All posts by Daneekas Ghost

Weekly Wild Whangdoodle: They’re Good, Actually

Are the Wild good?

This is the question that keeps getting asked. It's kind of hard to believe that the Wild might be anything other than a middle of the road team that people mention only to say "yeah, they're ... OK, I guess."  But here we are. They took 4 points off Vegas, and continue to dominate teams during 5 on 5 play and get pretty good goaltending to go along with it.  At some point, the question has to be taken seriously.

The Analytic Method

Dom Luszczyszyn at the Athletic has a model that bases predicted outcomes on his Game Score stat (calculated by counting stats like goals, assists, shots, penalties drawn, but also factoring in possession stats like xG, faceoffs, and CORSI) as well as factors like strength of remaining schedule, injuries, etc.  I like it because he continually updates how things have changed over the season, so you can see exactly where the model started to buy into the Wild as a legitimate contender in the West division along with Colorado and Las Vegas.

Evolving Hockey uses a team goal differential stat to compare team performance. The stat is broken down into four components:

  1. Shot Rates
  2. Shot Quality
  3. Shooting
  4. Goaltending.

In comparing the teams in the West across these four factors we see once again that the Wild are comfortably in the same statistical neighborhood as Vegas and Colorado.

The numbers in the table represent the team's rank out of 31 NHL teams.  Shot Rate and Shot Quality are a comparison between a team and their opponent.  The Wild have the largest differential in the NHL between the average quality of their offensive shots and the quality of shots they allow (they rank 5th in shot quality and their opponents rank 29th).

TeamGoal DifferentialShot RateShot QualityShooting%Save%
Las Vegas232291
Minnesota5911712
Colorado61181916
Los Angeles172617156
St. Louis191920324
Arizona233116237
San Jose2522131829
Anaheim2823253123

The DG plays with Spreadsheets Method

Which teams in the division have winning records (taking more than 50% of the points) against other teams in the division? Point percentage in this case is percentage of the points awarded in a game. So a win in regulation gets a team 100%, a win in OT or shootout gets them 67%, OT/SO loss gets them 33% and regulation loss 0%.  Don’t be mad at me that this makes no sense, take it up with the NHL Standings Point Policy director.

TIER 1 - Las Vegas, Colorado, and Minnesota each have a points% greater than or equal to 50 against all but one team in the division.  Las Vegas is lower than 50% against Minnesota, Minnesota is lower than 50% against Colorado, and Colorado is lower than 50% against ... you guessed it - Anaheim.  (Colorado and Las Vegas have split their two games, so are each at 50% in their matchup).

TIER 2 - St. Louis, Arizona, and Los Angeles are each above a 50% points percentage against 3 other teams in the division. This seems like a natural second tier in the division so far this season. Dom's model would see this as a slight to St. Louis, but I think this matches the actual results pretty well.

TIER 3 - San Jose and Anaheim are certainly the low end of the West, generally not beating anyone consistently.

Now I can compare each teams result against those tiers so far this season:

TeamP% vs. Tier 1P% vs. Tier 2P% vs. Tier 3
Las Vegas47%75%74%
Minnesota50%64%71%
Colorado53%67%58%
St. Louis42%40%70%
Los Angeles31%62%50%
Arizona28%52%64%
San Jose24%44%75%
Anaheim39%29%25%
AVERAGE38%53%62%

What stands out here?

  • The Wild and Las Vegas are above average against every tier.
    • They've been good and they've been good against everyone in the division.
  • Los Angeles and St. Louis against Tier 2.
    • The Kings power play caught fire and they steamrolled the Blues over a set of games (Kings went 4-1-1), which makes a big difference in a short season like we've got this year.
  • Colorado against Tier 3.
    • They've gone to overtime against the Ducks in three of their 4 meetings. That makes it hard to drive up their points% against the bottom of the division.

To quantify how much of each teams standings position came from games against each tier I calculated points earned above average using the numbers above.

