Minnesota Wild: Top 5 Games to See Live This Season
By Cody Defoe
The Minnesota Wild open their 2018-19 NHL Schedule tonight, on the road against the Colorado Avalanche. What other games stand out on their schedule this year?
I’ve went through the Minnesota Wild schedule for the season, and thoroughly dissected the games to determine which games are the most must-see. Road games are important, but for the purpose of this exercise I’m going to give you the Top 5 games that will be played at Xcel Energy Center this year.
The Minnesota Wild do not have any extremely long home stands, the longest being 5 games late in March. This is a good thing, as a long home stand can lead to complacency and unnecessary losses.
The home stand in March is at a perfect time as well, in the last quarter of the season when everyone is battling for playoff spots or playoff positioning the Team of 18,000 will be able to encourage the Wild down the stretch run of the season.
Early in the year, Minnesota will face a long road trip of 7 games. They will be away from their friendly home for 7 games from the end of October into the middle of November. This stretch could be a very telling run for how the rest of the season will go.
Minnesota also will have 14 back-to-back games, only one of which is with both games being at home. There are the somewhat easy trips to Tampa & Florida, Edmonton & Calgary, Anaheim & Los Angeles, but even those still require travel after a game night.
The Minnesota Wild will need to be able to rely on Devan Dubnyk and Alex Stalock fairly heavily in all those back-to-back situations, as the team will likely be short on rest and flat-footed at points in the season.
These are the Top 5 Home Games I can find. Purely based on my own opinion, but diagnosed as best I can based on the players coming from each team and where each game falls during the season. Let me know if you think I missed an important game.