Fluke goal may turn season around for key member of the Wild

In the end, the Minnesota Wild lost another game, which, with the way their season has started, isn't what they needed, especially against a divisional opponent. Kyle Connor scored 46 seconds into overtime as the Wild dropped their fourth game in a row, losing to the Winnipeg Jets, 4-3.  Despite their failure to capture the win, there were some encouraging signs from the team as a whole as they outplayed the Jets for the vast majority of the game. More importantly, one of their key players picked up his first goal of the season, albeit in a somewhat funky way.

“No, never, never. I don’t think I’ll ever see one like that again. God, it feels good to, like you said, get a bounce.”

That’s how Brock Faber described his first goal of the season, which came at the 13:12 mark of the period and tied the game at two goals a piece. Not only did he get “a bounce,” he got at least two in scoring one of the more interesting goals of the season. 

So many things could have gone wrong with this play, and for a team mired in a slump like the Wild they usually do. It started when Neal Pionk fumbled the puck with absolutely no pressure around him whatsoever. Marco Rossi recovered it and fed it Vinnie Hinostoza. The veteran made the right play to send it back to Rossi as both Jets’ defenders followed the puck.

Rossi was wide open and probably should have taken the shot. Instead he spotted Faber cutting down the middle of the ice and put the pass on his stick. Faber’s shot is deflected over the net by  Alex Iafello’s backcheck. Two looks from a high-danger area and the Wild don’t even get a shot on net. Surely they had fumbled away an excellent scoring chance.

The puck had a different idea as it rebounded off of the glass behind the net, caromed all the way back into the crease, and then into the back of the net as All-World goaltender Connor Hellebuyck kicked it into his own net in a desperate move to cover the puck. 

It was Faber’s first goal of the season, and he would add an assist on the power play later in the game for his second multi-point performance in a row. In the overtime loss to San Jose, he had three assists. The five points in two games come after he was held off of the scoresheet in his first nine games.

The young defenseman was putting a lot of pressure on himself and the frustration was obvious. He acknowledged this to the media following the Wild’s 6-2 loss to the Utah Mammoth,

“I’m better than this. I know I am. I thought I had opportunities to play a solid game, and I gotta kind of go back to square one. Defend better, I gotta limit my turnovers, I gotta let the game come to me ... I gotta be, I guess stay more positive.”

In order to get Faber out of his head a little, Hynes moved him to the second power play unit, and it paid off as Faber has three special teams points in his last two games. It seems the offense has helped defensively as the results are starting to come in the defensive zone. 

The Wild had a 17-8 edge in shots on goal at 5v5 against the Jets when he was on the ice in the loss at 5v5. They’ve also been giving up fewer scoring chances against over the last two games when Faber has been patrolling the defensive zone. If he can find that balance between defense and offense that makes him such a special young player, the Wild should start piling up wins again and get their season back on track.

For Faber a lucky bounce (or two) might be just what his confidence needed and he can get back to the style of play that led him to put up 47 points as a 21-year-old rookie two seasons ago.