Teamversus T1versus T2versus T3Pts Above Average
VGK1.74.42.28.3
MIN2.22.81.05.9
COL2.72.8-0.84.7
L.A-2.01.9-1.4-1.5
STL0.4-3.91.6-1.9
ARI-2.2-0.20.3-2.1
S.J-2.8-2.21.6-3.4
ANA0.0-5.7-4.4-10.1

The Grand Conclusion

I think they're a good team, actually. Their point total isn't inflated by beating up on the bottom feeders and they've won some games against the best teams in the division. They have the statistical proof that they have played well, but that their success is not a fluke. Their scoring and expected scoring line up pretty well. (figure from MoneyPuck).

There is of course, a warning in this analysis. And that warning is the St. Louis Blues. The Blues have had a remarkably easy schedule in the first half of the season, playing 10 games against SJ and Anaheim (more than anyone in the division) and 5 games against Vegas, Colorado, and Minnesota (fewer than anyone in the division). But they ran up against a hot team in Los Angeles in February and dropped a bunch of points in games that they probably expected to win.  Now they have to make those points back in the second half of the season against teams at the top of the division, a much harder task. Those 8 games against the Wild have become a much more important set now that the Blues are looking up at the Wild in the standings.

The first half of the season has gone very well, the Wild have surprised a bunch of people by being legitimately good and exciting and fun. In the second half, the biggest danger becomes running into a cold streak or an opponent's hot streak that cuts into the advantage they've built by playing as one of the best teams in the division so far.

This week's schedule:

A whole bunch more words on the standings are up above, but here's how they look as everyone approaches the halfway point.

  1. Vegas - 37 points (25G)
  2. Minnesota - 35 points (26G)
  3. Colorado - 34 points (26G)
  4. St. Louis - 33 points (28G)
  5. LosAngeles - 28 points (27G)
  6. Arizona - 28 points (28G)
  7. San Jose - 25 points (25G)
  8. Anaheim - 22 points (29G)

===================================================

The Kirill Kaprizov Corner

Hat trick! 3 goals in one period! Look at how he shoots this puck on his second goal. He's turning on one skate, with no momentum toward the goal and still scores. AH! It's so good.

And while you're looking at that remember the 10 seconds before that where he comes off the bench like he's been shot out of a cannon and just ... skates past everyone.

He's so much fun.

On the rookie leaderboards, he's first in goals (10), first in assists (14), and first in points (24).

Players not Named Kirill

Who's got the best two-way line in hockey? Your Minnesota Wild, that's who.

Barkov or Barzal will probably win the Selke trophy for best defensive forward, but there will be a whole bunch of stat nerds who will take to Twitter and write "well, actually..." posts in favor of Joel Eriksson Ek.

The bad news is that Foligno will be out for at least a couple of weeks.

Leaderboards

PlayerGPlayerAPlayerPts
Eriksson Ek11Kaprizov14Kaprizov24
Kaprizov10Greenway14Greenway19
Fiala9Zuccarello14Zuccarello18
Foligno7Foligno9Foligno16
Rask6Brodin/Parise9Eriksson Ek16

Weekly Wild Whangdoodle: A Second Helping of Desert

The Whangdoodle switched media and joined the WGOMPHBP for  a chat last week.  Check it out!

This week's schedule:

This schedule looks suspiciously like last week's schedule, except now all the games are in Minnesota.

Starting to see just a sliver of separation between the top half and the bottom half of the division. It would be good to add some points and really widen that split.

  1. Vegas - 33 points (21G)
  2. St. Louis - 31 points (25G)
  3. Colorado - 28 points (22G)
  4. Minnesota - 27 points (22G)
  5. LosAngeles - 25 points (23G)
  6. Arizona - 25 points (24G)
  7. Anaheim - 20 points (25G)
  8. San Jose - 19 points (22G)

===================================================

The Kirill Kaprizov Corner

On the rookie leaderboards, he's first in assists (13), second in goals (6), and first in points (19).

Players not Named Kirill

Cam Talbot had a rough week, going 0-2-1 while giving up 13 goals on 96 shots (.865 save percentage - not what you want).  In the three games Talbot started this week, opponents outscored their xG by 5.7 goals.

    • Talbot currently ranks 36th out of 61 goalies in the NHL in save percentage above expected (-.007)
    • Kahkonen ranks 27th in the same category (-.003)
    • If we look at Goals Saved Above Average, Kahkonen (2.93) is 17th and Talbot (0.08) is 30th out of 61.

