The Need to Knows
- The Time: 7pm PST
- The Place: Climate Pledge Arena in beautiful Seattle, WA
- Place to Watch: KONG, KHN, FanDuel Sportsnet-North, ESPN+
- Place to Listen: Kraken Audio Network via KJR 93.3FM
- An Opposing Viewpoint: Hockey Wilderness
Know Your Enemy
- The Wild are 35-22-4, which is good for 74 points in the standings, and 3rd in the Central Division.
- The Wild’s leading goalscorer is Kirill Kaprizov, who has 23 goals in 37 games. Mercifully, he is not appearing in this contest as he is on IR.
- The men behind him however, will be: Matt Boldy and Marco Rossi are sitting on 21 goals in 61 games.
- The Wild only have a few players out, but those players being out hurts them badly. Kaprizov, Eriksson-Ek, and Brodin are all major parts of their gameplan and they are all very much not playing today.
- Filip Gustavsson usually takes the Lion’s Share of starts for Minnesota, though he just came out of the absolute snorefest that Boston-Minnesota was on Sunday night, so it’s possible we see Marc-Andre Fleury instead. Gustavsson has a .914 SV% on the year on 40 starts, and Fleury has a .904 SV% on 19 starts.
Game Preview
So I’m sure you read the Know Your Enemy section and got a little queasy.
The Wild have been a pretty good team for pretty much all of the season, and have comfortably been in charge of their own destiny regarding their place in the Central Division. They’ve got young, high end talent, and useful vets, a decent defense corps, and solid goaltending. This seems like it’s gonna be uphill skating, right?
Well, Minnesota sure wants it to be, because they are rolling into town on a gross performance streak. They only just pulled out of an ugly three game losing skid by playing one of the most boring games I’ve ever had the misfortune of watching to the end, and that three game losing streak features a lot of scoring first and then allowing the opponent unrestricted access to their net for the rest of the game. They’re missing a lot of the talent that makes them truly special, and as such, hockey in Minnesota lately has been a gruesome watch. Believe it or not, that does mean Seattle has a pretty good chance of winning…in theory.
The critical thing is not getting disorganized and desperate if the Wild score first. They can do that and often do. The critical thing is keeping sustained pressure: the Wild both bend and eventually break; especially without their Selke candidate Center Joel Eriksson-Ek, their defense is going to be hard pressed. Also, and while I understand this is a tall ask for this crew…they should try to take advantage of Minnesota’s PK, which is in the bottom 5 of the league. There are goals to be had here. There’s a win to be had here as well.
The Kraken just have to keep focus, and keep the hammer down.
LETS GO KRAKEN, LETS GO SQUIDS