Blizzard6411
#benchstoner
And he tops it by beating up BurishHow cool would it be to see Clowe score his first goal of the season on Wednesday at SJ as a member of the Minnesota Wild???
And he tops it by beating up BurishHow cool would it be to see Clowe score his first goal of the season on Wednesday at SJ as a member of the Minnesota Wild???
If Cullen is out, I see us calling up Granlund. Any other forward and it would be someone other than Granlund, but we need an offensive 2nd line center on that line and sorry, but Brodziak doesn't cut it.
Why is Brodin so impotent offensively?
I mean, it's great that he focuses on defence his first year in the NHL, but he should get more points on his outlet passes alone.
Too many games, in too short a time. The Wild schedule quirks have arrived, and the team looks very tired right now. When we played Dallas the other day, the Stars have like almost 4 days to prepare for us, while we were flying back and forth, and playing the Yotes back in the Cities. Two back to backs in the same week this week is going to make for a long week for anything Wild. Get used to some more lack luster games before things get better I'm afraid. The Blues had some rest before playing us tonight. It's just a matter of our team getting tired, and having to play good teams on little to no rest, while they all seem to be rested for a couple / few days when they play us. It's just one of those things.
If Cullen is out for a while, think we go for Derek Roy?
Bad, bad game.
This team has been playing poorly for a while now. And the power play cannot get worse. Overpassing, overpassing, pass pass pass pass pass pass pass pass, tipped puck and out. Terrible. Absolutely terrible.
We should expect a hell of a lot better than this team has been.
Starts in the defensive zone...outside the top pairing nobody is moving the puck well. Flashes of decent puck movement from Spurgeon and Clark but lots of mistakes as well. Gilbert and Stoner have been horrendous with the puck. I'm not sure Clark is good enough to get this defense into/through the playoffs.
Up front, they looked incredibly soft. Top line was great outside of reluctance to shoot the puck. Fourth line was drawing penalties at least and I liked Mitchell's game. The other two, soft and ineffective.
Personally I'd like to see Mitchell getting Heatley's ice time even strength and put Heatley on the first unit PP. I get having Brodziak as a right hand shot and in case Koivu gets tossed from the draw, but he's just not adding much on the PP.
Wild better shape up pretty damn soon otherwise they are going to fall down the standings and find themselves in real trouble.
What does it say about the playoffs? Starting on relatively even terms where rest is concerned I'm not that worried about the physical aspect facing St. Louis or LA--i expect they'll hit more, but we'll have enough legs to at least look like we're in the game most nights. I wasn't expecting anything more than the first round so not too devastated one way or the other. Just need to hold on to get there.
I've noticed a real reluctance by the Wild to engage in physical play on the forecheck. Outside of Clutterbuck, those third and fourth lines have been chipping in pucks and not taking the body. They need to bang, especially when the other team is finishing every check in our end.
This is what it says about the playoffs. We are screwed if we can't penetrate a 1-3-1 defense like STL was playing in the 3rd. I don't blame them for doing it either. That was very smart hockey by that club and between that and Elliott's play they deserved to win that game. They wanted it more than the Wild did. But if fans (Parise and Brodziak didn't make this excuse) want to state it was because of how many games in short amount of time, I hate to break it to them but the playoffs aren't exactly play a game, get 4 days off.