SURGING: The Minnesota Wild Turned Their Season Around, But Can They Sustain Their Success?

The Minnesota Wild have overcome a slow start and have now won five in a row. Seth Tupel is here to talk about how they did it and what they need to do to keep it going. All that and more next on today’s Locked On NHL podcast. [Music] You’re Locked on NHL, your daily podcast on the National Hockey League. Part of the Locked On podcast network. your team every day. Gil Martin here and welcome everybody to the Monday episode of the Locked On NHL podcast. We are part of the Locked On podcast network, your team every day. I want to thank everyone who makes Locked on NHL your first listen every day. Don’t forget to subscribe on YouTube or wherever you listen to podcasts so you never miss an episode. and thank you for helping to make Locked On the number one sports podcast network. Today’s episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Download the FanDuel app now by visiting fanuel.com and win $300 in bonus bets if your first $5 bet wins. It is my pleasure to welcome back to the show the host of Locked on Wild, Seth Tupel. And uh Seth, amazing five in a row, a shutout win over Winnipeg on Sunday. What has been the biggest difference for this team over the last five games? Well, in a word, everything. Gil, um it just what a difference a month makes. Uh in the month of October, Wild got off to a pretty bad start. They were getting inconsistent goalending. Defense was leaky. offense was outside of one or two players really non-existent. And you you flip to the month of November and the numbers honestly are eyepopping. No matter how you look at them, they’re the Wilder 91 and one in the month of November. They have scored first in 12 straight games. They have not trailed at any point in eight straight games. Wow. They are getting unbelievable goalending. They’ve allowed just 17 goals in their last 11 games. Uh the offense is being led by Carrill Capri off and Matt Baldy, but we’re starting to get some other contributors. Uh beyond those two, Marcus Johansson has been a consistent third presence. Um the special teams have stabilized. The Wild penalty kill is uh just under 90% in the month of November, which is a mark that I I hadn’t seen the Wild hit in any single month, I don’t think, over the last four years. So, everything just has kind of settled down after a rocky start. And it doesn’t matter if it’s Philip Gustiffson in net or Yesad, you have high confidence that they are going to not only uh keep the opponent at bay almost entirely. They they just it’s shutouts pretty much every time they they’re out there. Yesper has three shutouts on the season. Philip Gustoson has two shutouts. It’s like it doesn’t matter who’s in net. It just seems like the Wild have full confidence that uh they’re going to get a great goalie performance and they are they are riding vibes at an all-time high right now. Talk to me about the return of Matt Zucarelloo and the impact that he’s had. He’s at a pointto-ame pace since his return. Yeah, and we we just have seen, you know, the the chemistry with Carell Capri off what it has done with Zuckerella being productive in that spot. It’s allowed the Wild to put Matt Baldi on line two. Um, and you know, there’s been chemistry between him, Julenk, and uh, and Marcus Johansson. So now you’ve got two lines that are performing at a pretty good level, which is something that they just had not had uh, consistently over the last couple of years. You can attack with two lines. They’re getting good play from the bottom six as far as uh, defensive performances go. It it it’s hard to point to one specific thing and be like, “Yeah, that’s definitely not going well right now.” It just seems like everything that they’re doing, all the moves they’re making, even with a couple of major injuries on the roster, everything is just coming up roses right now. Maybe the penalty kill still a concern. They’re they’re ranked 28th in the league. I know they’ve been better as of late. What’s going on with that? Well, I think we’re seeing a more concerted effort to just be mindful with the puck. Uh, I mean, winning faceoffs has certainly helped, but we’ve seen this team when they kind of get stuck on the penalty kill, they try to clear or they try to center, you know, into the zone and it just it doesn’t work. It leads to a turnover here and there which leads to quick goal opportunities for the opponent. It just seems like the passes have been a lot smarter and more thought out uh to okay, let’s go here and then let’s immediately get it out of the zone. Just the little things like they’re they’re doing most of what they need to do uh any given penalty kill. It just comes down to a couple of those little detail things and if you get those to go, you’re probably going to be successful. If you don’t, other teams probably scoring a goal. You mentioned injuries. What is the timetable for return and how important are is getting these players back? So Ryan Hartman and Marco Rossi at last update are still weak to week. Uh from the sounds of it, Rossi with a lower body injury that he had been dealing with uh for quote a little while. So he’s on injured reserve. Uh Vladimir Terasenko was put on injured reserve as well. Uh I’ll talk about him in a second. Uh and Ryan Hartman of course uh also out. So you’ve got two centers out of the lineup that has led to Danilla Eurovv being inserted into the top of the lineup and honestly he’s looked just fine. He’s looked just fine in a topline center role which is great for the uh the development of the young players on this roster. Uh but when you get Rossi back, when you get Hartman back, those are two pieces that this team is going to need eventually. Uh so that will certainly help with the depth. But it’s ironic that uh Vladimir Terasenko was the big offseason acquisition and the numbers for each of the lines have actually been better since he came out of the lineup than they were with him in it. So maybe he was uh dealing with an injury up to this point in the season or that might uh that might have been a little bit of a swing and miss for uh for Billy. But I I mean if they can mitigate this uh this stretch with especially Rossy and Hartman out of the lineup, if they can just kind of hold serve during that stretch, uh when they get those guys back, they will uh they’ll definitely be in a little better shape as far as depth goes. The old cliche is you’re never as good as you are when you’re on a winning streak or as bad as you are when you’re on a losing streak. So long term, what does this team need to do to contend this year? Well, I think the big key is going to come down to um when the goalending is not going to be this good all season. Like the goalending has been sensational for the last month and that’s great. We we have been really happy to get those performances, but you know, at some point there are going to be a few more goals that that come in than there have been. Can the offense continue to push and can they up their scoring even a little bit to kind of compensate for that? That’s the big key is we know we knew the defense was going to be good coming in and we knew that the goalending was going to play a major factor as well. Can the Wild get secondary scoring as the season unfolds beyond what you’re getting from Carell Capri off and Matt Baldy? That’s been the question the last couple of years. It’s a question again this year. If guys consistently add goals beyond what they’re getting at the top, that’ll be the difference for this year’s team. All right, we’ll see if they are going to be able to sustain it. It’s going to be an interesting season and right now the Wild are the hottest team in the NHL. Seth, why don’t you tell our viewers and our listeners where they could find the podcast and where they could find you on social media? Certainly. Uh, you can follow the show on Locked on Wild on all of your favorite social media platforms. Locked on Wild and you can also follow me at Seth Tups. Uh, please don’t follow me for Vikings takes because it’s too painful. I won’t uh I won’t be supplying any more of those the rest of the season. But hopefully the Minnesota Wild will uh continue their winning ways and uh we’ll talk plenty about them as the season rolls along. All right, Seth. Thank you so much. My pleasure, Gil. Today’s game is brought to you by your friends at FanDuel. The NBA is back and there’s no better place to get in on the action than FanDuel, the official sports betting partner of the NBA. Even if you miss the start of the game or you want to ride the hot hand, FanDuel has live bets on everything from who will score next to fourth quarter comebacks. 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The Minnesota Wild are one of the hottest teams in the league having won five straight. They turned a shaky October into an outstanding month of November.

