Minnesota Wild: Roster Hopefuls Give Good Effort in Dallas
By Cody Defoe
Matt Read
Matt Read gets his place in the Top 3 for this game largely in part because of his goal, but also for what that goal means in regards to his bid to secure a position on the Minnesota Wild’s opening day roster.
Read followed up his first preseason goal from the 7-0 win against Colorado, with another to tie the game Monday late in the 1st period. The goal puts him as the front runner to secure one of the final forward positions on the Wild’s 4th line.
Read was slightly exposed playing against the Dallas top line for a large portion of this night as he was on the ice for 4 of the goals against, including all 3 by the Benn/Hintz line. The bright side to that, is that he was always on the ice for 2 of the goals for, and if he can score while playing against an opposing top line then he should be able to score more when he’s playing in a 4th line role.
He spent most of the game on the opposite wing from Marcus Foligno, and the pair were centered by both Eric Fehr and Matt Hendricks at diferent points in the game. If I were a betting man, I’d say that Fehr is the more likely to open the season with these 2 wingers.
The other solid part of Read’s game was that he got to spend a large portion of the power play on the ice. This is an area Read probably won’t see much of when regular season starts, but he didn’t seem out of place in his role there.
His biggest detraction is that he only played 10 seconds shorthanded, and was scored against in that 10 second period. As a 4th line player, usually your best hope of seeing any special teams action would be on the PK. That’s an area Read needs to work on if he hopes to stick with the team long term.
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Read is a former 20 goal scorer at the NHL level, so he has proven he can get it done at the NHL level. All signs point towards him getting another chance to regain his past glories, hopefully for him these preseason games are a sign of things to come. If they are, the Minnesota Wild could have found another free agency bargain!