Showing posts with label Minnesota Wild. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Minnesota Wild. Show all posts

Thursday, February 27, 2014

Friday, January 17, 2014

Minnesota Wild: Cooke Check on Nail Yakupov, Leads to Justin Fontaine goal


One of the positive things to come out of this season is the play of rookie forward Justin Fontaine. With the goal last night, Fontaine now has 12 goals on the season. That's third on the Minnesota Wild in goals. That three more than 7.5-Million dollar man Dany Heatley. Check out the beginning of this play, Matt Cooke blows up Nail Yakupov with beautiful, legal check. Apparently,Yakupov is out with a upper body injury.
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Minnesota Wild: Stephane Veilleux blows up Ryan Jones



Wild forward Stephane Veilleux absolutely destroys Ryan Jones with a wonderful hit. Yeah that Ryan Jones. Apparently, the former RedHawk didn’t like getting blown up, and decided he’s going to fight Veilleux for a perfectly legal hit… You know, I don’t like this. Are some of these guys becoming crybabies or what? Learn to take a hit, take a number, check them back. That was a clean hit and hockey still allows checking. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good fight, but this is not a reason to fight someone.
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Jason Pominville dekes out Edmonton Goalie



Wow! What a nice goal... Jason Pominville is having a decent season for the wild and that was goal 19 on the year. With the goal Pominville now has (19g-14a—33pts) on the season.
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Friday, January 10, 2014

Minnesota Wild: Former UMD Bulldog Justin Fontaine scores hat-trick against the Coyotes



Coming into the season, a Wild player hadn't scored a hat-trick since January 17,  2010, when former Wild forward Guillaume Latendresse scored a hat-trick against the Phoenix Coyotes... Almost four years later a Wild player did it again against the Coyotes.

The Wild now have two hat-tricks in six days. So, tip of the hat to former Bulldog forward Justin Fontaine for leading the Wild to a 4-1 victory over the Desert Dogs. For all of naysayers that said Fontaine wouldn't make the Minnesota Wild, he's been up with the Wild since the start of the season.

Ahem, just to refresh everyone's memory.

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Tuesday, January 07, 2014

The Swiss 2014 Olympic Hockey Team

SAVE! Jonas Hiller
SAVE! Jonas Hiller (Photo credit: MattBritt00)
Goalies 
Reto Berra (Calgary Flames)
Tobias Stephan

Defensemen
Severin Blindenbacher
Rafael Diaz (Montréal Canadiens)
Philippe Furrer
Roman Josi (Nashville Predators)
Mathias Seger
Julien Vauclair
Yannick Weber (Vancouver Canucks)

Forwards
Andres Ambühl
Matthias Bieber
Simon Bodenmann
Damien Brunner (New Jersey Devils)
Luca Cunti
Ryan Gardner
Denis Hollenstein
Simon Moser
Nino Niederreiter (Minnesota Wild)
Martin Plüss
Kevin Romy
Reto Suri
Morris Trachsler
Roman Wick


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Monday, January 06, 2014

Minnesota Wild: The Hits Keep Coming

This is not good news for the Minnesota Wild. Mikko Koiuv and Josh Harding were placed on the injured reserve list. With forward Zach Parise out, the Wild are even more offensively challenged. If my math is right, that's tree players out with foot injuries as well (Koiuv, Spurgeon and Parise). The loss of Harding is huge as well. He is 18-7-3 with a 1.65 goals-against average, a .933 save percentage
Chad Graff, Pioneer Press -- The Wild placed captain Mikko Koivu and goalie Josh Harding on injured reserve Monday.

That means each will sit out at least seven days.

Koivu was injured Saturday night when he apparently blocked a shot with his ankle. The Wild did not announce a time frame for Koivu's return, but an update is expected Monday afternoon after the team practices in Los Angeles.

Harding was termed "ill" in the days leading to Monday. He had been placed on IR last month to adjust to treatment changes for multiple sclerosis. The changes were termed "minor" by Harding and the team, but he only appeared in two games after being activated in late December.
With a offensively challenged line-up and with the current injuries, the Wild are going to have to have someone step up and chip in offensively.

Sunday, January 05, 2014

Minnesota Wild: Ryan Suter scores a Hat-Trick to help Wild beat Caps 5-3.



Wild defenseman Ryan Suter became the first Minnesota Wild defenseman in their team's history to score a hat-trick. That was also the first hat-trick of Suter's NHL career. The Wild scored five goals on 11 shots. That's not a misprint or a typo. The Wild have now won two-games in a row.


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Friday, December 27, 2013

Minnesota Wild: Parise might have to miss some time

The hits keep coming for the Minnesota Wild. Wild. Forward Zach Parise is injured and will need to rest his injured foot. Going into the break, the Wild were 4-6-0 in their last 10 games. The Wild are also starving for offense and secondary scoring and have scored  a measly  22 goals in the last 15 games. That's not going to win a lot of hockey games in any league.
Michael Russo, Rsso's Rants -- For a team that lacks confidence and has 22 goals in the past 15 games and must dig deep and figure out a way to stop the bleeding and climb back into the top-8, Parise's absence comes out a bad time.

Parise blocked a shot by Alex Steen on Nov. 25. Coincidentally - or maybe not, the Wild is 5-9-1 since and 1-7-1, including that game in St. Louis, on the road since.

