The Athletic Hockey Show - The Wednesday Game's icy field of dreams, Seattle Kraken sputtering in season one and NY Rangers the surprise of the NHL's first half

Episode Date: February 2, 2022

With Rob Pizzo on Olympic duty for the CBC, Jesse Granger pilots the roundtable along with Sara Civian and special guest Michael Russo from the Athletic. The crew discusses Russo's beautifully written story and accompanying video and podcast of The Wednesday game: former MLB MVP Justin Morneau's Field of Dreams hockey game in Minnesota, which former NHL and MLB players take part in. We also get an update on the red hot Minnesota Wild who wrap their first half tonight in Chicago before the all-star break.Jesse, Sara and Mike also discuss the top storylines as we reach the unofficial halfway mark in the NHL, including the white hot Colorado Avalanche and Carolina Hurricanes being the class of the West and East, the surprisingly good New York Rangers and ??? We address the upcoming trade deadline and the Arizona Coyotes willingness to take on salary for additional picks, and the Coyotes investigating playing in a 5000 seat arena. Plus we hit on the additions to the all-star skills competition in Vegas this weekend, what has gone wrong for the Seattle Kraken in year one and we stick tap Sara's midseason poems for each player on the Hurricanes roster. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hey everyone. Welcome to another Wednesday roundtable episode of the Athletic Hockey Show. I'm Jesse Granger filling in his host for the next three weeks while Rob Pizzo is on Olympic duty for the CBC. I'm joined by Sarah Sivian in Raleigh. And our guest this week for the roundtable is Michael Rousseau, who covers the Wild for the athletic. Mike's in Chicago today where the Wilder playing the Blackhawks in their last game before the All-Star Break. How's it going, guys? Very good. How are you?

Very good, very good here in Vegas, getting ramped up for All-Star Break. How are you, Sarah? I'm good. I'm good. I miss Rob. That's sad. Who knows when he'll be back. But wish him the best in his endeavors. Important duties. Once every four years, we can go three weeks without Rob. We'll see how I do with this. Oh, you're going to crush it. Yeah. So we've reached the unofficial midway point of the season. I know this year is kind of weird because COVID and games getting postponed. Some teams are way past the midway points. Some teams aren't quite there. But we're going to call this the unofficial halfway point as we hit the All-Star break.

So I'd like to get you guys thoughts just, is there anything that stands out to you? When you look at this first half of the NHL season, I guess what do you feel like is the story of this season? Is there anything that sticks out to you, Sarah? There's so many, like, I don't know if the playoff picture has ever been clearer. There's so many teams fighting for, like, the number one spot and then the last spot. It's just kind of dispersed. And then all the games are like seven to two. I don't know if like that's just in my head, but I feel like there's so many high scoring.

games. I don't know. So you've been in the game longer than I. What do you think? I think that we just should skip everything and get to a Carolina, Colorado final. Those two teams seem like the absolute real deals of the league right now. Less than 10 regulation losses for each of them. And Colorado, to me, just looks like the team that's running away with the West, absolutely dominant. Yet Arizona goes in there yesterday and beats them in Denver, which I think was very unexpected. But they're doing this without McKinnon. I've watched the watch the Wilde play them. The Wilde have actually played them pretty well this year, but man, they are an absolute juggernaut right now. Yeah, I obviously cover in Vegas. I'm very much looking forward to the

collision course between Vegas and Colorado. Obviously, Vegas beat them last year. So the Avs got a little extra motivation this year and they look really good. To me, the thing that stands out when I look at the NHL standings is I feel like all the teams up at the top are the ones we expected. Like they're the teams that make the playoffs every year, except for the New York Rangers. And I have to give Gerard Gallant credit. The guy has another team just exceeding all expectations. Chris Kreider leads the NHL in goals somehow. Did not expect that at the midway point. And the Rangers have the fifth best record in hockey. And it's not even like Alexei Lafranier hasn't really taken off. Like it's not maybe the guys that we expected. But the the Rangers have been have been shockingly good

to start this. Do you think, I don't know how much you've watched of the Rangers, Michael. Do you think they can keep this up? Do you think this is for real? I don't know. I mean, the wild went in there the other day and dominated them. And, you know, and that to me would be the most surprised team in the league right now. I mean, the wild, you know, I think that the standings don't make it look as good as the wild are. I mean, they've got the six best point percentage in the league right now. You know, they've had two nine game unbeat point streaks in the league. And I was actually blown away the other day about how mediocre the wild made the Rangers look.