So either Kahkonen is the better goalie right now, or playing goalie against Las Vegas is harder than against other teams.  I guess both could be true.

The Wild power play is ridiculously bad. The went 0 for 9 last week, with no goals in 16:15 of power play time.  That calculates out as 0.00 goals/60 minutes, which would be a rate that would put them last in the NHL.

The season long power play numbers are just as bad.

      • 3.0 G/60 min. is last in the NHL
      • 5.8% shooting percentage is last in the NHL
      • 6.8 xG/60 is 18th in the NHL

That last number gives us some hope that maybe someday the Wild will progress toward having an average power play. I'm not holding my breath.

The Wild have not given up a shorthanded goal yet this year, so the power play is ranked #1 in the NHL defensively.

Leaderboards

PlayerGPlayerAPlayerPts
Eriksson Ek8Greenway13Kaprizov19
Fiala7Kaprizov13Greenway18
Foligno7Zuccarello9Foligno14
Kaprizov6Suter8Zuccarello13
Dumba/Rask/Greenway5Brodin8Eriksson Ek12

March Books

I read A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders this month.  Saunders is a professor at Syracuse and he reflects on the stories that he enjoys teaching the most and then goes through seven examples by four Russian authors (Chekhov, Tolstoy, Turgenev, and Gogol).  It does read like a class on fiction writing at times, but it was also really fun to watch someone who is undeniably good at something pick apart how other people do that thing.  I also enjoy people writing and discussing teaching, so this was right up my alley. I heard about this book because Saunders appeared on the So Many Damn Books podcast and he sold me on it.

All of that aside, I did get a little bit tired of the perspective of seven stories all told by old Russian dudes. So if you are looking for a read that has diversity of perspective ... this ain't that.


As is required whenever I mention George Saunders, I have linked to my favorite of his performances below.

Weekly Wild Whangdoodle: Just Deserts

Six wins in a row! Hard to feel bad about that.

Thanks to a quirky California-heavy schedule and a COVID shutdown that skipped over some games against the division powerhouses, the Wild have fattened up their record to the point that they spent a couple of hours in first place in the division on Saturday night.

But that's probably selling this team short a little bit. They've played really well. The goalies have been really solid, the defense has been stingy, and they've gotten offensive contributions from several lines (who had Marco Nico Sturm down for a three-goal week?).

  • Zuccarello has a six-game point streak and is up to fourth on the team in points despite playing in less than half the games. He's been great on a line with Kaprizov, and his pass to Dumba in the waning seconds of overtime on Saturday was a really nice play.
  • Sturm-Bonino-Bjugstad has been a really great fourth line. It always feels like damning with faint praise to say things like that, but these three were consistently good last week.
  • Jordan Greenway continues to pile up assists. Last season, he had a career high in points and points per game (28 points, 0.42 P/G). In 18 games this year, he's halfway to that point total (2G-12A-14pts) and nearly doubling up his points per game pace (0.78 P/G).

This week's schedule:

Two teams that Minnesota hasn't seen yet this season will now be their only opponents for the next two weeks.

Las Vegas is good - they've beat up on everyone in the division except Colorado (10-2-1 record against non-Colorado opponents this year). Their goalie has been red-hot, they've dominated 5-on-5 (only the Wild have better even strength numbers in the West division).  Their power play hasn't been amazing (18th in the NHL in goals/60), but they've been unlucky (7th in the NHL in xG/60), so I'd be OK not giving them too many chances.

Arizona has had a truly strange schedule, with more than half of their games coming against two teams (STL and ANA). But they've been a pretty middle of the road team (as evidenced by their 1.00 points/game place in the standings). They've lost when they've played COL and Vegas (1-5 record against those two), but also lost as many games as they've won against the California teams (4-2-2 record).  Most of the stats favor the Wild in these games, but this is probably the team most likely to challenge the Wild for a playoff spot as the season goes on.

Updating the standings reveals that everyone except San Jose and Anaheim are very close. It will be interesting to see how long LA and Arizona remain in the mix, and if St. Louis can keep up with the top teams.

