Post by Minnesota Wild on Jan 15, 2022 14:37:46 GMT -6
Welcome to the second edition of Wild Times
At the quarter mark of the PFHL's inaugural season, the Minnesota Wild find themselves with a 9-8-1 record, winning as many games as they've lost thus far. The Wild sit a point out of the playoffs, and it is evident the Wild have struggled, despite their current 3 game win streak. "We have been facing some early season adversity, ideally we would like to be sitting in a playoff position, but the season is still young and there's a lot of room to continue to build team chemistry and get on a roll here as we begin to enter the dog days of the season." GM Wolf quipped.
The biggest reason for the early season Wild woes? They can't score. The Minnesota Wild sit dead last in the entire league with only 42 goals scored. "Goal scoring has been an issue, that's become the forefront of a lot of our team meetings with the players and in our upper mangement meetings. How do we start improving our goal scoring?" Despite the lack of goals, the Wild also sit 8th in the league in goals against, so it's no secret the Wild are a part of the least scoring games in the entire PFHL. "Our team defense is really solid, and hasn't been an issue, our GAA is low in relative to most teams in the league, which is a positive, but yes we'd like to start scoring more because team defense doesn't mean a whole lot if you still can't score more goals than the other team." Wolf admitted.
To put things in perspective, the Wild's leading scorer, and pending unrestricted free agent, is Evgeni Kuznetsov, but he's only leading the team with 13 points in 18 games. "Let's just say most of our wins have come from team efforts right now and not so much inidivudal efforts. A quality to have in some capacity, but it's no secret that our best players need to start playing like our best players. We need guys like Kopitar, Kuznetsov, Teravainen, and Atkinson to start playing with some more jam."
Will the Wild solve these early season struggles? That remains to be forseen. Minnesota is yet to make any roster changes as of yet in the PFHL, and Wild GM Eric Wolf is notorious for behaving conservative and not making too many rash decisions. Eighteen (18) games into the regular season is too small of a sample size to start turning over the roster. Will the goals come? Wild GM hopes so, "We have the personnel, we have goal scorers like Kopitar, Kuznetsov, Teravainen, Atkinson, etc, and I think our team defense is one of the best in the league, so I have faith in the roster we've constructed and I feel we're still at a point here where we can solve what's ailing us internally. Obviously if we're closer to the trade deadline and the same issues are persisting, then that's another conversation... but as for now I feel we can be a playoff team."
It'll be interesting to see how the season shakes out for the Wild, many questions remain to be answered for the team, one of them being their leading scorer Evgeni Kuznetsov, a pending unrestricted free agent. Will the Wild use their overwhelming guilt card on the talented center? I suppose we'll know whether or not Kuznetsov remains in Minnesota closer to the leagues trade deadline... stay tuned.
The biggest reason for the early season Wild woes? They can't score. The Minnesota Wild sit dead last in the entire league with only 42 goals scored. "Goal scoring has been an issue, that's become the forefront of a lot of our team meetings with the players and in our upper mangement meetings. How do we start improving our goal scoring?" Despite the lack of goals, the Wild also sit 8th in the league in goals against, so it's no secret the Wild are a part of the least scoring games in the entire PFHL. "Our team defense is really solid, and hasn't been an issue, our GAA is low in relative to most teams in the league, which is a positive, but yes we'd like to start scoring more because team defense doesn't mean a whole lot if you still can't score more goals than the other team." Wolf admitted.
To put things in perspective, the Wild's leading scorer, and pending unrestricted free agent, is Evgeni Kuznetsov, but he's only leading the team with 13 points in 18 games. "Let's just say most of our wins have come from team efforts right now and not so much inidivudal efforts. A quality to have in some capacity, but it's no secret that our best players need to start playing like our best players. We need guys like Kopitar, Kuznetsov, Teravainen, and Atkinson to start playing with some more jam."
Will the Wild solve these early season struggles? That remains to be forseen. Minnesota is yet to make any roster changes as of yet in the PFHL, and Wild GM Eric Wolf is notorious for behaving conservative and not making too many rash decisions. Eighteen (18) games into the regular season is too small of a sample size to start turning over the roster. Will the goals come? Wild GM hopes so, "We have the personnel, we have goal scorers like Kopitar, Kuznetsov, Teravainen, Atkinson, etc, and I think our team defense is one of the best in the league, so I have faith in the roster we've constructed and I feel we're still at a point here where we can solve what's ailing us internally. Obviously if we're closer to the trade deadline and the same issues are persisting, then that's another conversation... but as for now I feel we can be a playoff team."
It'll be interesting to see how the season shakes out for the Wild, many questions remain to be answered for the team, one of them being their leading scorer Evgeni Kuznetsov, a pending unrestricted free agent. Will the Wild use their overwhelming guilt card on the talented center? I suppose we'll know whether or not Kuznetsov remains in Minnesota closer to the leagues trade deadline... stay tuned.
