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I am really starting to believe the Wild are playing "Rope-A-Dope" with everyone. They came out last night in the first couple of minutes, threw a few quick jabs, then faded back into the ropes and let the Kings fly around...wearing them down. Honestly, I don't think the Kings had all that many Grade A chances in the 1st period. Very happy to see Nino score. You could see a HUGE weight come off his shoulders after that goal. The look on his face told how relieved he was.
With that goal, I hope the confidence starts coming back out now. And then move him back to the Parise/Koivu line, and let the Zucker/Staal/Grannie line go back to be a great scoring line. We are just about at the 1/5 point of the season and I have to say I really like what Parise is doing. Point per game right now. I don't expect that to last all season, but what he is doing now really helps. And anyone that says the game right now are not as important as the games at the end of the season are just thinking wrong. If you are winning these games now, you don't have as much pressure to win games later, so the Wild could be playing late games without a ton of pressure. At least that is the way I have always looked at it.
Next move for the Wild is to hire someone to work with Greenway and teach him puck handling. Watching him, I can see what he is trying to do, but most of the time he is losing the handle on the puck. Maybe he should take a page from Latavius Murray and skate backwards towards the net, covering up the puck. The Tay-Train always ends his runs moving forward, but is turned around. Greenway is big enough to just plow through people with the puck..and if they all jump on him, he just outlets the puck to someone else to shoot. |