Seth Toupal of Locked On Wild discusses how the Wild turned things around, the key injuries they need to overcome and what it will take to sustain this success.

All this and more on today’s Locked On NHL Podcast with Gil Martin.

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10 comments

  2. Jesper is the best goalie in the league
    Bar none, the defense is quickly becoming the one of the best
    And I see this team breaking their 12 game winning streak this year
    Denny from what the hell are you smoking

  3. We've seen this a bunch from this group…They will go on a heater…Be considered one of the best teams…. Then unfortunately go on a losing streak just scraping into the playoffs against 1 of the best on the road…Seen this happen consistently with this group…. What will happen this year??

  7. 4 things I see that they need to do to continue to be good. Goalies continue to be dominant, no injuries, drive the net more and continue to improve their puck handling more. Watching some of the replays, it still looks like they are just hacking and whacking pucks instead of precision passes like they used to. Other than that, hope they continue to be this good.

  9. The biggest difference is that these guys finally are not just floating the blue lines and are finally getting back to backcheck. This has had a the biggest impact for the D Core because now they have players to pass to, not just stretch pass after stretch pass (which too many ended up in icing the puck, a loss on the D Zone faceoff and getting the crap fore hecked until a goal ends up in our net). We have improved on faceoffs a bit. Now to play the best of the young guns so the Pointless Ben Jones can go back to Iowa. We can't expect success playing 40% of our bottom 6 being AHL players but not NHL!

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