The Next Five Games: COL, ANA, LAK, ARI, TBL
This is the first installment of a season-long series taking a look at the schedule ahead in five-game clumps, letting you know the storylines, stats, and trends to look for over the next five games.
We’ve got one game in the books and it felt good. A 5-0 trouncing of the Avalanche, where possession, offense, defense, and goaltending was all looking effortlessly solid.
Unfortunately, there are going to be very few games that look like that or feature such a thorough beating of the opposition. Let’s take a look ahead to the next five games, what to expect, and what to look for.
Road Woes and The Road Home
The next five-game stretch starts with three on the road and some weird pacing. They’ll get the second half of their home-and-home with Colorado on Saturday and then won’t play again until Friday in Anaheim. That’s followed by an afternoon match with the defending Cup champs in Los Angeles on Sunday.
It’s a tough three-game stretch and a five-day lull between games won’t help the team gain any momentum. They’ll need to figure that out, because one of the Wild’s weak spots last season was their road play. They ranked 28th in road goals last season and went 17-17-7 away from St. Paul. The story wasn’t much better in the playoffs, as they went 1-6 on the road in the first two rounds.
The first month of the season is going to be tough all around with the schedule the Wild have — ten of the first 11 games are against playoff teams including Cup champs, Cup runner-up, and the President’s Trophy winner. A strong start on the first road trip (or series of road trips with no home games in between, I guess) will help the team get off to the strong start coach Mike Yeo has talked about a lot all preseason.
After that trek the Wild head back to Xcel for an October 23 game against the Arizona Coyotes and an October 25 game against the Tampa Bay Lightning.
The Possessed
We saw a lot of positives in the first game, but that kind of play is obviously unsustainable and teams are going to come out a little harder than the Avs did last night. Hell, the Avs are going to come out harder in subsequent games than the Avs did last night.
Over the next five games we’ll be watching the possession game. While I wouldn’t expect the team’s Corsi For to be 77.18% regularly like it was against the Avs — really an incredible performance — the team is looking to improve it’s possession game from last year and see it sticking in the positive numbers. The Wild will have a tough test in that regard against the Kings, who led the NHL in possession last season.
We’ll also be looking to see how the lines react to Thursday’s game. the Parise-Granlund-Pominville line was incredible, cycling like a washing machine and posting incredible possession totals. (Corsi For on that line: Granlund 94.59%, Parise 94.29%, Pominville 88.24%.) Again, that’s not a reasonable level to sustain, but they’ll need to keep their numbers up for the team to win. It was a great start for what could be a very, very dangerous line.
The Cooke-Koivu-Vanek line didn’t look like it was clicking all that well in stretches on Thursday. Through the next five games eyes will be on Thomas Vanek to see if he can find some chemistry with Mikko Koivu and get that line scoring and being more effective. Koivu led the team in possession last season, but tied for worst last night among team forwards. He was tied with Vanek at 51.85%. Still positive, but in a game where the Wild dominated in both ends, this line noticeably lacked the fire of the other three lines.
Another thing to watch for on this line will be whether or not Matt Cooke stays on wing there or if he finds his way down to the third or fourth line. It’s expected that Justin Fontaine will take his spot once he’s healthy. That line will find a groove, but what form it takes is yet to be seen. It’ll be an interesting storyline to watch over the next five games.
Lastly, goaltending will be a story for the next five games — as it’s likely to be until the Wild have a clear number one who has been healthy for a good stretch. Darcy Kuemper looks like he can take the starting job if he keeps his game together. He only faced 16 shots Thursday, but a shutout is a shutout and he looked like he had his game together. There was talk of Niklas Backstrom getting the start in Colorado, but after Kuemper’s shutout Yeo is going back to him on Saturday. With a long break between games it’ll be interesting to see if anything changes and if Kuemper can keep his strong start moving forward.
The season is young and lots of the storylines for the next five games will just be getting a sense of the roster and how this team is coming together, what kind of game they’ll play. They’ve got a tough road ahead in the next five and we should be able to get a better sense of where the team’s strengths truly are as they battle some tougher matches and get a few more games under their belts.