in the last two periods. But, you know, they were playing on the second of back-to-back. They looked like guys like Panarin and looked gassed. Adam Fox was hurt. So, you know, maybe I just didn't see the best of them that night. That's such a good point. We have to take into account, though. There's such a disparage of how many games teams have played going into this break.

So it's kind of, you got to take that. I mean, just to give me an example, I mean, the Rangers have played 47 games. The Wilder have played 40. So, you know, I wish the league would do something about that in the standings and, you know, make it a little easier. Like, somebody tweeted me the other day, like, the wild suck. They're just barely clinging to a wild card spot. I'm like, what are you looking at?

You know, like, do just a little math here and figure out that they are absolutely not clinging to a wild card. They have home ice advantage and are pretty much, you know, if it wasn't for Colorado being absolutely dominated right now, the wild would be right there. Right. It's, they clearly need to go to points percentage in the standings. Like as the default, like when you go to the standings page, it needs to be sorted by points percentage. Yeah, there should be like a pandemic contingency.

Right. Right. Yeah. Exactly. But as we reach the midway point, I feel like the next thing, like the next thing on the calendar after the All Star break is the trade deadline. And watching insider trading, Chris Johnston reported that the coyotes are, have let it be known across the league, they are willing to take on contracts or money in exchange for future assets.

I don't think that's super surprising. They have about $7 million in cap space, but I do think that in this pandemic world of tight caps and teams not spending to the cap and just it just seems like contracts are so much harder to fit in the last couple years, I think a team out there like Arizona that's willing to be the middleman could maybe like grease the tires a little bit, like give give some wiggle room to some of these teams that are looking to add at the trade deadline. Sarah, what do you think about the Arizona opening its books, I guess, to the rest of the league and trying to make some things work? It should make for a more fun deadline, right? You could have stopped at what do you think about Arizona? There's a lot going on there.

All these big contracts are going to play in a college hockey arena. I can't imagine big name guys are going to be thrilled about that. But honestly, who knows? I love when things are interesting. So I'll take it. What about you, Rousseau? Yeah, Arizona is always just so, so generous. Give us your picks, your prospects. And next year, when we're playing in a 5,000-seat arena, give us all your revenue sharing.

That is just, they're always just so real, real, they're just a big team player. That actually happened, you know, that was one of the big decisions that I hear, even though it's sort of been denied to me inside the Wild organization, I hear the Wild could have given up a first round pick last year to get Arizona. to take Zach Parisi and buy him out. And the reason why the Wild didn't want to do that is because then technically you'd be trading him and you'd be hitting on the cap recapture right then. And if he ever retired prematurely, which it sure looks like he's going to, the Wilde would

be dinged with that capri capture. So the Wild never wanted to go that route. But we saw last year, I mean, Arizona was just getting assets to take money. And I think they're going to do it again and be sort of the middleman. You know, Otto was another team that could be potentially in that position as well to be sort of the middleman and a lot of trades because there is. as Chris Johnson said on that insider trading, there's about 16 teams into LTIR right now. The math just does not work.

And so if those teams want to add, they're absolutely going to need a broker. Yeah. And you've got a team like the Golden Knights that's 10 million over the cap and looking to unload some cap space. And the teams that would normally be like example, for example, a Riley Smith on Vegas, he's an unrestricted free agent coming up. They're probably at least looking into the option of moving him. the teams you would normally trade him to, none of them have cap space.

