Brian Murphy: Suddenly there is drama in the State of Hockey
Woe and 3 is no way to treat a ravenous hockey market this starved for a Stanley Cup. Yet here are Minnesota Wild fans, suddenly buried under the sludge of 20 goals against, an ominous goaltending crisis and a youth movement stuck in cement.
“Too much, too soon,” an overwhelmed referee once sighed during a pregame brawl at the War Memorial in Charlestown.
One failed homestand does not define a season, but how the Wild are savaging their defensive street cred feels funereal. Like a narc crashing a Proud Boys rally.
Find another way to process three ugly home losses in which they have yet to play with a lead while opponents pad their stats and cackle out of town with two easy points and a swag bag of confidence.
The Vancouver Canucks and old friend Bruce Boudreau visit Thursday night before the introductory red carpet is rolled up at Xcel Energy Center and the Wild hit the road for five games to close out October.
To be sure, the Wild have plenty of time to right their ship. This essentially is the same team that only six months ago put the bow on a franchise-record 53-win, 113-point season.
Still, the NHL, they say, never gives up her dead when the fails of November come early. Starting a season of reckoning 0-3 instills scant confidence in a team already burdened by routine playoff failures, payroll dead money and evaporating public patience.
Meanwhile, across the river, the most-anticipated Timberwolves season in two decades is underway. Minnesota’s forlorn NBA team is not digging for salary cap quarters in the couch cushions. Or playing marketing sleight of hand with expectations.
The Wolves are all-in financially and spiritually for a deep run in the stacked Western Conference. And they may find plenty of disenchanted Wild fans hopping on the bandwagon come April.
You do not need to be in the Wild dressing room to feel the tension, which coach Dean Evason tried cutting with a chainsaw in preparing to face the similarly winless Canucks.
“Our team has to be the more desperate team, it’s as simple as that,” he told reporters Wednesday. “If we’re not, then we’ll be 0-4.”
Credit Evason for fearlessly staring into the abyss, but he might as well label Game 4 of the regular season an elimination game. No one is panicking quite yet, but there is a giant red button blinking in Evason’s office and no shortage of hands ready to pound it.
The Wild only have themselves to blame for so much early anxiety.
They played well at times, and kept pace with defending Cup champion Colorado Monday night, only to surrender another touchdown of goals. Minnesota is scoring plenty. Just not nearly enough to compensate for awful goaltending, laissez-faire zone coverage and “brain dead” penalties, according to Evason.
Sadly, we may be watching the real-time demise of a hall of fame goalie with three Stanley Cup rings and 38 birthday candles looming next month.
Marc-Andre Fleury did not lose the first-round series against the St. Louis Blues last spring, but he did little to slow the inevitable exit, either. Handing him the crease again in 2022-23 after trading Cam Talbot to Ottawa straight up for backup Filip Gustavsson has, to put it mildly, produced diminished returns.
Fleury was benched between periods of Saturday’s 6-7 beer-league performance against the L.A. Kings after Evason spared him the indignity of being yanked off the ice.
In the 6-3 loss to the Avalanche, Gustavsson, like his mentor, was unable to make timely saves that snuff opposing momentum or fuel their own team’s surge.
Much was made about 21-year-old center Marco Rossi securing a roster spot following a brilliant preseason that made the 2020 No. 9 overall pick seem ready for prime time. It took all of two games for Evason to chop his ice time in half before scratching him against the Avs.
He is expected to return against Vancouver, humbled but already marginalized.
There is some good news. Jordan Greenway is scheduled to make his season debut after offseason surgery robbed him of training camp.
He practiced alongside Joel Eriksson Ek and Marcus Foligno, reuniting the punishing and productive GREEF line.
Ryan Hartman also was spotted between Kirill Kaprisov and Mats Zuccarello, according to reports, another throwback combination that paid huge dividends last season for Minnesota.
Evason is aggressively pulling his coaching and psychological levers, trying to keep this cold start from freezing the Wild out too soon.
Winless, Canucks, Boudreau … suddenly we have drama in the State of Hockey before all the leaves fall.
“We’re all responsible,” Evason said. “We’ll all be accountable, and we’ll get out of this together.”
Or go down with that old iron boat.
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