Minnesota Wild: Does sharing the scoring around work?

The Minnesota Wild are often looked at as a team without one true superstar goal-scorer. Instead, their scoring is shared quite evenly around their line-up. Does it work?

One look at the standings suggest that it does. The Minnesota Wild currently sit third in the entire league despite not having a player in the top ten across the league for points production.

Whilst it would be nice to have a Mikko Rantanen, Connor McDavid or Patrice Bergeron; the Minnesota Wild make do with the players they have and get contributions beyond just an elite first line.

No one of the Minnesota Wild lines could really be tagged as elite, unless of course you look at the defensive pairing of Matt Dumba and Ryan Suter or the man between the pipes, Devan Dubnyk.

In terms of forward lines, they’re made up of some good and some great players, but no one of the regular lines is, as the sum of its parts, elite.

In fact, you have to drop to 34th place in the league point scoring chart to find the first Minnesota Wild player; Mikael Granlund on 19 points (10 goals, 9 assists). It’s been suggested that he could be the superstar player that the Wild would like. It might be a little too early to call it, but continued strong form would edge him closer to that bracket.

Including Granlund, you find a list of players that are all contributing with ten or more points on the year thus far:

• Mikael Granlund – 19 points (10 goals, 9 assists)
• Zach Parise – 16 points (7 goals, 9 assists)
• Mikko Koivu – 16 points (4 goals, 12 assists)
• Ryan Suter – 15 points (3 goals, 12 assists)
• Jason Zucker – 14 points (6 goals, 8 assists)
• Eric Staal – 14 points (6 goals, 8 assists)
• Matt Dumba – 11 points (7 goals, 4 assists)
• Charlie Coyle – 10 points (3 goals, 7 assists)
• Jared Spurgeon – 10 points (3 goals, 7 assists)

What this highlights is that the point production in the Minnesota Wild line-up comes from the top two lines mainly, though Charlie Coyle is a main-stay on the third line. The defense, which can be ranked among the best in the league, also is more than capable of producing points.

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One thing you also notice is that no one player is a goalscorer per se. There are guys that score a bit but nobody is screaming away with a big lead over their teammates in terms of goals. Goals are proving largely a product of the team; as seen by the large number of assists.

Of the Minnesota Wild line-up, the goal-scoring is truly shared around; out of the players that have played more than ten games this year, only useful summer acquisition Greg Pateryn has yet to tally a goal (nor a point, actually).

The only other guys not to register points have all played seven games or less and are very much role players, so it’s not exactly their remit.

Should the Minnesota Wild find themselves with injuries or should they trade someone like Eric Staal away (to avoid a possible over-payment next year), the team should be able to adjust and continue to score. Such is the benefit or it being so evenly spread.

The scoring spread goes a long way to explaining the success of the team thus far; spreading your goals and assists mean that opposing teams can’t hone in on one specific line or player – long may it continue.

Though of course, an elite-tier goal scorer isn’t something we’d say no to either!