  1. Vegas - 25 points (17G)
  2. Minnesota - 24 points (18G)
  3. St. Louis - 24 points (21G)
  4. Colorado - 23 points (18G)
  5. LosAngeles - 22 points (20G)
  6. Arizona - 21 points (21G)
  7. Anaheim - 17 points (21G)
  8. San Jose - 16 points (18G)

===================================================

The Kirill Kaprizov Corner

I love this kid. He's so good. He tries passes that other people wouldn't think of and then pulls them off. He's so strong on the puck and always seems to have somewhere to go with it. There's no other word for it other than that he's fun to watch. Since being paired with Zuccarello, he's started to get more scoring chances as well.

On the rookie leaderboards, he's first in assists (11), second in goals (6), and first in points (17).  He's well on his way to the Calder, and if this pace continues, it won't be close.

Players not Named Kirill

  • Eriksson Ek's next goal will set a new career high for goals in a season for him.
  • Notably missing from the leaderboards below is Zach Parise.
  • 18 games into the season, and the team leader in points on the power play is ... Zach Parise, with 2 assists. Kevin Fiala is tied for the lead with 2 goals.
  • Ryan Hartman has played really well in a new role (center).

Leaderboards

PlayerGPlayerAPlayerPts
Eriksson Ek8Greenway12Kaprizov17
Fiala6Kaprizov11Greenway14
Kaprizov6Suter8Eriksson Ek12
Rask5Zuccarello8Zuccarello11
Dumba/Foligno4Hartman6Fiala / Rask / Hartman9

Weekly Wild Whangdoodle: The Quarter Post

A Monday night game threw off my schedule. Here's a whangdoodle.

14 games represents 25% of the scheduled season, so we're now into the second half of the first half. Other than Eriksson Ek still leading the team in goals scored, I think this team has been pretty much as expected.

This week's schedule:

We have to be almost done with the Kings at this point, right?

LA won three in a row last week to vault to the top of the bottom of the West standings - Minnesota's sweep of Anaheim puts them with the best points percentage, but the fewest games played.  Separation remains difficult for this group.

LA - 17 points in 16 games
Arizona - 17 points in 17 games
Minnesota - 16 points in 14 games
San Jose - 16 points in 16 games
Anaheim - 15 points in 18 games

===================================================

The Kirill Kaprizov Corner

Kaprizov continues to lead all NHL rookies in assists and is tied for first in total points. (3G - 8A - 11Pts)

He is indeed - fun.

Players not Named Kirill

  • Eriksson Ek continues to have a spectacular year.  I'm not even questioning it any more.
  • Fiala is scoring. This is a very good thing.
  • Rask continues to score when Kaprizov feeds him the puck. I guess we let it ride?  (special shout out to Rask winning 12 of 13 faceoffs against the Ducks on Saturday - I'm as confused as any of you)
  • The Wild continue to be saturated with good defensemen. Dakota Mermis and Calen Addison sound like they acquitted themselves well in short stints on the COVID-decimated roster.
  • Zuccarello is back! (three points in three games? Yeah, he gets an exclamation point for that)

Leaderboards

PlayerGPlayerAPlayerPts
Eriksson Ek6Greenway9Kaprizov11
Fiala6Kaprizov8Greenway11
Rask4Suter6Eriksson Ek10
Dumba3Brodin / Parise4Fiala7
Kaprizov3Eriksson Ek4Brodin / Parise / Suter6

Weekly Wild Whangdoodle: Week ??

Hockey?

There's hockey again?

Well then, it's time to whang that doodle.

Remember last time I wrote one of these and I threw in this little note?

  • Foligno had a positive Covid test on Sunday, so now we enter the seriously not fun part where we wait and wonder if this is a single case or the start of an outbreak through the team.

It was the second one.  The Wild haven't played in two weeks and it feels like about half the roster has been on the Covid list in that time.

So now they're back, and they get to cobble together the rest of the season without really knowing who will be available or how many games they will play or when they will play them ... here we go!

This week's schedule:

Oh hey, we're back in California!

So many teams in this division are right around the 1 point/game record. Any kind of hot streak would do wonders to separate from this group.

