Like it or not, Adam Wilcox’s stellar play lands him in the spotlight.

He’s humble off the ice and just as ruthless on it.

Gopher sophomore Adam Wilcox is putting up numbers that Gopher goalies don’t usually amass. He’s already got the single season record for save percentage, his 51 wins (going into this weekend’s NCAA West Regional) ties him for seventh all-time (with two years left to play) and he is tied for second in the NCAA this year in save percentage.

And if you ask him about his success – all he’ll do is talk about how good the defense in front him is playing.

Wilcox is a finalist for Mike Richter award, given out to the nation’s top goaltender and a finalist for the Hobey Baker Award, given annually to the player who best displays outstanding skills in all phases of the game, strength of character on and off the ice, sportsmanship and scholastic achievement. While this is the first year of the Richter award, Wilcox is the first Gopher to be a finalist for the Hobey since Ryan Potulny in 2006.

Think about that, it’s been 8 years since the Gophers have had a finalist for the nation’s top individual hockey honor. Names like Kessel, Okposo, Wheeler, Bjugstad and more have donned the Maroon and Gold—some longer than others—but none of them have crossed into the territory that Wilcox has.

But what I love most about Adam Wilcox and his success is that he wasn’t a highly-touted blue chip goalie from a hockey factory school. He played in US selection camps but never played in the World Junior Championships or played on the development team. He was a very good goalie at South St. Paul, which is becoming ‘Goalie High’ between Wilcox and his cousin Alex Stalock who plays for the San Jose Sharks.

While he was named to the All-Classic Suburban team twice, he only earned honorable mention at the state level twice. In fact, he might have been a better football player for the Packers, making All-Conference and All-State teams and even winning the Tom Nace award.

He is the quintessential story of good things happening to people who work hard. He stayed at his small school as long as he could. And when his opportunity to shine came, he made the most of it.

Wilcox was drafted in the sixth round of the 2011 draft by Tampa Bay which is not bad for goalies by any means but, until this season, he was somewhat of an unknown outside of our borders. Now, he is looking to pull off something that only two other goalies have done in the history of college hockey have achieved: Win its top prize, the Hobey Baker award.

By the way, one of the others to do it, was the guy who Wilcox will spend the next two years chasing in the Gopher record books, Rob Stauber, who won the award in 1988 (Ryan Miller is the other).

I happen to think Wilcox can pull it off. If you look at the numbers they are comparable. Stauber went 34-10 that year, with a 2.72 goals against average. While Wilcox won’t be able to duplicate the win total, his G.A.A. is a slim 1.90 (third in the nation). Yes there are goalies with better stats, but they don’t play the level of competition that Wilcox does night in and night out.

Like most goalies he is a cool customer. He rarely gets rattled in a game, and he never sweats a question after it. It would be nice to see a Minnesotan get a chance to join an elite group, especially since the “land of 10-thousand skates” rarely is known for those who wear the goalie version.

Just maybe Wilcox can pull it off. But if he does, don’t expect him to brag much about it.

The post Schwartz: In the Shadows No More appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.

Featured Image:
Jason Pominville
(Getty Images/Bruce Kluckhohn)

Wild do the little things right to down Sabres and end skid …

The dark cloud casting an ever-increasing shadow of doom over the Minnesota Wild dressing room recently gave way to a sliver of daylight on Thursday night at Xcel Energy Center. On the strength of three second-period goals, the Wild managed to defeat the lowly Buffalo Sabres 4-1 in front of 18,229 to snap a franchise high six-game losing streak.

Goals by Marco Scandella, Jason Pominville and Jason Zucker in the middle stanza gave Minnesota its second such lead at home in five days. Unlike Sunday’s debacle against the Islanders, however, the Wild managed to maintain its lead to record their first win since a beating Vancouver in a shootout on Dec. 17 in St. Paul.

“We needed that for sure, but we did it the right way, which is big,” Wild coach Mike Yeo said of the win. “That’s what we said after last game, that we have to take some of the things that we did and improve on some of the things that we weren’t quite good enough at but [it was] a pretty complete game tonight.”

Wild center Kyle Brodziak, capped off the scoring with an empty net goal without even taking a shot. Brodziak’s 30-game goal drought ended when Buffalo’s Christian Erhoff hauled him down as he carried the puck toward an empty net. The officials awarded Brodziak his third goal of the season, ruling he would have scored.

“He was going to score. He was going to go top shelf, for sure,” Yeo said, unable to keep a straight face and eliciting laughter from the media. “But he earned that goal with his play; he was good all night.”

Pominville tallied his team-leading 18th of the season and second in two games against his former team, each of them holding up as game winners. He admitted shooting on Sabres and newly-named U.S. Olympic goalie Ryan Miller is still difficult to get used to.

“He’s in a pretty unique class of goalies,” Pominville said. “I think we played 11 years together so he knows everything I’ve got so I just shut my eyes and threw it on net and found a way [to score].”

Wild goaltender Niklas Backstrom, however, outdueled Miller, making 19 saves to snap a personal eight-game losing streak. The win, just his second in regulation this season and first since Oct. 26, and raised his record to 3-9-2.

Backstrom, who wasn’t supposed to play against Buffalo but was forced into action when the team learned earlier in the day Josh Harding was unavailable due to illness, diminished any suggestions the game offered any sort of personal redemption.

“You try to approach the same way every day, it doesn’t matter if you play good or you play bad,” Backstrom said. “You go out there and work as hard as you can and when you do that, good things are going to happen. You can’t focus on what happened in the past. You just approach the same way every day and believe in what you’re doing. It’s been working, so it’s going to be there sooner or later.”

But his effort was not lost on his teammates.

“We’re really excited for Backy,” Pominville said. “He played really well and I think we all know he was going through a bit of a tough-go. We weren’t scoring a lot of goals when he was playing, so just to get the lead for him tonight was huge and for him to stand tall when he needed to was huge for the team.”

Captains Ryan Suter and Mikko Koivu each had two assists and were a combined plus-4 to contribute to what Yeo termed as a complete game.

“We had everybody show up and play hard and play the right way tonight, and I thought that started with our leaders, there’s no question,” Yeo said. “I’ve said this many times: That’s what we need those guys to do.”

Terms like “details” and “the little things” were used repeatedly in the Wild dressing room and attention to those were critical to a Minnesota team 5-12-1 in its past 18 games looking to get out of its funk.

“We did all the small things, all the details right,” Backstrom said. “Shift after shift, we did the right things. That’s something you have to build on.”

“If you look at it, we didn’t do anything special but we did a lot of good things right and all the little details right,” Pominville said. “That led to us out-shooting them and for the most part out-playing them.

“We needed points bad and we need to keep headed in that direction.”

The post One in a Row appeared first on Minnesota Hockey Magazine.