason Zucker, Charlie Coyle and Vanek.

Lately, Koivu has inserted himself higher into the narrative.

“I’m really happy for him,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said. “He was getting chances, but the puck wasn’t going in. It’s a good lesson for everybody, young players especially, that you just have to stay with it.”

Koivu went seven games without a point between Nov. 27 and Dec. 11, but has eight in his past three games.

“You always want to produce, when you’re out there for power plays,” he said. “You want to help the team with getting some offense going. I had more chances, but that’s a good sign, too.”

Koivu insists the Wild are doing nothing differently, that the chances were there even while the team tallied just 16 goals over a nine-game stretch through Dec. 12.

“For sure we want to score as much as we can,” he noted. “But at the same time, being good defensively allows us to be good offensively.”

Minnesota limited New York to five shots in the first period and got power-play goals from Dumba and Pominville plus a goal from Chris Porter, two assists from Suter and 21 saves from Dubnyk including one on a penalty shot.

It extended the Wild’s record to 6-0-3 since Nov. 27.

They also appear totally comfortable at the X, where they have a 12-3-1 mark this season and have an average attendance of 19,003 per game.

Fans and players alike expect a good game every night from the home team.

So does the coach.

Yeo said he watched from behind the bench as the Rangers cut Minnesota’s lead to 2-1 and later to 4-2 but noted that he was never nervous.

“For whatever reason,” he said, “I felt pretty confident back there.”

The post Koivu, Wild both heating up appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

New York responds quickly after Vanek ties it as Minnesota falls 3-2

St. Paul — In his brief time with the Wild, Thomas Vanek has proven himself to be a polarizing figure. Fans either love him or hate him and sometimes both within the same game.

Thursday night was one of those nights for Vanek after a crucial early turnover in the first, a momentum-killing and power-play-negating penalty in the second and a game-tying goal in the third.

Vanek scored his 21st goal of the year, and team-leading 12th goal since the All-Star break, at 5:53 of the third period to complete Minnesota’s comeback from a two goal, first-period deficit.

But New York Rangers’ J.T. Miller answered 55 seconds later and the Eastern Conference’s top team escaped Xcel Energy Center with a 3-2 win in front of 19, 244.

“We didn’t really find our game until the start of the second and I think after that we slowly took over,” Vanek said. “It’s just unfortunate we couldn’t have kept it tied for a little bit longer, I think we would have got the next one.”

Ranger captain, and St. Paul native, Ryan McDonagh fired a shot from just inside the blue line where an uncovered Miller deflected it past Wild goaltender Devan Dubnyk for his 10th of the season.

“It’s one quick play and they do a good job of getting a tip on a stick,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said. “In those situations we’ve got to do a better job of coming [into the defensive zone] and, once that puck gets back to the point, making sure we’re boxing guys out.”

The victory clinched the Metropolitan Division title for the Rangers and home ice through at least the first two rounds of the playoffs.

Matt Dumba assisted on both Minnesota goals and Jason Pominville scored his first goal in 10 games for the Wild who lost for just the second time in nine games to snap a five-game winning streak. Dubnyk allowed three goals on 26 shots to suffer just his seventh loss (26-7-1) in a Minnesota uniform.

Trailing 2-0 after one period, the Wild got off to a flying start to open the second and got on the board just short of the six minute mark on Pominville’s 17th goal of the season. Matt Dumba carried the puck in deep and threw the puck to Zach Parise whose shot through the crease caromed off of Pominville’s skate at 5:54.

When New York’s Carl Hagelin tripped the Wild’s Justin Fontaine two minutes later, the momentum was all Minnesota’s as it headed to its first power play of the night.

But just 48 seconds later, Vanek was tagged for interference, negating the power play and beginning a string of five penalties over the period’s final 11 minutes.

“It’s not the perfect recipe when you’re coming from behind,” Yeo said about the Wild’s revolving penalty box door. “In that situation we did what we had to do, we gave ourselves a chance.”

To its credit, as Yeo said, the Minnesota’s penalty killers held the Rangers to just one goal on six power-play opportunities including a two man advantage in the period’s final minute when Kyle Brodziak, playing without a stick, and Marco Scandella provided critical shot blocks.

“Brodz is a guy who’s been sacrificing himself all season long as far as the way he plays the game, the way he sticks up for his teammates, the way he blocks shots,” Yeo said. “It’s tough to see those types of things on T.V. o maybe from the stands, but the lift that give to the rest of the bench, that’s a huge momentum builder.”