Arizona - 16 points in 15 games
Minnesota - 12 points in 11 games
Anaheim - 15 points in 16 games
San Jose - 13 points in 14 games
LA - 11 points in 13 games

===================================================

The Kirill Kaprizov Corner

Kaprizov leads all NHL rookies in assists and is second in total points. (3G - 6A - 9Pts)

There's not a lot of analysis to do here, except to say it's really fun to have an exciting player like this on the team.

Players not Named Kirill

  • Joel Eriksson Ek has not scored a goal in February.
  • Lots of NHL debuts coming up as the roster gets juggled. Calen Addison will be one of them tonight - He's the prospect the Wild got back in the Zucker trade, so it's exciting to see him getting  his debut.
  • Zuccarello is back. I considered ending that sentence with an exclamation point, but thought that was maybe a bit much.

Leaderboards

PlayerGPlayerAPlayerPts
Eriksson Ek5Greenway8Greenway10
Fiala3Suter6Eriksson Ek9
Rask3Kaprizov6Kaprizov9
Dumba3Brodin4Suter6
Kaprizov3Eriksson Ek4Brodin6

Weekly Wild Whangdoodle: Week 4

This week's schedule:

Let's play the Avalanche again!

Last week's results:

MIN 1 - LA 2 - Highlights

The Kings are better than everyone thought, at least right now, but the Wild have to find a way to score that's in addition to Jordan Greenway digging the puck out of the corner and getting the puck to noted goal-scorer Joel Eriksson Ek. After this game, JEE was tied for 10th in the NHL in goals scored this season,

Russo had a column on The Athletic that hammered the Wild's current center situation. He doesn't see Rask, or Johansson, or Bonino, or Bjugstad as the answer, and right now it's hard to see how they will improve this pretty glaring hole.

The power play was 0 for 3 in this one and has dropped to 2 for 30 on the season (6.7% was 29th out of 31 in the NHL)

MIN 5 - LA 3 - Highlights

Look at that offense! Johansson, Kaprizov, Bjugstad, Fiala and (of course) Eriksson Ek scored. (JEE leaderboard update - only five players in the entire NHL had scored more goals  as of Friday morning).

The near self destruction in the second period (11 penalty minutes in 14 minutes of game play) almost ruined an incredibly dominant performance by the Wild.  Any time they were 5 on 5 against LA, they were in control of the game.

The power play was 0 for 4 in this one and has dropped to 2 for 34 on the season (5.9% was 30th out of 31 in the NHL)

MIN 1 - COL 5 - Highlights

I didn't pay attention to this one and you shouldn't have either.  Not great.

The power play was 0 for 2 in this one and has dropped to 2 for 36 on the season (5.6% was 30th out of 31 in the NHL)

MIN 4 - COL 3 - OT - Highlights

Victor Rask will save us all. His two goals in this one kept the Wild in it, and then Greenway and Eriksson Ek set up Jonas Brodin for the winner 18 seconds into overtime. Everyone (I mean, everyone) knows that the Wild just won't find consistent success with this set of centers, but hey, it got them 2 points and a split of their first two games with Colorado, so I guess we keep letting it ride.

Colorado somehow shut down the goal scoring machine that is Joel Eriksson Ek for two games. It's only a matter of time though, until he's back on the scoresheet.

The power play was 0 for 3 in this one and has dropped to 2 for 39 on the season (5.1% is 31st out of 31 in the NHL - they did it!)

===================================================

The Wild are halfway through their season series with LA and have 6 points in 4 games.  Do that again in the second half of the season series and I think that's a good pace.

The Wild have split every two-game set except the first one, which is enough for them to be one point out of first place in the West division.  In reality, Vegas has played 3 fewer games than Minnesota and is still only one point behind, so if we assume Vegas would win one of those three games in hand, the Wild are in fourth in the division, behind Vegas, Colorado, and St. Louis.  Raise your hand if you're surprised?  Yeah, me neither.

The Kirill Kaprizov Corner

Kaprizov leads all NHL rookies in total points and assists (2G - 6A - 8Pts).

He is averaging the most ice time per game among rookie forwards by a full two minutes, so he's playing a bunch and he's been so good. Evolving Hockey has him at 3.4 GAR (Goals above Replacement) after 10 games, which easily above an MVP level pace (Small Sample Size caveats apply).

