Gone Puck Wild
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Minnesota Wild: Power Rankings After Week Two

By Luke Ryan

ST. PAUL, MN - OCTOBER 13: Eric Fehr #21 of the Minnesota Wild and Martin Necas #88 of the Carolina Hurricanes battle for the puck during a game between the Minnesota Wild and Carolina Hurricanes at Xcel Energy Center on October 13, 2018 in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Hurricanes beat the Wild 5-4 in overtime.(Photo by Bruce Kluckhohn/NHLI via Getty Images)
ST. PAUL, MN - OCTOBER 13: Eric Fehr #21 of the Minnesota Wild and Martin Necas #88 of the Carolina Hurricanes battle for the puck during a game between the Minnesota Wild and Carolina Hurricanes at Xcel Energy Center on October 13, 2018 in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Hurricanes beat the Wild 5-4 in overtime.(Photo by Bruce Kluckhohn/NHLI via Getty Images) /
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Week two was a lot kinder to the Minnesota Wild than the previous week. An overtime win against the Chicago Blackhawks was followed by an overtime loss to the Carolina Hurricanes; points from both games, at least.

Whilst these aren’t the sorts of results that the Minnesota Wild can be reliant upon; grinding out to overtime makes a difference. Last year’s wild-card spot was decided by just one point, after all.

Devan Dubnyk was the real hero of the week, standing on his head with a ridiculous shot count fired at him by the Hurricanes.

The promotion of Jordan Greenway to the top line against Chicago was also a change from recent times and for all intent and purposes, appeared somewhat inspired.

J.J. Regan of NBC Sports Washington placed the Minnesota Wild in 22nd place, whilst NBC Sports Boston colleague, Joe Haggerty ranked the team 17th (last week: 24th).

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Regan was keen to point out that the lost point against Carolina could make a real difference come the season end, whilst Haggerty, much like us, pointed out that whilst the team may not have been in great form, Devan Dubnyk already is.

An improvement of seven spots in Haggerty’s estimation either points to the Minnesota Wild finally finding a bit of form or other teams being that awful in the past week.

Ryan Lambert of Yahoo Sports has a grand total of zero words to say about the Minnesota Wild, but ranks the team in 25th (last week: 27th). A climb of two spots in his estimation says very little, realistically.

Possibly most concerning is that the NHL.com’s Super 16 has yet to feature the Minnesota Wild. It has however featured four of their Central Division rivals.

The Wild will be needing to significantly pick up their game to climb above the Colorado Avalanche, Chicago Blackhawks, Winnipeg Jets and top-ranked Nashville Predators in our estimation.

North of the border, they’re not much kinder to Minnesota, with TSN.ca ranking the team 24th (last week: 28th).

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The need to fix up the shots against count is blatantly clear; with the statistic that they’ve allowed more than 40 shots across three games already big cause for concern.

Whilst the team is climbing on most people’s rankings, they need to be pushing into the top fifteen; right now they’re lingering low in others’ estimations for now.

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