Minnesota Wild: Jason Pominville Will Succeed Next Season
With such a bad start to the season in 2015-16 Minnesota Wild forward Jason Pominville has garnered a massive amount of criticism with some calling for the Wild to cut ties with him this offseason. Still many forget Pominville was the team leader in playoff scoring and might be worthy of a second chance.
It’s not a stretch to say that Minnesota Wild forward Jason Pominville had the worst season of his 13 year NHL career. Going into the 2015-16 season Pominville had scored 237 NHL goals and it seemed as if he’d be poised to add more to that total playing on the top line with Parise and Granlund. But it didn’t really happen as he didn’t score his first goal of the season until his 21st game of the season on November 28th against Dallas.
It wasn’t the start Pominville envisioned or was proud of. As he told Michael Rand of the Star Tribune that “You get off to the start I had, and name me one guy who had my start who winds up having a good year.” He goes on to explain how that start affected him “It’s tough to get behind the 8-ball. You lose confidence, you’re trying to find your play and get back to where you’ve had success, but you get away from it because you’re trying to overdo things or overthinking.”
The shadow of the 8-ball loomed large for Pommer starting on Boxing Day and going all the way to January 21st. During that stretch he went scoreless in 13 games played. It was a time that the Wild desperately needed Pominville to step-up as the Wild went 4-7-2 in that stretch. The Wild continued their downward spiral even further and Pominville went with them as he scored only two points in his next ten games after breaking his 13 game scoreless streak.
Then on February 17th in Calgary, Pominville would breakout scoring a huge goal and an assist. After that game he turned things around as he tallied 5 goals 10 assists in the final 18 games of the season. Had he played like that consistently all season Pominville would have had over 20 goals and 40 assists. That would have been a result that would have matched the expectations of a player who is making $5.6 million a season.
In the playoffs, Pominville continued his great end of the season play by notching four goals and three assists. So good was his performance that he led the team in points in their six games against Dallas. It’s an excellent individual performance that is overshadowed by the team being beat in the series by the Stars. Had the Wild won the series, we might be talking about the turnaround of Pominville this offseason rather than the struggles he had at the beginning of the regular season.
For all the good play he put up at the end of the season and into the playoffs, many have wondered if the Wild would be better off cutting ties with Pominville with a buyout or possibly a trade. The issue is that a buyout of Pominville with three years left on his contract will actually end up being a setback for the Wild due to dead money hits, and a trade is most likely not possible due to his large cap hit.
Is keeping Pominville such a bad thing? Even for such a bad season, he still finished 8th on the Wild in points with 36 just above Erik Haula and Jared Spurgeon. Combine that with the fact that Pominville was an above average possession player on the year with a Corsi of 51.6% and a Fenwick of 52.3%, you can see that the Wild were better with him on the ice.
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Pominville’s ending of his season speaks more to his potential for next season than anything else. It’s hard to argue that a player who played so well in the playoffs will not have the potential to play excellent hockey the next season.
His confidence seems to be back as he explains to Rand “I just need to get off to a better start, and my points will be where they normally would be.” That speaks volumes to the fact that Pommer is past what has happened at the beginning of last season, and knows what needs to be done to make sure it doesn’t happen again. Additionally, under the more offensive system that Bruce Boudreau will bring the team you can see where Pominville’s confidence could go up if give more opportunities to score.
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Sure Pominville deserves a lot of the criticisms because of his play for most of last year. But one thing you never saw is Pommer give up. Even if the points didn’t come he did everything he could to make them. The results he had at the end of the season and into the playoffs shows a player that is dedicated and still wants to play at a high level.
His former coach in Buffalo Lindy Ruff said it best “I think Jason’s just a real good two-way player and does the right things, plays the game the right way”. Is it so bad to have a player like that in your lineup?