Minnesota Wild: Start the season with a strong October

The Minnesota Wild completed the month of October with their best record since the 2015-16 Season. A complete team effort resulted in a strong month.

The month of October for the Minnesota Wild went much the same way as most of the games along the same way. Minnesota started slow, going 1-2-2 through the first 5 games and looking quite sluggish for the better part of most games.

Late in the games, namely the third period, Minnesota looked like a much better team by winning the third period in most games. Late in the month, the Minnesota Wild appeared to be finding their stride and starting to skate better early in games.

Following the lackluster start to the season, Minnesota went on to win 6 of their next 7 games and slide up to third place in the Central Division.

They finished the month of October as the only NHL team without a regulation loss on home ice, and an impressive 2 road wins on top of that. Registering 16 of a possible 24 points in October, the Wild are on pace with the 2015-16 and 2016-17 teams before the down year last season.

Most importantly, the team escaped October with the only injuries being minor ones to Joel Eriksson Ek and Matt Hendricks. Each player missed 6 games due to injury in October, but neither’s contributions were sorely missed.

Mikko Koivu‘s day off to welcome his new child was the biggest missed game of the month, and if the Minnesota Wild can say that their biggest players only missed games for positive like that, then this team should be in good shape going forward.

The largest negative of October could be that the team finished with a goal differential of Zero, with 35 goals for and 35 goals against, through 12 games. This is something that will need to be worked on going forward.

Minnesota Wild goalies combined for a fantastic start to the season, but most of the credit needs to go to Devan Dubnyk.

Devan Dubnyk finished October with a superb 2.19 GAA (8th among goalies with at least 5 starts) and .937 Sv% (4th among goalies with at least 5 games played). His 5 wins were tied for 5th in the NHL, only 1 back of the league leaders in the category.

More importantly, Devan Dubnyk was the backbone of the team during the sluggish start to the season, keeping them in games they should have been out of early on, and outright stealing the a point against Vegas in the second game of the season.

This is more of the same for Devan Dubnyk in the regular season, as he has become the brick wall in net and is relied upon to bail out his teammates when they are giving up too many chances against.

Dubnyk personally set a single season record in Dallas on October 19th, recording 24 saves in the second period alone, en route to recording the 3-1 win in a game that Minnesota had no rights being close in if not for Dubnyk.

Alex Stalock took 3 starts in relief of Dubnyk, each in half of back-to-back games for the Wild, and recorded 2 wins in 3 tries.

Stalock’s stats don’t reflect as nicely in the Goals Against and Save Percentage categories, with a 3.30 GAA and .895 Sv%, but 2 wins in 3 attempts is enough to make fans ignore the stat lines a little bit more.

Where Stalock impressed is in his puck handling, being praised as a third defenseman with how well he handled the puck. Including springing the offense in 3-on-3 overtime for the game winning goal against Tampa Bay.

https://twitter.com/mnwild/status/1053850865134698496

Stalock could use to clean up some of the weaker goals he was allowing in October, but as long as the team in front keeps providing him the offense to win the 5-4 and 4-3 games we can’t complain about his goals against yet.

Mikael Granlund tied for the team lead for the Minnesota Wild with 12 points through the month of October, more importantly he finished the month on a 9 game point streak.

The Minnesota offense started October quite slowly, with only 1 goal in each of it’s first 2 games of the season. It came alive after that, scoring at least 2 goals per game in every game since. A large part of this success is the play of veteran forward Mikael Granlund.

Granlund had 6 goals and 6 assists in October, to tie with Zach Parise (4G, 8A) for the lead among forwards . His 6 goals led the team in that category, and his 23% shooting percentage is better than NHL superstars Connor McDavid, Sidney Crosby, Filip Forsberg, and Nathan MacKinnon (among others).

This shooting pace may be hard to maintain over the course of the season, but the key here is that Granlund is not shooting any more often than is usual for him. He is taking the shots that are given to him, and the team is doing a better job setting him up.

Granlund’s NHL bests are 26 goals and 46 assists, in different seasons. At his current point per game pace, he would nearly double his best goal scoring season. Obviously shooting 23% is quite high, and we should temper expectations, but if William Karlsson can do it for one full season then it’s not out of the realm of possibility for a player of Granlund’s skill.

Eric Staal got off to a quiet start to the season, leaving some to believe he was finally regressing after an excellent 2017-18. He has picked up his game since then, though, and finished October with 10 points in 12 games on pace for another 60+ point season.

Zach Parise was the early season star of the offense, scoring points when the offensive well looked dry in the first few games. He has since quieted slightly, but still looks to be in the best shape of his Minnesota Wild career.

Charlie Coyle, Mikko Koivu, and Jason Zucker have each provided timely offence through the first month of the season, and even Nino Niederreiter has provided 5 assists despite struggling to find his first goal of the season.

Most surprising is the play of the Minnesota Wild’s 4th line, as Eric Fehr and Marcus Foligno have each provided important goals early this year. They are still searching for a permanent fixture to fill that last spot on their line, but regardless of line mate those 2 have been consistently solid players to start the season.

It was a slow start, but things have come around to end the month strong. Like the team who starts the game down 1-0 in the first period before mounting the third period comeback to steal a win, the Wild started October behind the proverbial eight ball, but have come back at the end of the month to finish strong.

With the offense firing as it is, and players like Niederreiter and Eriksson Ek still looking to break scoring slumps, it’s a promising start to a must-win season. More of this throughout the year, and we could be looking at high expectations late in the year.