Minnesota Wild: Should Suter’s Minutes be Reduced?
One constant every season is that Ryan Suter will lead the Minnesota Wild in average minutes played by a country mile. Still as the Wild blueliner moves further into his 30s, would it not be right to reduce his minutes played per game?
One of the continual debates that seems to surround the Minnesota Wild year-in and year-out is the amount of minutes that Ryan Suter plays a game. Beginning with his first season Suter has racked up monster minutes and is always near the top of the league in minutes played in his four campaigns with the Wild. Last season Suter played an average 28:36 minutes a game and still set a career high in points with 51 (8 goals and 43 asssits), seeming to buck the convention that less minutes leads to more production.
The rumor surrounding Suter every offseason is that the Wild will reduce his minutes in the upcoming season. There seems to be more speculation over that with the Wild’s new coaching staff in place. Bruce Boudreau has already said that he has never had a player who has played minutes like Suter does, seeming to suggest that he might be thinking about reducing Suter’s minutes per game. But is that such a good idea?
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Suter is probably the most efficient player in the NHL. With a combination of an effective skating strike and superior positioning, Suter has the defensive zone covered. He doesn’t have to expend a ton of energy to move around the defensive zone to do his job. Additionally, he seems to have an uncanny ability to use his defensive partner to adjust his positioning and become even more efficient in his energy expenditures. This might be why one of the rubs Suter had with Mike Yeo last season was that he wanted to move his defensive partner in midseason.
Sure his shutdown ability might be there due to superior energy saving, but what about how he plays the transition game? According to the Score.com’s Justin Bourne “Suter recorded 1444 defensive zone touches through January 19, almost 350 more than his next closest teammate (Jonas Brodin). His success rate clearing the zone on those touches was an astounding 31.2 percent, which puts him in the company of elite puck movers like Erik Karlsson, Kris Letang, Keith Yandle”.
Still not convinced that Suter can move the puck? You just need to simply look at his assist numbers. Last season he tallied 43 assists to be 7th in league amoungst defenders, and has 342 total in his 11 NHL seasons. He’s feeding the puck consistently to create scoring chances off of the first pass out of the zone. That’s important when trying to create those up ice rushes that make for odd-man situations and then in-turn develop into awesome scoring chances.
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Durability is something that most people seem to call out as well to argue a redux in Suter’s minutes. The thing here is that Suter doesn’t have a durability issue. Last season Suter played in all 82 contests the Wild had in the regular season. Furthermore, in the 2013-14 season when he logged his career high 29:25 average minutes he also missed zero games. Sure he’s not getting any younger, but if he keeps conditioning himself and playing a style that is conducive to long minutes a game Suter can keep this up for a long time to come.
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So why reduce Suter’s minutes? The Wild are better when he’s on the ice, his Corsi and Fenwick were both over 50% last season. He’s the best defender on the team, Suter has never finished a season minus in plus/minus in his four seasons with the club. Most of all though he can handle it, he’s only missed five regular season games in his time with the Wild. What’s the old adage…if it ain’t broke don’t fix it.