Coming off of a four-day layoff between games, the Wild trailed 1-0 just over two minutes into the game courtesy of a Vanek defensive -zone turnover.

Facing the wall outside the right circle, Vanek backhanded a blind cross-ice pass which New York’s Carl Hagelin promptly picked off. Hagelin fired toward the Minnesota net where former Wild center Dominic Moore redirected the puck past Dubnyk at the 2:09 mark of the first.

“It was a little bit of a slow start,” Yeo said. “A good team, a pressure team like that, will recognize that and I think they took advantage of it but, for the most part, I think we found our game after that.”

“That’s a good team,” Vanek said of the Rangers. “They started quick and we were a little bit on our heels, it took us a little bit to get going, but there’s no excuse there.”

The Rangers extended the lead to 2-0 at 14:37 on Rick Nash’s 41st goal of the year, a sharp angle shot from along the goal line to Dubnyk’s right just 22 seconds after Minnesota’s Justin Fontaine was sent off for high-sticking. It’s one Dubnyk said he would like to have back.

“It was kind of a strange play,” Dubnyk said. “I think the puck flipped up on his blade and he just went to shovel it across and it hit me on the inside of the hand. I think if that puck stays flat, it’s probably not coming that high.”

The post Rangers halt Wild streak at five appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

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SAINT PAUL—Zach Parise scored his team-leading 23rd goal of the season and Darcy Kuemper made 29 saves as the Minnesota Wild snapped a three-game losing streak with a 2-1 win over the New York Rangers on Thursday night at Xcel Energy Center. Minnesota rebounded from blowing a three-goal lead to the lowly Edmonton Oilers just 48 hours earlier to hand the Rangers their second consecutive loss.

“I have a lot of respect for that team,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said of the Rangers. “They’ve got the goaltending, they’ve got speed, they’ve got skill and they check well, so it was a big win for us.”

The game was tied 1-1 after two periods but the Wild struck early in the final frame to take the lead. After Rangers’ goaltender Cam Talbot stopped Mikael Granlund’s effort from in tight, along with a pair of Jason Pominville rebounds, Parise pushed the puck under Talbot just 1:03 into the third.

“It was a really smart play by Granlund to attack the net, for him to recognize that he had room, and that’s what started the play,” Parise said. “I think at that point of the game we had to start getting some pucks into the crease there and get an ugly one.”

“A guy like Granny typically hasn’t been a guy to take a puck to the net like that,” Yeo said. “Obviously that was a huge moment in the game.”

But the Rangers turned up the heat on Minnesota over the final 18:57 and outshot the Wild 16-8 in the period but Kuemper was up to the task.

When Kyle Brodziak put his team down a man with a delay of game penalty with 3:20 to go Kuemper withstood the New York barrage right up to the final buzzer.

“Can’t let too many games slip away this time of year,” Kuemper said. “Just the way we played was solid; we got back to our identity and stuck with it the whole way.”

The Wild grabbed a 1-0 lead on Nino Niederreiter’s one-timer off a Brodziak feed at 13:08 of the first. Brodziak knocked Rangers’ defenseman John Moore off the puck along the end boards to Talbot’s right and poked it to Niederreiter who slammed home No. 12 of the season.

“What I liked is the two goals that we scored, those are the kind of goals that you can score in the playoffs and those are the kind of goals we have to score going forward,” Yeo said. “We need a playoff offense mentality.”

Talbot stopped 24 Minnesota shots and has allowed just three goals in two starts against the Wild this season, including the Rangers’ 4-1 win at Madison Square Garden on Dec. 22.

Hastings Minnesota’s Derek Stepan scored the Rangers’ lone goal in in a 2-1 loss to the WIld on Thursday.
(MHM Photo / Jeff Wegge)

Seconds after nearly tying the game with a power-play goal when his shot rang off both the crossbar and left post, New York’s Derek Stepan did just that at 3:19 of the second. The Hastings native carried the puck in from the left point and, using Jonas Brodin as a screen, let a wrist shot go from the top of the left circle beating Kuemper for his 12th of the year.

With the memory of the Edmonton loss still fresh, Parise spoke after the game about the importance of protecting leads as the playoffs near and winning games “the hard way” as was the case against the Rangers.

“Tonight it was a hard game the way they played,” Parise said. “They were in our face all the time through the neutral zone, we didn’t have much tape-to-tape [passes] it was a lot of along the walls, chip it and chase it, but sometimes you have to win like that.”

The post Wild Win the Hard Way appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.