So this is a really important shift: You’ve just taken a 2-0 lead on the road, in the first period, and the head coach immediately throws out the fourth line (probably a nod to Boudreau’s confidence in that group to go out and not take the wind out of Minnesota’s sails). Of course, both of those goals came with the third pairing of Seeler and Pateryn on the ice, but the goals themselves were really simple: Get the puck back to the blue line, bodies in front, and throw it on net. The sequence shown in the pictures below came right after the Wild took a 2-0 lead against the Blues last week. When they chip in, it’s a fantastic bonus, but when they can control play a bit over stretches of the schedule (that eight-game rolling is nearly 10 percent of the season’s games) that’s a nice win.Īnd you don’t sustain over those types of stretches without doing a bunch of things well, which this group has been doing. So the numbers bear out that this group has been more than treading water, because again, the scoring explosion against the Blues was nice, but that’s not the segment of the lineup you’re going to lean on for scoring. The Wild’s depth - a definite Achilles heel at times over the past few seasons - has been doing its job and then some over the past few weeks though, giving Minnesota dependable minutes. Chip in offensively here and there, come out none worse for wear during your time on ice, and that probably checks most of the boxes in the “do your job” column. At the bare minimum, it feels like the break-even point is not to bleed goals or shots at 5-on-5. It’s open to interpretation what makes a third defensive pairing or fourth line effective. Even if it didn’t result in three-goal nights. While head coach Bruce Boudreau has been citing the Predators game as a turning point for Minnesota, it was two games later against the Dallas Stars that the Wild’s depth really started to pick up its level. So yes, on nights like those it’s very easy to sing the praises of your depth skaters, but for Minnesota that group had been slowly turning around its play over the past two weeks. (You probably saw all the tweets about each player’s plus-minus, and for as antiquated of a stat as it is on a macro level, when it jumps off the page for a single-game, it probably means something went very well.) Brown and Eric Fehr each scored a goal, Nick Seeler had a goal and an assist, and Seeler and defense partner Greg Pateryn were on the ice for four and five of the Minnesota goals, respectively. That wasn’t the case for the Wild’s fourth line and third defensive pairing in Saturday night’s 5-1 win over the Blues. Sometimes, a player’s on-ice contributions can quietly go unnoticed.
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