Should the Wild be Worried About Early Struggles?

The Minnesota Wild have dropped both of their first two games in the Regular Season, the first time since their inaugural season. Is it time to hit the panic button?

The short answer? Wellllllll.

Put simply the Wild has yet to put together a solid, full sixty-minutes to go out and win games. They’ve barely put together a full period. Today, we’ll unpack what has plagued the Wild early and what changes have to be made going into the next game against Winnipeg.

What the Wild Have Struggled with

The Wild have failed to jump out the gate. In the starting five minutes of both games, Mats Zuccarello took a hooking penalty, leaving the Wild shorthanded and behind in crucial minutes. In the Nashville game, the penalty got killed off (and the following one Nick Seeler would take) no problem, but against Colorado, the Rocky Mountain Line would punish the Wild for the early infraction.

This is not just an issue for the beginning of the game. Period starts have been incredibly stagnant; just look at the first five minutes of the third period of the Nashville Predators. Slow feet, bad coverage, two goals against, and zero momentum. Two Zucker scoring chances that were stuffed by Pekka Rinne only added to the Predator’s momentum. Speaking of the forwards…

We have gone through one hundred and twenty minutes of hockey and yet to have a goal scored by a forward line creating the goal. Everything has been generated from the blue line. While not a bad thing (I’ll explain later), it’s completely unsustainable, in the fashion they are doing it at least. Nashville has there defenseman jump into plays frequently and effectively, but they will hop deep into the offensive zone (around the circles/faceoff dots, twenty feet away from the goal line). The Wild’s defensemen success has been planted with their heels on that blue line, far away from the net (about sixty-four feet). Even with traffic in front of the net, it’s extremely difficult to generate viable scoring success this way. At best, someone is either blocking the goalie’s vision and the defenseman’s shot “has eyes” and hits the net, or someone gets a stick on the shot and the redirect at least causes the goalie to be out of position. At worst, the shot doesn’t get through, hitting either a defensive zone player or your own player, and create a breakout opportunity for the defensive team.

This issue isn’t just a 5-on-5 issue, this involves the powerplay. With a man advantage, the forwards on the powerplay group have yet to move the puck and to create for another forward on the group to bury or to have a defenseman jump into a play and have a no-doubter scored.

Staal allegedly is dealing with an injury, of what we are not sure. He also just might be older and slower. Zuccarello has yet to show anything exciting in the regular season, a disappointment after the solid preseason he had. The Kids (Donato, Ek, Fiala, Greenway, and Kunin) have yet to register points.

What Have the Wild Done Well

Possibly the biggest question mark going into the season was how Devan Dubnyk would perform in net this year. It might be the early season dominance Duby seems to possess in hockey seasons I mentioned in the recap of the Nashville game, but he has been the absolute least of the Minnesota Wild’s worries. He’s played fairly well, despite what his numbers might say. For those watching the game, Dubnyk has been making great saves and only had one goal that would make you sigh and shake your head.

Matt Dumba is doing Matt Dumba things. Getting to open spaces, while not being a defensive liability, and putting shots on goal. He’s the reason the Wild have contended in a lot of games, as represented by two goals in two games for the man.

The defense as a whole has played solidly. If they could get any help from the forwards on either end of the ice, the Wild would probably be 2-0 or 1-1.

For the number of penalties the Wild have taken, the PK has performed well, keeping with the trend set last year when the Wild had the seventh-best PK percentage in the league.

Wrap Up

Listen, we are still very early in this season. Two games are not representative of how the rest of the season would go. Otherwise, the Wild would go 0-82 and Dumba would score eighty-two goals. Sean McIndoe (aka DownGoesBrown) of The Athletic wrote a great piece of teams who started slow and blitzed late. Examples included: 2015-2016 Anaheim Ducks (who started with only one win in the first ten games, ten goals in those ten games and were shutout five times) and the 1979-1980 New York Islanders (who started 1-3-0 with tough losses to powerhouse teams). Teams have slow starts, especially when they play good teams! Nashville and Colorado are both generally accepted as playoff teams and performed as such. The Wild were tied with both teams past the midway point of the game, they’ve contended but just haven’t finished.

There are also teams performing abnormally well and abnormally bad compared to what was expected of them. The Buffalo Sabres are 4-0, the Red Wings are 2-1, the Ducks and Oilers are both 3-0, and the Rangers and Flyers are both 2-0. On the other end of the spectrum, The Lighting are 1-1-1, the Stars are 1-3, the Flames are 1-1-1, the Sharks are 0-4, and the Islanders are 1-2. It is way too early to make longterm predictions based on performance. That doesn’t mean the Wild can avoid adapting, and they have a spectacular opportunity to take advantage of a team that is weak defensively tonight against the Winnipeg Jets.