Parise was supposed to miss two to three weeks because of the bum foot but instead missed one game because he felt he could play through the injury and because of how difficult a stretch of games the Wild had coming up.

Commendable, but Parise was clearly playing through pain and the last week to 10 days, his off-ice limp was getting more and more pronounced. You could see it on the ice, too.

My educated guess is Parise will now need to stay off the foot for a little while so it doesn't linger any longer. How long? No clue, but this time doctors may have more say than Parise.

Thursday, December 12, 2013

Zenon Konopka double-minor for high sticking Jason Demers - GIF


This is a bad call, actually it's pathetic, as Wild tough guy Zenon Konopka was given a double minor for high sticking. You can see by the GIF that Konokpa never touched Jason Demers. The Sharks scored on the power play. You can bet that the Wild GM might be giving the NHL front office a call tomorrow. s/t CJZERO


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Tuesday, December 03, 2013

Saturday, November 30, 2013

Saturday Links: Game Day

Here's a few links for you to look at before you head to the game.
















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Friday, November 29, 2013

Minnesota Wild: Zach Parise tell the Injury Ninja to kiss off



Apparently, former Fighting Sioux All-American forward Zach Parise has a very high tolerance to pain and will be playing in tonight's game against the Colorado Avalanche. Originally, Parise was slated to be out 2-3 weeks. This is good news for the Minnesota Wild.


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Minnesota Wild: Injury Ninja visits Wild again

You have to watch out for the Injury Ninja. According to Pro Sports Daily, Mikael Granlund is out with a concussion after missing two-games due to another injury. Granlund’s game lasted a whole 29-seconds.
Pro Sports Daily -- "I feel horrible for him," Zucker said. "It's a battle, and I hope he gets better soon and can figure it out quickly, because that's not something anyone wants to see happen to anybody.

"Coach Mike Yeo termed it an upper body injury but said it has been nagging for at least the past three games. Granlund was cleared to play Wednesday for the first time in a week, but it came with a warning.

"He was cleared to play with the idea that we wanted to be careful and think about the big picture," Yeo said.

"Sometimes things happen."Yeo didn't want to look ahead to next week, when Granlund will be eligible to come off injured reserve.He said the team has been looking daily for too long at whether Granlund would play, so now they want to give him some time off.

"Could I sit here in hindsight and wish he didn't play? Of course," Yeo said. "But when a guy is cleared to play, what are you going to do? Are you going to say no?" - See more at:
According to Michael Russo, Minnesota Wild forward Mikael Granlund has been put on the injured reserve and is expected to miss about three games, probably more. This isn't good news for the Minnesota Wild.

Wednesday, November 27, 2013

Injured Wild forward Zach Parise skating in practice today



Minnesota Wild forward Zach Parise is supposed to be out 2-3 weeks with a lower body injury and he's taking part in practice today. Unreal! Those former North Dakota Hockey Players are tough.
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Monday, November 25, 2013

Top-eight teams in the NHL


Check out the top-eight teams in the NHL so far. The Minnesota Wild are ranked sixth right now. The Boston Bruins have the best goals against, before tonight's game. Top-seven teams are western teams.
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Friday, November 22, 2013

Amazing save by Josh Harding: Avoidance of the subject


You should never get to high or too low. Josh Harding is a perfect example of this. Last year, Harding was diagnosed with M.S. and ended up missing most of the season. He came back and played in the Stanley Cup Playoffs against the Chicago Blackhawks.  Now, this year, he's the Minnesota Wild starter. I don't think it's a stretch to say that Harding could be an All-Star.
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Thursday, November 14, 2013

Are the Wild a soft team?

English: Kadri at the 2010 world juniors
English: Kadri at the 2010 world juniors (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
From Michael Russo's blog today. Russo asked Yeo about the Wild being called a quote-unquote “soft” team.
“First off, obviously who’s the first [player] to jump on top of him [Kadri]?” Yeo said. “[Ryan] Suter. So to say that we didn’t do anything, that’s false actually. And if you want to get into it, it’s this simple really: They’ve got [Colton] Orr on the bench, they’ve got [Fraser] McLaren (he actually didn’t play, so I’m not positive whom Yeo meant), they’ve got [Mark Fraser]. They’ve got one after another. So if we go after Kadri, well, are they going to go after Konopka? No. They’re going to go after one of our top guys. They’ve got more down the line where they can keep playing that game.

“So where we have to be better is on the power play. Teams have to be afraid to pull that crap on us [because] they’re fearful of our power play. But at the same time, what I like is that our guys continued to play the game. I’ll take exception with anybody that tries to call us soft because that’s not true. Where it’d be soft is if they tried to have a physical impact on us. And as far as I’m concerned, we raised our game. And that to me is tough[ness]. It’s a different type of tough.
I think there's a good point here. Does Ryan Suter beat the crap out of Nazem Kadri and negate the power play or do the Minnesota Wild wait and pick a time to challenge Kadri later in the game. I say take the power play. The best way to make the Leafs pay is on the power play in that situation. Also, the Toronto Maple Leafs are full of cement heads and the Wild only have Zenon Konopka and Clayton Stoner, there's not a lot of other fighters on the Wild. That's not their game. I don't think their a soft team either.
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