POST CAST: Wild Offense Invisible in 5-1 Loss to Washington

POST CAST: Wild Offense Invisible in 5-1 Loss to Washington

weird to look old and tired after a full week off after a Tuesday game. Uh the Wilds, that was uh was not great. five to one loss to the Washington Capitals. And I find myself sitting here everybody just wondering what is the identity? What is the identity of this team? Five on five play was non-existent mainly because the Wilds can’t score if they can’t get set in the zone and they can’t get set in the zone unless they’re on the power play. That feels like a problem that has to be addressed in a very major way as soon as possible. Um, that was I I thankfully I didn’t have any teeth that actually need to be get needed to get pulled because I feel like I got a couple pulled uh already tonight. Um, let’s sift through this game. Uh, postcast time. [Music] You are Locked on Wild Postcast, part of Locked on Minnesota on the Locked On Network. Your team every day. Minnesota Wild fall by a score of 5 to one to the Washington Capitals in tonight’s matchup. They’re now two and three on the season. Um, I’m I’m kind of confused to be honest because the Wild played on Tuesday. They got to Washington. They had a couple of days off. They looked old. They looked old against the Capitals and 15 shots on goal. If not for a flurry in the last little bit of the game, they barely got over 10 shots on goal in this one. It is certainly it’s certainly a a decent Washington team uh as far as they go defensively, but this this team cannot this team cannot enter the zone offensively. Like they they can’t even get the puck into the zone in five on five. And the reason, think about this, the reason the power play has been so successful this year is because it gives the Wild an opportunity to get into the zone. Um, so they can get set up because they can’t they can’t enter the offensive zone at this point in the season. as I’ll say until it feels appropriate to hit the panic button. Um there’s plenty of time to get all this writed, but man alive, it is they have one five on five goal since the beginning of since the opening game of the season. I could have seen Marcus Johansson scoring tonight from a mile away because former team so you knew that was coming. But um this is we we saw at least movement as far as line combinations go, but um this is something that this is work in progress. Doesn’t feel like it’s doing it enough justice because they you you got to you got to get some things figured out here. Uh let’s let’s look at the stats. We’ll talk about the standouts here tonight as well. Um, here’s the recap from the game tonight. As far as the shots on goal go, not the best for the Minnesota Wild. 45 shots on goal for the Washington Capitals. Uh, the Wild went 0 for two on the power play. One for five went the Washington Capitals. Uh, they scored the um they scored in their final power play of the game. um rebound that kicked right to a uh waiting player and tapped it in and uh was able to uh to get that uh that power play goal. Faceoffs dead even down the middle. Hits not a huge factor. Um blocks slight edge to the Minnesota Wild. Obviously, one of the big things to keep an eye on in this game is the status of Zack Begoian who left early in the game. that certainly didn’t help matters cuz then you’re down a D when your offense is not capable of generating much of anything. Um, so that was that was uh was dicey at best. Uh, as far as some of the deeper statistics go, the Minnesota Wild managed 1.82 expected goals. Uh they had 28 unblocked shot attempts, 22 of those were low danger, five were medium danger, and one was high danger. So that percentage is pretty much you get what you pay for. If you don’t drive the net as an offense, you’re going to have a very hard time scoring. You’re going to have a very hard time consistently scoring. And it is the the the five on five, the inability to even gain the zone is what is causing just so much strife um as far as generating offense goes. The Capitals, meanwhile, they generated 4.95 expected goals. So, Philip Gustoson was slightly below average. I certainly don’t put as much on him in this game. I know he needs to be way better, but think about the goals. Think about the goals that the Capitals scored tonight. Um, they had the tap-in goal right next to Gustiffson. Uh, defensive breakdown there as nobody cleared the front of the net. Uh, there was the weird rebound that Gustoson made the initial save. puck went straight by Brock Faber and was picked up by the Capitals who deposited it deposited it into the empty net. Um, you know, on and on down the line. Not uh not the finest hour for the Minnesota Wild. Not the finest hour, but I’m seeing it a lot. I’m I’m seeing it a lot in the comments. Um, and I’m just going to I’m just going to put it out there like as much as as much as everybody wants to see a coach get fired, a GM get fired, an owner get replaced, it’s not happening. It It’s not It’s not happening until much much later into the season at at the worst. So, this is something that just has to get figured out. But um think about this though. Think this is something that I think the team needs to take a much bigger look at. I heard John Hines talk about it after the Dallas game and leading up to the game tonight that the team needs to they need to get back to their identity. I would like to know what the identity is because I don’t feel like this team has one right now. And you talk about you talk about, you know, getting the puck out of the zone quickly. That’s that’s a skill, that’s a trait, that’s