Missed opportunities and points could come back to haunt the Wild
By Derek Felska
‘It’s a game of inches’, ‘the fan’s are certainly getting their money’s worth’, ‘that will come back to haunt them’ are cliches you’ve heard probably countless times if you’re a fan of sports let alone hockey when talking about close games. Cliches like these are not bad, they don’t detract from the event and many times they often reflect the truth. We can all think of sports moments where all of those cliches have come true. An inch or two can be the difference between a shot ringing off a post and going in or deflecting harmlessly away. One result gives you a goal, the other doesn’t even register as a shot on goal but those are the breaks of professional sports. In hockey, misfortune in the offensive zone often seems to boomerang so the puck up ends up in your own net soon thereafter.
When the Wild squandered two long power plays in the 2nd period by not so much as attempting a shot on goal, despite their 3-0 lead I knew that lack of urgency was going to come back to haunt them. In the NFL, former coach Jerry Glanville used to say the only thing the Prevent Defense did was to prevent you from winning. The same is often true when a team decides to just defend its lead as the Wild did on Sunday against the Winnipeg Jets. The Wild had a 3-0 lead going into the 3rd and the team decided to sit on its lead and coast into a victory. Instead the Jets get a few lucky goals and that 3-goal lead dissolved in less than 5 minutes. The Wild found itself holding on just to get the game to overtime. The team would prevail in overtime on Marco Scandella‘s quick wrist shot, but the team still surrendered a ‘mercy’ point to a fellow Central Division foe. Was this an opportunity lost?
Nov 23, 2013; Winnipeg, Manitoba, CAN; Winnipeg Jets forward Bryan Little (18) scores during shootout on Minnesota Wild goalie Niklas Backstrom (32) at MTS Centre. Wild win 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Bruce Fedyck-USA TODAY Sports
Had the Wild won that game in regulation they would have leap frogged the Jets, who sat in 3rd going into the game but with the ‘mercy’ point they stayed ahead of Minnesota in the Central Division standings. Opportunities to leap frog divisional foes do not happen often. Head to head match ups offer that chance for a 4-point swing; but if you let it go to overtime its reduced to two. When you are already leading in the standings and considering you were trailing by a significant margin to reach overtime and prevent that 4-point swing from occurring was a bit of a win in itself for the Jets.
So what, its just one point, there is a lot of season left, right? Yes, there is a lot of season left but points earned at the early portion of the season mean just as much as those earned in the last few weeks. Remember Clock-gate back in 2012 between the Los Angeles Kings and the Columbus Blue Jackets? Where ‘human error’ with the clock stopped it at a crucial moment giving the Kings the opportunity to win the game with just .3 seconds on the clock. The Kings would qualify for the 8th spot in the playoffs that season, snagging the spot by just 5 points ahead of 9th place Calgary as they went on to win the Stanley Cup that season. The Wild also know just how fine that line can be; when it edged the Columbus Blue Jackets for the 8th spot in the Western Conference playoffs in 2013 by the simple fact more of its wins came in regulation than that of its expansion cousin.
So little things matter but if we dig deeper into Sunday’s game we see the team passing on obvious shooting opportunities. A 2-on-1 between Charlie Coyle and Thomas Vanek ended up without a shot even being taken as Coyle (who was in better shooting position than Vanek) tried to swing a pass across to the struggling Austrian sniper only to send it off target for an easy turnover. As Wayne Gretzky once said, “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take.” While games are not won on shot totals alone, its tough to win games if you pass up open chances to shoot the puck. Coyle and Vanek both had one shot apiece and they’re playing on the team’s 2nd line. The lack of shooting from Vanek in particular has been a major source of discussion among fans on message boards and on Twitter. The Winnipeg Jets certainly didn’t rally back on Sunday because of the perfect execution of their shots but rather by the luck that can be had by sending the puck towards the goal. Send the puck towards the goal, hope for a lucky bounce or deflection and if it crosses the goal line that’s all that matters. It doesn’t have to be pretty. The Jets keep it simple strategy combined with the Wild’s decision to defend their lead instead of playing assertive aggressive hockey resulted them being unable to deny Winnipeg an important point in the standings.
NHL fans often complain about the mercy point and its believed effect on the standings, but the rules are the same for everyone. Barring a tie in points in the standings those points matter and can be the difference between making the playoffs and scheduling tee times at the end of the regular season. The Wild have games in hand on most of the rest of the Central Division, including 3 games in hand on the Winnipeg Jets. The Jets currently have 23 points to the Wild’s 20, if the Wild would’ve won outright in regulation as they should have on Sunday they’d be trailing just by one after Winnipeg’s 3-1 win over New Jersey. With so many 3-point games in the league, its tough to climb past clubs ahead of you but now the Wild must win at least twice to swap places with the Jets. A win in regulation time would’ve made it possible to have done so with just one win. Winning 1 out of 3 is far more probable than trying to win 2 out of 3.
The Central Division is arguably the toughest in the NHL. With the surprising Nashville Predators leading the way, followed by a stacked Blues squad, then the Jets and you can’t forget about the Blackhawks. Chicago has struggled but still cannot be dismissed since afterall they’re the club that has bounced the Wild from the playoffs the last two seasons. It should come as no surprise that it will likely come down to the wire as to who moves onto the post-season. It will come down to teams pulling out a point here and there when perhaps their play didn’t make them deserving of it; or maybe in Minnesota’s case not finishing a team off in regulation when it had the chance.
Legendary coach Herb Brooks threw a tirade before the start of the 3rd period in the Gold Medal game between the United States and Finland during the 1980 Olympics telling his team if they didn’t will themselves back from a 2-1 deficit “they’d take that loss to their (expletive) graves.” It was brutish, but it did the job and the team rallied back to a 4-2 gold medal winning victory. The problem is in this case, the opportunity has already been lost and if the team comes up short they might just take that overtime victory and the ‘mercy’ point it spawned for Winnipeg who is more than a little motivated as the franchise hasn’t been in the playoffs since the 2006-07 season. Hopefully that lost opportunity like that (or the 3rd period implosion against the Rangers) doesn’t come back to haunt them. The Wild cannot afford to take any point for granted or feel so comfortable they can give them away either. Little things like that matter.