Dan Wallace: Wild Return To X Hoping To End Recent Caps Dominance

Well first regulation loss at home for the Wild this season, which is fairly impressive. Honestly i thought they played pretty well last night. Game probably should have been a lot closer considering the 3 or 4 pipe clanks on prime scoring chances as well as unlucky puck bounces on 3 or 4 other deflections. Not Dubnyks best game for obvious reasons, the Wilds defensive play broke down on a few of the 5 goals against.

All in all still fairly content with the overall team play last night and in the last month.

OK, I'll say it. I MUST be the bad luck for the Wild. I watched most of the game last night...and they lost. Gotta figure out how to get rid of this curse.

As for the game, is something wrong with Suter and Staal? Is Staal finally starting to decline or is the fact that they haven't approached him about a contract extension starting to bug him? And Suter just does not look right. I have only seen him skate extremely fast a time or 2, but he looks like he is dragging a piano behind him this year. Is he not fully healed yet? Even in games that the Wild have been winning he has looked slow.

Zucker and Spurgeon might be leading the NHL in posts this season so far. Gotta feel for those 2.

On another note...

Is Cal O'Reilly really not good enough for 4th line time in the NHL? 15 points in 13 games so far. Looks to me like he is earning the next call-up over Read. Does anyone know much about Mason Shaw? I see that he is on the small side, is he fast skater? Appears (by stats at least) that he is defensively responsible with offensive upside. An I am wondering if Sokolov was hurt for a couple of weeks or was just benched for a couple of weeks and told to get in better shape? His first 4 games, he had on 6 shots recorded....since coming back, he has 14 shots recorded in 4 games, with 2 goals to speak of. I really hope he is learning some defense in Iowa.

How about Kunin? I see that he is -3 in the +/-, with 11 penalty minutes. Is he struggling to keep his feet going? I now completely understand why he needs some time in Iowa...maybe his confidence with his knee is not near what it needs to be yet.

It is nice to see that Kaapo Kahkonen seems to be adjusting to play over here. First game he lost and gave up 3 goals. Next time, looks like he won in OT giving up 1 goal. 3rd game he goes out and gets a SO. I know, VERY small sample, but I think that shows game to game improvement.