With all this attention on baseball lately, I realized I haven't focused on the Minnesota Wild since the regular season started. Now is a good time to dive in.
Expectations for the Wild aren't exactly high this year. In just his second year behind the bench, it is believed that head coach Todd Richards may be on a short leash in terms of his job security. Last season was not the greatest, but I was willing to give Richards a grace period to implement his new system.
I'm not sure I agree with firing Richards during this season. There's been enough #fire____ topics in Minnesota sports lately with the very-necessary firing of Gophers football coach Tim Brewster, plus the shots being taken at Ron Gardenhire and now Vikings coach Brad Childress.
Let's see where the Wild stand at the end of the season, then it may be time to re-evaluate the personnel, but not before then. For the record, I'm just hoping the Wild can improve off of last year. And no, I don't think they have a good chance to advance to the playoffs (but hey, you never know).
Starting far from home
A lot of excitement has followed the Wild already in its young season. It started with two losses across the pond in Finland. The first game wasn't very good, and the second was the case of a great goaltender in a shootout loss.
Everyone will remember the first game against division-rival Vancouver this season at the Xcel Energy Center. The Wild played extremely well in a 6-2 win, but it was the physical part of the game that told the story.
Getting a little too physical
Canuck Ryan Rypien grabbed a fan that had a seat right next to the visitor's bench area. This was after Rypien reached over an official to punch Brad Staubitz in a skirmish along the Wild bench. It was clear from the beginning Rypien was out of line, with no instigation from the fan.
The NHL suspended the Canuck for six games. I don't have too much fault with this. Although contact with a fan is a big no-no, so maybe 10 games would have made a bigger statement, but at least he didn't skate by with just a couple. The NHL is so inconsistent these days with fines, penalties and suspensions, so this was a pretty decent result.
End of sell-out era
Another item to note, the Wild's consecutive sell-out streak officially died with the second home game this season. Of course, anybody who's been in that building on a somewhat consistent basis should have noticed the huge amount of green seats during games last season. Now it's just official.
On the plus side, if you want tickets to Wild games, they should be more readily available now, unlike in seasons past. I just hope it doesn't get as bad as the Timberwolves games though, where they have trouble giving tickets away.
The Wild are fresh off a home shootout loss to Los Angeles Monday night. After jumping to a 2-0 lead in the first period, they began an all-too-common march to the penalty box. The Kings tied it up and won in a shootout. I'm never very confident when the Wild reach the shootout.
They are now 3-3-2. However, they did win in Edmonton, so they won't have a huge winless streak on the road to start the season like they did last year.
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