Now that the NHL Olympic break has arrived and players head off to either represent their home countries, or just head home, let's take a closer look at the Minnesota Wild. Who's confident this bunch will sneak into the playoffs? Anyone? You won't find me jumping on board this playoff bandwagon.
Yes, I know the Wild played a great game to help couples out there celebrate Valentine's Day. A 6-2 win over the rival Canucks at home before a two-week break should give you a lot of momentum to carry over to the remaining part of the season. It was a game with lots of offense, career-highs being tied and broken, and an all-around entertaining game.
Heck, even my "favorite" James Sheppard got into a scrum. (I was at the gym at this time and not one TV was tuned to the Wild game. I did not believe it when my brother told me Shep had been in a fight. Who would've thought?)
But one great game doesn't take them off the hook for what lies ahead if the boys in red and green want to extend their season.
Playoffs?
Obviously, a team that sits within a few places of the eighth and final playoff spot needs to be thinking about how they can get in. They need to continue to break out their A-games each night and fight for their right to the playoffs. In other words, you gotta try, don't give up, etc., etc.
But that's from a player's perspective. I'm giving you a fan's perspective, which is: It's not gonna happen.
Those following this team closely enough shouldn't be all that surprised. The Wild are in their first year under a head coach not named Jacques, and a new general manager is holding the reigns. You can't expect to jump right to the top when there was such a shift in leadership, not to mention the NHL is filled with countless skilled and competitive teams.
Righting the ship
That's also not to say that the changes in coaching and management have been a bad thing. I don't think they have; quite the contrary in fact. I have seen some bold moves made from new GM Chuck Fletcher. Moves that you would probably never have seen from previous GM Doug Risebrough.
As far as coach Todd Richards goes, I'm going to give him a little more time, kind of a "grace year," if you will. He came in here trying to implement an entirely new system, focusing more intensively on offense rather than the defensive style preached by Jacques Lemaire.
I think everyone can agree that this season's start was not what anyone was expecting. Yes, we thought they would have some transition pains, but they were a bit more abysmal than anyone could have predicted. Road woes have pained the Wild all season long, but not more so than at the start where they could not win away from home at all.
I hate to keep going back to what seems to be a big cliche phrase, but the season has been somewhat of a roller coaster. (OK, I guess most teams can say that, but it's still true.) There have been good games and bad games, good streaks and bad streaks.
Getting on a four-game roll is great, but it's also negated when you lose the next three or four. When you have an 82-game season, you're bound to run into a lot of different factors contributing to your ups and downs as a team.
By the numbers
With all that said, let's talk numbers. Eight teams from each conference make the playoffs. (That's roughly half the teams out there.) The extra point teams earn for losing in extra frames, has made earning your spot in the top eight a tougher task than ever the past few seasons. Points are so tight in the final weeks of the season that it's hard to tell who will end up where.
Right now, the Wild are in 13th place. I don't have a prediction for exactly which position the Wild will find themselves in come season's end, but I just don't see them playing past their regular-season finale against the Dallas Stars on April 10.
My reasoning? A big one would have to be the Wild's March schedule.
Tough schedule
There has been much debate about the NHL schedule during Olympic years, and even debate as to whether NHL players should be competing in The Games at all. As it stands right now, the league still plays its 82-game schedule in the same six-month span as any other year. This makes for some time crunches and more than a few back-to-back games.
Case in point: The Wild play 16 games in March, including road-and-road back-to-backs three weeks in a row on the Thursdays and Fridays of the month. That means they play in one city one night, and another the next.
This is something all teams have to deal with, back-to-back games. But the Wild have seemed to have difficulty in the past with these games. Maybe others do too.
In a back-to-back situation, a team plays two games; that's 120 minutes of hockey. The constant problem for the Wild this season has been actually playing solid hockey for all of those minutes (even playing 40 of the 60 minutes in one game makes a difference).
Team A, team B
When a team is playing on the second night of the duo, they seem to be one of two types: A) Energized, in control and perhaps running on adrenaline to propel to a victory, or B) Sluggish, one step behind and doesn't give their all in an eventual loss. In which case they can afterward blame their woes on how tired they were after playing two nights in a row.
While I'm sure many teams could be considered Team B, I include the Wild in this group as well. It's not always in the second night of a game, but they have come out slow on occasions. It's even harder to watch when the Wild have had a short break, and then come out looking like Team B while their opponent is Team A after playing the night before.
The Wild need to come out strong after the break. Maybe "strong" isn't even a strong enough word. They need to dominate if they want to have a shot at the playoffs. I'm not guaranteeing that they'll make it or they won't.
Sports are not about guarantees. And after all the heroics and against-the-odds runs that I've witnessed from the Minnesota Twins in recent years, I'll never count a team out until it's official.
Basically, there's always a chance, but I just don't see it this year. They're playing some good hockey at times. They're making good moves for the future, so that's where focus should shift. As they say, there's always next year.
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