Minnesota Wild: Defying the statistics of a top-half team this season
By Luke Ryan
The Minnesota Wild are sitting comfortably in 8th place in the NHL presently, which equates to 2nd in the Central Division and 5th in the ever-strong Western Conference.
What is defying logic when it comes to the Minnesota Wild is the fact that based on certain team statistics, they have no right to be as high up the ladder as they are.
Their impressive form isn’t going unnoticed, although for a few weeks there, they were flying under the radar. In the most recent Power Rankings, one media outlet had them ranked in 3rd, with nobody placing them outside of the top ten.
In terms of their form, there are a lot of things it can be attributed to; strong goaltending, scoring coming from not just their offense, but defence as well, players like Mikael Granlund being sneaky good and of course, a revitalised Zach Parise scoring at a clip he hasn’t done so in years.
All of those factors add up to put the Minnesota Wild in a very competitive spot early-on. This isn’t anything new though. What remains to be seen is, should they make the play-offs, which at the moment seems likely; can they perform at the necessary level to escape the first round and make an impact?
What we have with the Minnesota Wild is an ageing core group of players; none are getting any younger and questions are being asked as to whether a rebuild is due.
Delving beyond the superficial surface layer of the eye-test and opinions being shared by the press, there are some key statistics that the Minnesota Wild are under-performing in.
When I say under-performing, we’re looking at the fact that typically a team in the upper echelons of the league meets these criteria.
Of course, the Wild may well be an outlier, this could be a product of Bruce Boudreau‘s systems or just as equally the group of players at his disposal and the fact that getting the best out of them isn’t necessarily the same as getting the best out of say Auston Matthews, John Tavares and company in Toronto or Jonathan Toews, Patrick Kane and company in Chicago.
As such, the Minnesota Wild make for an interesting study into what really is required to be a competitive team in this league, ’cause they sure as heck don’t fit the mould right now!