a characteristic of a team, but that’s not an identity. This is a team that, you know, tries to play physical, tries to to lean on that that grit a little bit to uh to steal a phrase from Dean Evson, but they’re most they’re quite und sized. They have a few players that can do that. Um, put a lot of the pressure on Carell Capri off and Matt Baldy to score the goals because there just aren’t a lot of other goal scorers on the team right now. I want to know what the identity is for this group. What are they? What do you hang your hat on for this Washington team? That it’s clear that they press defensively and they force you to make quick decisions and the Wild were completely unprepared for that in this game. And it it you need to just you need to just figure out like what are we good at? Like what are we what do what is our calling card? What do we hang our hat on? Um it’s just like it it just is not there at this point in the season. um you have 77 games to figure it out. But you know the thing that I go back to is we let’s what do we know about what this team has done over the last few years. They have put a lot of pressure on the top two lines and by extension they have put a lot of pressure on the top line to basically carry the carry the offense, carry the party. That that doesn’t feel that doesn’t feel like that’s a real sustainable model if I’m being perfectly honest. um that you’ve gota you’ve got to find a way you’ve got to find a way to inject life into that group. Now, we saw a lot of different combinations. Um we we saw a lot of different combinations utilized in the game tonight. And honestly, the the line that had the most consistent as far as expected goals for was the fourth line. William Ogrren, Denil Yurov, and Vinnie Hinistrosza. They had the highest on ice expected goals four, followed by Baldi, Rossi, and Terasenko. But the numbers for the rest of these lines were pretty bad as far as expected goals go. There was only one goal scored that was by the Marcus Johansson, Marco Rossi, Matt Baldy line. That line played one minute together and they had an expected goals score of 0.05. When you’re getting into BAC category, as far as your expected goals go, that’s not great. So, tonight was tonight was the line blender and I hope that it leads to a serious look at what is going to what is going to lead this team right now and what isn’t because through the first through the first five games of the season, it’s been very uneven. Now, I would like to for the standouts, I’d like to give uh Danilov a uh nice pat on the back again. Um because I I thought he had another solid game. And I I know we’re still seeing some of the uh some of the hiccups from Zeve Boy, but Jesse and I talked about it in yesterday’s episode. Growing pains. That’s the theme for this year is the growing pains and how willing are the Minnesota Wild to allow this to play out knowing that you’re going to get better play from these guys in the lineup than you would get from the people that had been filling those spots before. And if you get the process going pretty early, as they have with Boyam and with Yurov, you can mitigate that. But if you I if you are trying to like 20 30 games into the season, if you’re trying to um if you’re trying to continue to go with some of these low ceiling vets, then yeah, you’re going to have a problem. And it’s as far as who needs to be better, like what needs to improve. I I think the team just needs I think the team needs to get on the same page. It looks very disjointed out there right now. And a lot of that is, you know, the the line blending process, but this is part of, hear me out on this, too. This is part of the process I think that you have to deal with if you’re not going to play your key guys in the preseason. quite a bit. The Wild played their main players one or two games in the preseason. How are you supposed to get these combinations to gel? How are you supposed to get time with those guys? Practice is practice. I know I probably tooted the horn of the Ogrren E Terasenko line a little bit too much in practice because they I don’t think they ever got into a game maybe one time. How are you supposed to get line combinations to work if you don’t give those guys requisite time together? So then you have to treat the early part of the season um you have to treat the early part of the season and figuring this out. That being said, you you got to like this is this is no different to me than the game that the Ottawa Senators had against Buffalo where they lost like 8 to4. You got to take those as opportunities to like, hey guys, we need to we need to clean some stuff up. Like there’s there’s a lot of ironing to do at this point in the season. Uh there’s there’s a lot there’s a lot to get uh there’s a lot to get ironed out. So that being said, Danilov gets one of my standouts here tonight. Um Minnesota Wild offense gets to stand out in a bad way. Uh they have now two five on five goals this season and they had So what were the total numbers? The Wild had 28 unblocked shot attempts. They had total How many actual shot attempts did they have? They had a ton that were blocked, but they had a ton that just missed outright, too. And uh so they had 14 blocked shots out of then I hate doing math. 42. How about the uh how about the Vinnie Henestroa um all alone in front of the net and he sends it wide from like six feet in front of the net. At that point I’m like okay this is this is snake bit to say the least. But um this is another point offensively to consider. So, when you have as few shot attempts as the Wild had tonight, uh, as