From Russo after Tuesday's game:

It’s unbelievable how many chances Kaprizov has set up for his teammates that they haven’t finished. Look at his pass in the first period Tuesday that Bonino wasn’t ready for. Look at his backdoor pass to Johansson in the third period Sunday that should have been a tap-in, go-ahead goal.

At some point, Kaprizov has probably just got to get more selfish and do it himself. He had no shots on goal against the Kings and ranks eighth on the team with 12 shots in seven games.

Players not Named Kirill

  • I don't know what to say about Victor Rask. If he's the guy that capitalizes on Kaprizov's passes, then that's a really good thing and I hope it continues and he has a 20 goal season.
  • Joel Eriksson Ek is three goals away from his career high.
  • We're probably going to have to talk about Jordan Greenway and his point per game pace at some point, aren't we?
  • Cam Talbot came back from his injury for Sunday's win. Minnesota's team 5-on-5 FancyStat numbers are really good:
    • 10th in expected goals
    • 8th in actual goals/60 minutes
    • 3rd in expected goals against,
    • 24th(!) in actual goals against/60 minutes
  • So that's a little worrisome on the goaltending front. Kahkonen has been below average and Talbot has been a little better. Average goaltending would be really nice, so let's hope for that.

COVID news

  • Foligno had a positive Covid test on Sunday, so now we enter the seriously not fun part where we wait and wonder if this is a single case or the start of an outbreak through the team.
  • Marco Rossi (Last year's first round draft pick) went back to Austria to recover from long-term Covid complications. He will not play this season.

Leaderboards

PlayerGPlayerAPlayerPts
Eriksson Ek5Greenway8Greenway10
Fiala3Suter6Eriksson Ek9
Rask3Kaprizov6Kaprizov8
Dumba3Brodin4Suter6
6 players tied2Eriksson Ek4Brodin6

Book Day: Groundhog’s Eve

Well, the year is off and running. I'm still creating elaborate lists to figure out how to spend my bookstore gift cards that I got at the end of the year, but I did get a couple of books  in the mail this month:

Baseball's Leading Lady: Effa Manley and the Rise and Fall of the Negro Leagues by Andrea Williams

She's the only woman inducted into the baseball HOF, and I hadn't really ever heard of her until I came across this book. The little Ghost is pretty interested in the Negro Leagues, so we might dive into this one together.

Ellis Island by Georges Perec

The latest in the New Directions subscription that I got for Christmas and I'm excited to read another Perec book.  I loved "Life: A User's Manual" and I've committed myself to reading "A Void" at some point this year. Maybe I'll do that this month to pair with my new acquisition.

Some links to interesting things I read in January:

We Didn't Have a Chance to Say Goodbye - Sabrina Orah Mark - She's one of those authors that I read every time I see her name and I'm never disappointed.

My husband and I were on our honeymoon, and I thought I only wanted the plague doctor. I didn’t know I’d eventually need him, too. “You can’t be serious,” says my brother. “Who loses a plague doctor during a plague?” “I guess I do,” I say.

“We’ll find him,” says my husband. But we never do.

Corvid Vision - Barbara Tran - A poem from Conjunctions that I thought had a lot of interesting images in it.

When something is said to come full
circle does this mark completion or make
a new form

an O
through which another
could fly?

Reading with the Little Ghost:

The Girl and the Ghost turned out to be far too dark for our current situation.  Lots of bullying and jealousy and anger and it just wasn't the thing we wanted to read before bed. We switched after about 90 pages after the main character had a nightmare about eating curry with human body parts in it.

So, instead we are reading Pip Bartlett's Guide to Sea Monsters which is a series that G has enjoyed. This is the third book, and it's much more light-hearted entertainment.

He really liked Monstrous: The Lore, Gore and Science Behind Your Favorite Monsters. This was  a book where he would go quiet for a while and I'd go looking for him only to find him nose deep in a chart about how to tell if you are dead or undead.  Thanks, Pepper!

He also just finished The Atlas of Vanishing Places which was full of geography facts and just about perfect for the obsessions of this particular third grader.

