Minnesota Wild: Lost Game to Tyler Bozak in Less Than 30 Seconds

Matt Dumba

Mathew Dumba was the best player in Minnesota Wild green for this game. He looked every bit of the first pairing defenseman he was cast as for the night.

Dumba was originally credited with the Wild’s second goal, before it was determined he had bounced it off of Kloos’s backside, but he was also present in every zone and responsible all over the ice.

I said it in my season preview, and I stand behind it after his first preseason game: This season should finally be the year that Dumba establishes himself among the league’s best.

He played on a pairing with Jonas Brodin in this game, and we should expect that pairing to be where he will start the season.

Dumba was not hesitant to take the body on the night, he was standing players up at the blueline, forcing dump ins from the neutral zone, and controlling play in the offensive zone.

Dumba may get a bad rep in the Twin Cities and among Wild fans for a tendency towards turnovers or poor defensive play, but he has made a conscious effort to improve on those mistakes every year and this year should be his best yet.

If Matt Dumba can translate his play from this preseason game into the regular season, we may have to start including him in discussions alongside the names of offensive D-Men like Brent Burns or Erik Karlsson.

Pairing Dumba alongside Brodin makes sense in the short term, as the 2 of them seem to feed into each other’s strengths and they have played well together in recent years.

For the long term, I think the Minnesota Wild have something special as a secret weapon pairing of Dumba with Ryan Suter. Those 2 together could form a back-end weapon that few teams in the NHL would enjoy facing.