Minnesota Wild: Know Your Rivals – Colorado Avalanche

The Minnesota Wild as always faces a steep challenge to emerge from the Central Division. What about their rivals?

We’re looking at each of the teams in the Central Division in the hopes of gauging how much more or less of a threat they now are to the Minnesota Wild.

Last year’s surprise package, the Colorado Avalanche project to be a handful once more. They have youth on their side which often means that the team is a little less risk-averse.

They will surely be out to prove last season wasn’t a fluke, so will have a certain chip on their shoulder, figuratively speaking.

When Do We Face Them:

@ Colorado (Thursday, October 4 @ 8PM)
vs Colorado (Saturday, October 27 @ 7PM)
@ Colorado (Wednesday, January 23 @ 8:30PM)
vs Colorado (Tuesday, March 19 @ 7PM)

How We Match Up With Them

Per NHL.com, the Colorado Avalanche used 11 rookie players last season. The obvious hope for any rivals, the Minnesota Wild included, is that the dreaded sophomore slump is in full effect.

The star player for the team last year was definitely Nathan MacKinnon, who seems to have finally hit his stride as a top-tier player.

Defending him is key; he very nearly stole the Hart Memorial Trophy last year and will be hoping to match that performance, if not go one better. He can truly place himself in the top-tier of players in the NHL, if not on the cusp of it.

If Mikko Koivu can shut him out of the game, then the rest of the line-up doesn’t feel as scary. Not to say that the team isn’t impressive, just it’s not quite brimming with elite, elite players.

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Mikko Ratanen, Gabriel Landeskog, Alexander Kerfoot and Tyson Barrie will offer plenty of resistance, but they’re not quite a comparable to MacKinnon or in Barrie’s case, I wouldn’t quite put him on par with Ryan Suter.

Additional to the core is a combination of Philipp Grubauer and Semyon Varlamov in net, that has massive potential to provide elite goaltending against any opposition.

The hope for the Minnesota Wild has to be that they struggle to work out how to share the load and as a result both players suffer performance-wise.

Perhaps though, the underestimation factor is their trump card. If the Minnesota Wild approach them as if they’re rookies, or this year, sophomores – they could be caught out.

Our friends over at Mile High Sticking seem to think that we’re very much over-estimating ourselves; guess we’ll have to prove them wrong.

I’m not about to say they’re a bad team or that their players aren’t elite, because MacKinnon at the very least is; but I am going to be rather smug if we beat them and Dumba is a difference-maker!

Maybe when all is said and done though, it’s the Minnesota Wild’s youngsters having break-out years this time around. Maybe they can leave the Avalanche for dust?!

I think we’ll see some levelling out of the team, but they’re most definitely a contender for the wild-card spot; there’s too much raw talent for them not to be.