far as shots on goal go, this is an inaccurate team to begin with. And this is a team that has a a large portion of their shots blocked. So you are if you if you attempt 100 shot attempts in a game last year 33% of those shots were blocked and 34 of them missed the net entirely. That’s 67% of your shot attempts that don’t get to the goalie. So you are leaving yourself 33% roughly of the shot attempts that actually get to the net. And if you if you can’t get to the I if you can’t get to the goalie, if you’re shooting from the perimeter, those easy spots, and you don’t have somebody in front of the net that can screen the goalie, you’re not going to have a good time. And we certainly didn’t tonight. I think pretty much every line combination was out attempted here this evening. Um, Capri off Capri off Hartman and Terasenko were out attempted 11 to nothing uh in their time on the ice. Baldi, Eric and Caprioff was out attempted 5 to2. Baldi, Rossi, Capri off was in positive territory as far as attempts go at six to four, but until until they can get that second line figured out, we are not going to see Capri off and Baldi together uh very often. You got to you you have to get that spot figured out. Um, these are these are the problems that have been dragging this team for I don’t know since 2021 2022 since the last time they had a legitimate um a legitimate anchor presence on that second line. Kevin Fiala, that was the last time the Wild had a like legitimate anchor presence on that second line. And you you were never going to the Wild made their choice. They were never going to resign Fiala. So, they made the trade. They brought Brock Faber in. And as Jesse and I talked about, feels like Faber is a couple of degrees off from where he was in his uh his rookie season. Just a just a little bit off. And I don’t know if it’s an injury. I don’t know if it’s that he is basically being asked to uh asked to do everything. I don’t know what it is, but it’s it’s noticeable for those that follow the team. It’s not a huge it’s not a huge difference, but it’s noticeable. So, I don’t know. Like, this is this is a point in the season. Like, I’m not not like a rock bottom situation or anything. It can get far worse. It can get far worse. But this should be one of those losses that you this should be one of those losses that you kind of take a step back and you look at cuz you just you got dragged up and down the ice for 60 minutes and it just it looks like at this point the car is kind of on autopilot and I like the thing that stood out to me I’ll keep repeating it. The thing that stood out to me tonight is they just looked old. This roster just looked old and they have been far older in previous seasons, but you don’t see it show through that often. And having a couple of days off in front of a backto back and looking like this on the first night Not uh not ideal. Um let’s see if we’ve got any quotes. I’m not sure who is uh I’m not sure who is following the team here. Um okay, it’s Joe Smith. Uh so we are in elite hands. Um, let’s see what uh let’s see what Joe Smith has to say as far as uh comments go and then we’ll take a break and uh we’ll kind of kind of regroup here. Uh John Hines, no update on Zack Bean in the post game. Uh Brock Faber said that’s just unacceptable from top to bottom. He’s right that uh those are the only updates that we have so far. So, this is a good this feels like a good I don’t I don’t want to say team only meeting, closed door meeting, but this feels like a real good opportunity to just hey, we got we got to be better up and down the board. Up and down the board. Um because that was uh was not great. Uh let’s break. We’ll uh take a little bit of a look ahead to tomorrow’s game. Um because you go from playing Washington to the Wild playing Philly tomorrow and we all know that uh Philly is just a joy to play against. So we’ll uh we’ll talk about that game as well. And uh I think since so many are doing it in the comments, we’ll ceremoniously fire somebody tonight. Ceremoniously, of course, cuz I don’t have any real power. But uh we’ll we’ll talk about all that as we continue tonight’s postcast. Wildfall five to one. They were mostly just offensive as opposed to having offense. I don’t know why I think that joke is funny. It’s really not. Uh we’ll break more postcast coming up. Today’s postcast is brought to you by Game Time. Hockey season is officially here and nothing beats being in the arena for those opening games. Let’s be real, getting tickets can be a total headache. Between waiting in cues, surprise fees, and prices that jump right before checkout, it’s easy to get frustrated when all you want to do is cheer on your team. 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Pick a bet, put down five bucks, and if it hits, you’ll unlock $300 in bonus bets to use across the app. Minnesota Vikings taking on the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday. And uh the Vikings are still underdogs in this one. It’s one and a half points for Philly. I still feel optimistic about the Minnesota Vikings. So, I would take the Vikings plus one and a half. And if that wins, then you can put the rest on Matt Baldy to win the heart. Yet another point tonight. Um, you who knows, you might uh you might end up being a big winner courtesy of FanDuel. So, what are you waiting for? Visit fanuel.com to download the FanDuel app today and get started. Minnesota Wild lose by a score of five to one. And let’s let’s do this because there are certainly things that need to change. And I I’m going to put a uh I’m going to put some dirt