Minnesota Wild: What Does The Opening Night Line-Up Look Like?

The Minnesota Wild aren’t going to surprise anyone with their pairing between the pipes this season. Coming into camp, Devan Dubnyk had his spot all but guaranteed and Alex Stalock had his there for the taking too.

Their only competitor was Andrew Hammond, who will start the league with the Iowa Wild but offers a perfectly viable backup to the backup option should things ‘go south’.

Devan Dubnyk comes off the back of a 0.918% save percentage year, after a 0.923% the year prior. Whether this is the sign of a gradual regression in his skill between the pipes or simply a blip on the radar, we shall see.

The more notable fact was that come playoff time, he dropped to a meagre 0.908% as the Minnesota Wild went out in five games. Dubnyk will certainly be expected to pick up his game somewhat should the Minnesota Wild be a chance at playoffs this year.

A workload of about sixty games is likely again, so let’s hope he spent the summer doing plenty of conditioning work.

In Alex Stalock, the Minnesota Wild pretty much have a case of ‘what you see is what you get’. A steady and able backup goaltender that isn’t about to post elite numbers, nor is he likely to be picked up as someone’s new number one goaltender.

As a Minnesota native, he no doubt enjoys pulling on a Minnesota Wild jersey and sees action twenty to thirty times a season.

His best season was a 0.932% save percentage behind the San Jose Sharks in the 2013-14 season, across 24 games.

Getting anywhere close to replicating that as Dubnyk’s backup would work out perfectly for the Minnesota Wild.

Picking the make-up of the Minnesota Wild defense on opening night is a little more complicated, especially given there is an abundance of decent depth options.

However, recent roster cuts make it a lot clearer to determine who is likely to slot in where on the blue-line.

The most obvious is the Minnesota Wild’s top pairing of Ryan Suter and Matt Dumba. This pair didn’t spend a great deal for time partnering each other last season but project to be an incredibly solid duo.

They combined for 101 points last campaign, albeit on separate pairings for the most part; the big question is whether that production is limited by their partnership or whether they both excel and score at the same rate irregardless.

Moving down to the second pairing, you’ll find the duo of Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin. We’ve spoken about both players.

In the case of Spurgeon, it was to point out how underrated he is for the work he puts in on defense, whilst Brodin was someone we suggested is a prime candidate to be traded.

Either way, it’s an expectation that come opening night, these two will be making up a second pairing, that although it won’t strike fear into the opposition, it will be more than able to hold it’s own.

Finally, we forsee the third pairing being made up of summer signing Greg Pateryn and Nick Seeler.

Between the pair of them, they’ve done enough to see off competition from the likes of Ryan Murphy, who hopefully clears waivers, Matt Bartkowski and Carson Soucy.

The expectation is that Nate Prosser warms a seat in the press-box for the time being. Gustav Olofsson, meanwhile, looks set to start the season with the big club albeit on injured reserve.

There are questions when he recovers as to whether Prosser or himself did enough in pre-season to maintain the extra spot. The defensive depth in the Minnesota Wild organisation screams out for a trade to be made in order to free up some spots.

At the offensive end of the ice, the Minnesota Wild first two lines are reasonably easy to pick. It’s beyond them that the picture isn’t quite as crystal clear.

The obvious first line sees last years 42 goal-scorer Eric Staal with Jason Zucker and Mikael Granlund.

Between the three of them, they were last year’s top three scorers for the Minnesota Wild, netting a combined 207 points. They’ll need to repeat at least close to that sort of form this year in case any of the other forward combinations happen to struggle.

On the second line, the Minnesota Wild faithful will no doubt be looking forward to a revitalised Zach Parise stepping out alongside Nino Neiderreiter and Mikko Koivu.

Parise only managed 42 games last campaign, so there’s no doubt it’s good to see him back. In that short span, he managed to score 15 goals and register 9 assists.

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He’s always quite reliable for points as long as he remains fit, which is always the part he’s proven slightly less reliable on.

Koivu and Neiderreiter, beyond their role on the second line, will no doubt also find themselves on the penalty-kill once more, ensuring they see a decent amount of ice-time.

The third line proves quite intriguing this year, as the Minnesota Wild chose to actually experiment a little in pre-season.

That experiment involved trialling Jordan Greenway as a center and seemed to be a relative success.

With Charlie Coyle netting a hat-trick in pre-season and Joel Eriksson-Ek mounting a strong shot total, this line may actually have something to it as the season starts.

Finally, the most up in the air of all the roster selections; the fourth line.

You;d expect that summer signing Eric Fehr begins as the center, whilst the wing spots were hotly contested between Kyle Rau, Matt Read, Matt Hendricks, J.T. Brown and Justin Kloos, among others.

The odds are that Marcus Foligno makes the cut and I’d predict Matt Hendricks makes the opening night roster.

That leaves J.T. Brown to join Nate Prosser and the injured Gustav Olofsson in the press box.