It was the perfect time for a closed-door, players-only, tear-the-effin’-paint-off-the-wall team meeting. While a few choice words were indeed flung around, the locker-room doors opened to the media atypically fast because captain Jared Spurgeon had something more unique in mind.
“Spurgey told me that he wanted to just have something the next day, and that’s how it went,” alternate captain Marcus Foligno said. “Spurgey threw on the text message group, ‘Hey, we’re going to have a meeting before practice and just the players, and we’re going to hash things out.’ So, yeah, that was all him.”
Since Nov. 1, the Wild are a league-best 7-1-1 (15 of a possible 18 points).
Luckily for us, Foligno, Spurgeon and defenseman Brock Faber did give The Athletic a little taste.
“A lot of the message was just everyone’s intentions are right in this room, and it’s just getting back to things you can control,” Faber said. “Like, I can’t control whether I have five shots on goal, five opportunities to jump in the rush, five chances a game. I can’t control that. Things I can control are the way I box out, the way I compete, the way I gap, and then the rest is already written. So getting back to our identity and trusting the guy next to you was obviously the thing.
“The deeper message was more so just, ‘Everyone has the right intentions in here and let’s just f—ing lean into what makes each individual good and it’ll come together. It was a good reset for us. It was very positive. Very positive in that room. We knew the team we had, and we pushed through it.”
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TL;DR version: next time someone complains about Spurgeon being the captain of this team, show this article.
> Spurgeon, a Wild lifer since his 21st birthday 15 years ago, may seem like a quiet captain on the outside, and he largely is. However, he’s beloved by his teammates and is as inclusive as anybody who’s ever put on a Wild sweater. He makes everybody feel a part of it, so when he speaks, it means something.
Thats my captain
Something Lapanta said on the most recent Worst Seats really resonated with me. It applied to Spurgeon, but I think we can use it to talk about the other players too.
“Far too often, fans are focused on what Spurgeon is not or isn’t doing, forgetting what he was or is.”
Is Spurgeon the be all end all defenseman of the league? No, but what he was and still is is a guy very well rounded, defensively responsible, and has most of not all the team’s historical defensive records.
Ek for example shut down Carlson, Eichel, and Celebrini on nearly all 5on5 shifts. So what if he isn’t always the best scorer? He is more often than not impossible to score against when he is on.
It is so easy to harp on a player “should” be this guy, that guy, etc, forgetting that those guys we harp on shut down or kept up with darlings of the NHL in Anaheim, San Jose, Vegas, and Carolina to fight back into contention.
The team said fuck this and won their identity back, at least for now.