Weekly Wild Whangdoodle: Week 3

This week's schedule:

Four home games this week, the Wild get another look at the Kings and then start a stretch of four in a row against the Avalanche.

Both of these teams are currently at .500 (Kings are 2-2-2, Avs are 3-3-0). That's surprising in both cases, although for different reasons.

Last week's results:

MIN 0 - ANA 1 - Highlights

The power play is bad (0 for 5 on this night, 0 for the season through three games). The Wild actually had the better control of play, but couldn't solve Gibson. Cam Talbot played a pretty good game in goal. Losing 1-0 is just so annoying. The team shooting percentage went from 11% (highest in the West) before the game to 7.7% (middle of the pack) after.

MIN 3 - ANA 2 - Highlights

The Wild were cruising, up 2-0, outshooting Anaheim 24-7 and then they just kind of lost it at the end of the second period and allowed the Ducks to tie the game. Then Kaprizov to Greenway to Eriksson Ek about 90 seconds into the third period and the Wild had their third win of the season.  And they got a power play goal! Their power play was now 1 for 20 (5%) on the season. Infinitely better than 0%, but still not great. On the other side the penalty kill was 12 for 13 on the year and added a short handed goal in this one.

MIN 4 - SJ 1 - Highlights

Hey! A game with a goal differential greater than one! Thanks to two empty net goals by the Wild, but at least Parise and Fiala got their first goals of the year here.

MIN 3 - SJ 5 - Highlights

WW

===================================================

Two splits with two not great teams is not ideal, and this week will be a bit more of a test.  We're over 10% of the way through the season, and now the Wild get to play some more of the top end of the division.  Series splits with Colorado / Vegas will feel a lot better.

TEAM CORSI% FEN% xGF/60xGA/60Sh%Sv%
Wild51.852.22.41.87.5%92.6%

Overall stats look OK - CORSI and Fenwick are above 50%, so the Wild are carrying the play at 5 on 5 versus their opponents. Their shooting percentage is a little low, and their save percentage is high.

Special teams is going to be the thing, I think. If the power play starts going well and they keep this up at 5 on 5, they'll do very well.

The Kirill Kaprizov Corner

Is he more of a playmaker than a goal-scorer? That could be interesting.

Players not Named Kirill

  • Eriksson Ek and Greenway are having a really good start to the season paired together on the third line. I really hope both of them continue to be productive
  • Cam Talbot - great game against Anaheim (the 1-0 loss) and then an injury.
  • Kappo Kahkonen - Seen more minutes right away in the season, seems to be OK as far as I can tell. Metrics through 2+ games seem to say he's a tick above average, so ... that's something.
Shots AgainstGoals AgainstFenwick AgainstSV%FenwickSV%Reb per 100SV
Talbot1068140.925.9454.2
Expected8.5.921.9393.7
Kahkonen766114.921.9462.0
Expected5.4.921.9533.4
  • Fiala and Parise both scored goals last week - empty net goals totally count - and it's nice to see them get some points. The Wild will need both of them to score as the competition gets better.

Leaderboards

PlayerGPlayerAPlayerPts
Eriksson Ek3Kaprizov5Kaprizov6
Dumba2Suter5Suter5
Parise2Greenway4Eriksson Ek5
Fiala2Eriksson Ek2Greenway5
9 players tied1Pateryn2Parise / Dumba3

FMD: Tom Jones Need Not Apply

The Ghost family has decided on their themed playlist for 2021 - Cats.  We threw together a few songs last weekend, so we've got a 10-song start, but are always open to suggestions:

  • Nashville Cats - The Lovin' Spoonful
  • The Cat Came Back - Sonny James
  • The Lion Sleeps Tonight (Wimoweh) - The Tokens
  • Stray Cat Strut - Stray Cats
  • Keyboard Sonata in G Minor (the "Cat Fugue") - D. Scarlatti
  • Eye of the Tiger - Survivor
  • Jellicle Songs for Jellicle Cats - Cats
  • You Can Sleep on Top of Anything - Kitty Kat Fan Club
  • Ev'rybody Wants to Be a Cat - Artistocats
  • Honky Cat - Elton John

Last year we did space and ended up with a fun mix.

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