It’s been a week since the League Office elected to postpone the 2019-2020 season for the foreseeable future, but it feels like we haven’t had hockey in months. To lighten the mood, we’ll give our Top 5 moments of the 2019-2020 season… so far.
5. Minnesota Wild Delivers Lovely Christmas Gift
Two days after Christmas Day, the Minnesota Wild marched into Denver and defeated the Colorado Avalanche in a phenomenal 6-4 game. The Wild played a pretty good game, minus the last 3 minutes of the 1st and 2nd periods.
Carson Soucy opened up the scoring for the Wild 5:33 into the game. The one silver lining with this extended break in the season, if the Wild play another game in the 19-20 season, Soucy will be much closer to returning to the lineup- maybe even in the lineup first game back.
Eric Staal would make it 2-0 near the ten-minute mark of the period. Fiala assisted on both of the Wild’s first two goals. The Wild looked to be playing extraordinary hockey for the first seventeen minutes of the period.
If you blinked you would have missed it. The Avalanche scored two quick goals and made it tied at 2 at the end of the first.
Despite the lapse, the Wild would score the very important first goal in the 2nd period, Brad Hunt just over 11minutes in, to make it 3-2. And then again, in the final minute in the period, the Avs tied it again at 3-3.
In the 3rd, the Avs would finally take a lead, Matt Calvert (of all people) would make it 4-3. You had to be annoyed and nervous if you were a Wild fan. We had led twice in this game and gave both away. It was shaping up to be another disappointing loss to a division rival.
And then, in the distance. Our knights in shining armor. Mats “The Lizard” Zuccarello tied it at 4 halfway through the period. Two minutes later, Victor Rask would pick a pass off in the neutral zone, take it into the offensive zone, and then rifle one off the far post and in past Pavel Francouz for the GWG. Ryan Suter would tie a nice knot on the game with an Empty Net Goal- with absolutely no controversy on potential offsetting penalties whatsoever.
It wasn’t the cleanest game, but it had that classic Divisional Rival feel. It was competitive, tough, and fierce the entire time.
Also, I went to Denver to see this game. So that was pretty cool.