New-Look Wild Rise to Top of NHL Standings at BetLM

New-Look Wild Rise to Top of NHL Standings

Head­ing into the 2011-12 sea­son, much of the focus in the North­west Divi­sion was right­fully on the Van­cou­ver Canucks, who won the Pres­i­dents’ Tro­phy for the 2010-11 sea­son, sat atop the West­ern Con­fer­ence through­out the play­offs and advanced to Game 7 of the Stan­ley Cup Final last spring.

By Hal­loween, the focus had shifted to the young and thrilling Edmon­ton Oil­ers, who quickly erased the mem­ory of back-to-back dead last fin­ishes by rac­ing to the top of the divi­sion behind recent No. 1 picks Ryan Nugent-Hopkins and Tay­lor Hall.

Not a whole lot was said dur­ing this time about the Min­nesota Wild, apart from the occa­sional men­tion of the trades exe­cuted over the sum­mer that brought Dany Heat­ley and Devin Setoguchi from the San Jose Sharks, or that they had a new coach in Mike Yeo. But after fin­ish­ing out of the play­off pic­ture each of the past three sea­sons, the Wild reg­is­tered on few hockey fans’ radars.

Flash for­ward to Mon­day morn­ing, when the Wild and the rest of the NHL awoke to find Min­nesota atop the League stand­ings with a 12–5-3 record, and in first place by five points in the North­west stand­ings, the largest lead in any divi­sion. The team is also on a season-high four-game win­ning streak, which it will carry into Wednesday’s con­test against the Nashville Preda­tors at Xcel Energy Center.

“This is the team we are, but not the team we’re going to be,” Yeo told the Min­neapo­lis Star-Tribune last week. “We’re happy with where we’ve got­ten so far, and there are things to feel good about. Hav­ing said that, they’re not hand­ing out awards for being in first place in our divi­sion right now.”

Even still, for a fran­chise that hasn’t had a ton to cel­e­brate since a sur­prise run to the West­ern Con­fer­ence Finals in 2003 and a divi­sion title when it last made the play­offs in 2007-08, there is a lot of excite­ment in Min­nesota over the way the Wild have been playing.

Con­sider some of these stats from the game notes fol­low­ing their 3–2 shootout win over the surg­ing St. Louis Blues on Sat­ur­day night, a game cap­tain Miiko Koivu tied on the power play with 1:38 left in reg­u­la­tion prior to scor­ing along with Matt Cullen in the penalty-shot tiebreaker:

- Min­nesota has won five in a row at home for the first time since it took six straight from March 15-April 3, 2008 — just before the Wild made their last play­off appear­ance. They have four games still remain­ing on their cur­rent six-game homestand.

- The Wild have allowed only 17 goals in their 10 home games so far, and 39 goals total in 20 games. Their 1.95 team goals-against aver­age is by far the best in the League — the New York Rangers are sec­ond at 2.12. The Wild have also killed off 19 con­sec­u­tive penal­ties at the Xcel Energy Center.

- Thir­teen of Minnesota’s 20 games have been decided by a sin­gle goal, and they’ve recorded a point in 11 of them, post­ing an 8–2-3 mark.

- The Wild own a 12–3-2 record against the West­ern Conference.

“There is a totally dif­fer­ent feel­ing around here, as far as how good our con­fi­dence actu­ally is,” for­ward Cal Clut­ter­buck told the Star Tri­bune. “A lot of peo­ple say there is a process going on. It’s a lot dif­fer­ent when there is a clear indi­ca­tion of what that process is.”

The process began with the instal­la­tion of Yeo behind the bench. The 38-year-old was an assis­tant to Dan Bylsma on the Pitts­burgh Pen­guins’ cham­pi­onship team in 2009, then led the AHL’s Hous­ton Aeros to the Calder Cup Finals last sea­son in his only sea­son as their head coach.

“He has the tech­ni­cal aspects and the com­mu­ni­ca­tion skills and the fire and the pas­sion,” Wild GM Cliff Fletcher told the Star Tri­bune. “He took a pretty good Hous­ton team and made them a championship-caliber team.”

On the ice, the Wild haven’t exactly trans­formed into the 1980s Edmon­ton Oil­ers. They’re still a rel­a­tively low-scoring team — 2.2 goals per game is good for 28th in the League — but their new­com­ers are play­ing key roles. Heatley’s 12 points place him sec­ond on the team in scor­ing, while Setoguchi is sec­ond with 6 goals.

Then there’s Koivu, who has 330 points in 453 games since Min­nesota made him the No. 6 pick in the 2001 NHL Draft. The first per­ma­nent cap­tain in Wild his­tory, he leads the team with 13 points this sea­son and scored both short­handed and on the power play Sat­ur­day, giv­ing him 99 career goals.

“He gives us a chance to win every game because of the way he plays the game, and it’s great to see him get rewarded,” Yeo said fol­low­ing Koivu’s effort against the Blues.

Also not to be ignored in the Wild’s fast start is the con­tri­bu­tion in the crease. Not only is Niklas Back­strom play­ing at an elite level (7–4-2, 1.97 goals-against aver­age, .935 save per­cent­age), he’s actu­ally been sur­passed at times by his backup Josh Hard­ing. After miss­ing all of last sea­son with a knee injury, Hard­ing has returned to go 5–1-1 with a 1.79 GAA and .945 save per­cent­age — includ­ing a 2–0-1 mark with a shutout against the Detroit Red Wings alone.

“It’s a great feel­ing,” Hard­ing said after he blanked Detroit with 36 saves on Oct. 29. “It makes you know that all that hard work paid off.”

Hard work has come to epit­o­mize Minnesota’s early return to promi­nence. There’s still a lit­tle more than three-quarters of the sea­son left to play and the Wild will need to start scor­ing more goals or con­tinue to rely on lights-out per­for­mances from Back­strom and Hard­ing. For the moment, though, they’re the talk not only of the town but the entire League and seem to have found the recipe for success.

“We have a team full of fight­ers,” Yeo told the Star Tri­bune. “When the game’s on the line they’re fight­ing, block­ing shots, col­laps­ing in front of the net, in scram­bles. They find a way [to come back], and to pro­tect a lead. Again, it’s not per­fect, but inside our locker room there is a lot of fight.”

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