Sportswriters like to get players and coaches to qualify their wins. Does it mean more to battle back late? Was it special to beat your former team? Did it feel good to finally jump out of the gate fast?
The Wild took turns responding to those questions after Sunday’s victory over the Montreal Canadiens, and of course there were specific reasons they came out on top. But, really, the how and the why were unimportant in the immediate wake of a 4-3 win at Xcel Energy Center.
The Wild won for the second time in eight tries; that’s all that mattered.
“Thank God, eh?” said winger Marcus Foligno.
For at least another few days, the drama inside and outside Minnesota’s NHL team will be gone. Mikko Koivu won’t yell at everyone in a closed-door meeting, and coach Bruce Boudreau won’t make the players sit through a horror movie recounting their bad passes and turnovers during a 1-6-0 start.
The pins and needles inside the dressing room were so dense that Jason Zucker apologized to Boudreau on Saturday after invoking his name in a self-flagellating quote following last Thursday’s 4-0 loss at Montreal. Zucker’s quote was taken at the team bus, minutes after a players-only airing of the grievances called by longtime captain Koivu.
Whatever was said, it didn’t tear the team apart. Montreal was playing with its backup goaltender in the second of back-to-backs following a 5-2 victory at St. Louis, but Minnesota did play better — much better, in fact — than it did in a 2-0 victory at Ottawa last Monday.
“Leaders led after the game in Montreal,” Foligno said. “Mikko just said what he had to say to get everyone on the same page. I’ve been on (teams) in Buffalo where it’s a thing where you don’t have the players to back it up, but there’s players in here that can back it up and get things going.”
Just in case they were feeling too good about themselves after discussing their feelings, Boudreau followed with a horror film session featuring bad passes and turnovers from the previous seven games — necessary, the coach said, because “we had a lot of bad passes and turnovers.”
“These players are better than that,” Boudreau added.
Certainly, most of us thought so. Not many are expecting a long playoff run from this version of the Minnesota Wild, but not many looked at the current roster and thought this would be a bottom-out slog — and that’s what it was starting to look like. It still could be, but Sunday’s win at least proved the Wild can string together three crisp passes.
That’s a skill taken for granted in professional hockey, but until Sunday, the Wild looked like a team that had never played together. They weren’t perfect in their second go at the Canadiens, but they played better — often quite well. That has to be a relief for a team that beat Ottawa by mistake.
Of course this is far from over. The Wild really have played one good game this season, and Edmonton (7-1-0) visits the X on Tuesday. Until Minnesota climbs out of the hole they’ve dug, drama will be only a shootout loss away.
“We’re all professionals and we’re all mature,” Foligno said. “We can’t point fingers. If we start doing that, I’ve been in seasons where it spirals out of control, and it’s not the type of group in here to do that stuff. What was said in Montreal was said, and we learned from it.”
Sunday was a good start.
“It’s a good group,” Boudreau said of his team. “I’ve always said that it’s a group that cares. These guys care. It’d be great if we could put a little string together.”
That’s how the good teams do it. We’ll know soon enough if these guys can be one of them.