on the coffin of the Pete Dbor um train. Pete Dbor certainly has had success at all of his stops uh since he has been a coach, but he has been run out of every spot he has coached. whether it be San Jose, whether it be Vegas, whether it be Dallas, he’s been run out of every spot that he’s coached because after a certain point, he starts to kind of he starts to kind of get into some drama situations with his players. Jake, Mark Andre Flurry, list goes on and on. Um, this he he ain’t fixing that. He ain’t fixing that. And I don’t know. I I don’t think I think we overblow considerably the John Hines doesn’t like rookie players. I challenge you to find me a coach in the NHL and please comment in please comment in videos all this week. I challenge you to find me a coach that does not do similar things to what as far as playing young players. It happens all over the league. It is a leaguewide problem. It is a leaguewide position. playing veterans over young players up and down the NHL. They do it. So, if you can find me somebody that doesn’t have to do it out of necessity, San Jose Sharks, Anaheim Ducks don’t count. They have to do it out of necessity. Chicago has to do it out of necessity. Montreal is about the only team. Montreal is about the only team that did so to develop. And obviously there are other examples, but like this whole talking point of John Hines hates rookies. He doesn’t want to see them succeed. He doesn’t want to see them play meaningful minutes in the lineup. It It’s overblown. He certainly has he certainly has his faults. We’re seeing him on full display, but like we can uh we can we can dampen that uh anytime now. Um like it’s it’s roster construction. If you want to point to roster construction, that’s the biggest issue. It’s how this roster is constructed and what these players on this roster do and on the flip side don’t do. I think what I would like to see tomorrow Is Ryan Hartman get a chance in that top six? Ben Jones is with the team. Ben Jones can play center. Give Give your office a chance at the third se. See if Ryan Hartman can solve the issues with that second line scoring. I feel like you just you need shooters in that spot. And to this point, like what was uh what was Terasena? What did he have for numbers here tonight? Should have had that up. Actually, I did. Um Terasenko tonight had one shot on goal in 14 minutes. A guy that has notoriously shot the puck throughout his career. Like I I don’t know if he just doesn’t see really see where he fits at this point. I don’t know if he just doesn’t see where he fits on the roster at this point, but he has been a guy throughout his career that has really not been afraid to shoot the puck. Do you trust Billy to actually trade and make changes to the roster that will get us a win, though? He’s the architect of this disaster. I mean, he’s made deals in the past. I have to assume that he’s going to do it again. Otherwise, what’s otherwise what’s the point? Like, what are we what are we doing here? If we if we have the outcome predetermined, what is the point? What is the point of sitting here talking about the games if we already know how the season’s going to play out if we know that there’s no way to fix it? Like, what are we doing? Yeah, fire fire everybody. That’s always the answer. [Music] Uh, let’s talk about the Flyers. team team fire everybody and burn it to the ground. You’re not you’re not gonna get your way in game five. Are you gonna fire Carrill then too? You’re gonna fire Baldi? You’re going to fire Jud Bracket? Lord have mercy. Uh the Philadelphia Flyers so far this year are one two and one. Uh they just lost to the Winnipeg Jets 5-2. Their lone win this year is against the Florida Panthers 5-2. And this is a Philly team that’s got a little bit in the way of young talent, but not a ton. And I mean, it’s just it just it just has to be way better. It’s got to be it’s got to be much better than it was tonight. And I I don’t know that we need to I don’t know that we need to super boil it down beyond that. You can’t say it’s a roster construction issue, then say the guy who built it should keep his job, I guess. So, do I need to do I need to spend every episode, every day for the rest of the season saying Bill Gar needs to be fired, John Hines needs to be fired. Um, do I need to publicly have that position for everybody to be satisfied every day for the rest of the season until it happens? Says John Hines all over the ice. We weren’t at a level, I would say, from a speed perspective and a competitive perspective to give ourselves a chance to win. He’s not wrong. Uh Brock Faber, poor Scotty Bowman out of retirement. All right, everybody. I think I’m going to get on to the rest of my Friday. Uh enjoy the game tomorrow and we’ll be back with you on Monday with an episode with Alex. Uh make sure to like and subscribe so you don’t miss out on any future episodes. Minnesota Wild fall by a score of 5 to one tonight. We’ll see who has their jobs when we uh come back on Monday.

The Minnesota Wild fell 5-1 to Washington Friday night in DC to drop to 2-3 on the season. The Wild struggled mightily to generate offense all night long, finishing with a season low 15 shots on goal. The Capitals scored once in the first and second period, and 3 goals in the 3rd. The Wild scored their lone goal courtesy of Marcus Johansson, but were mostly dominated in every single facet the rest of the night. Filip Gustavsson stopped 40 of 45 shots in net for the Wild, who face Philadelphia tomorrow to continue their 5 game road trip.

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