Like all the contenders that would normally be buying at the deadline, I look at the athletic, we've got our big trade board, and we've got Jacob Chikrin and Tomas Hurtle and Klingberg and Mark Andre Fleury. Those guys all carry cap hits of $5, $6 million. And it just, there's, like you said, you look at the math. There's no way any of those contracts are being moved without a broker or a middleman. To me, it's going to be, like, you can only withhold salary on two contracts at a time though, right?

So it's not like Arizona can just say, hey, everyone in the league, like, feed your contracts through us. Like you can only have two at a time. So it is limited, but I do think it's an interesting. Like I said, I think the financials of the league have kind of hurt the trade deadline and free agency the last couple of years. Not as exciting. Not as the money is not as free flowing as it was. But I think this may help. Yeah, I think that, you know, the one point that I made that I was doing a flip

that I actually like all of a sudden at like light bulb went off that I actually think that they need to look at is this revenue sharing with Arizona next year. Like if like they've got to like I think teams will absolutely flip out if they're playing in a college arena as Sarah said and they're all of a sudden they've always been probably the 30 second in league revenue and gotten a boatload of money from other teams. That there needs to be some sort of continuously place there on on figuring out a way to make sure that they're not just getting a ton of money from different teams. I'm sure Brad Marchand will take that to the NHLPA. Yeah, exactly. Right. Well, and especially if, if you're, if like the plan is to play in an arena where you literally can't make money.

Like, like, yeah, even if you sell the place out, you're not making any money. So this isn't a, hey, we're trying and we just can't sell tickets. Like, if you, if you, if they go that route, you're literally deciding to not make money. And you're just going to rely on the revenue sharing, which. Unless you're selling each ticket for about 500 bucks of pop to the folks. in Scottsdale or something. Yeah. You're showing up in their team.

Then all of a sudden they might be number one in the league in revenue. Johnny Nanzel. Yeah, exactly. So our next thing coming up here, I'm obviously in Vegas for the All-Star game. I'm pretty excited about it. This whole week is going to be fun. And we have two very, very unique things to this All-Star. You knew Vegas was going to do it big.

They were going to do it differently. They were going to find a way to make this unique. The Fountain Face. off will be played on the water at the Belagio Fountains. Obviously, they'll have platforms for the guys to stand on. They're going to take them on boats out to the platforms and have them shoot. Apparently, the Belagio fountains are supposed to be going off during it. I'm sitting here in Vegas right now, looking at the palm tree in my backyard. It is very windy, very windy here in Vegas. I'm hoping that that can calm down in time for that, because if anyone's been to Vegas and stood by the Belagio Fountains, if you're within a mile of it when it's

Wendy, you are soaked. So that part is going to be interesting. But then they're also going to be playing Blackjack on the strip by shooting pucks at cards. Which of the two is your favorite, Sarah? I saw a tweet that said, this is great, but I don't know if any of them can count that high. So I like that chirp. I think the Blackjack will be fun to see who is the best at Blackjack.

You know what I mean? Definitely. Yeah. And I'm looking forward to that. I just love, I sat when when Steve, Mayor was in Minnesota a bunch in November and December. I sat with him out a couple times and he showed me the renderings of the Blasio fountain and how amazing it's going to look at night with everything lit up.

They basically have a rink that are rafts that look like a hockey rink. And it's just going to look absolutely spectacular. And as you mentioned, what I love, like I said to Steve Mayer, I'm like, how does one go about closing down the Las Vegas strip? I mean, this is one of the most iconic streets in all of the world. A lot of traffic goes through there. And he was, we literally just called the mayor and the police chief and said, can we close down the strip?

And they said, yes. So, like, that's how, uh, so that's how simple, apparently it was for them to do this. So I'm looking forward to that. I'm also looking forward. I love that they bring back the breakaway challenge. And they got all these young, young, you know, yes. Brash guys that are just going to go out there and have fun with it.

You know, Caprisoff, not to give away as a scoop wild fans, but Capri Soff's going to be in the breakaway challenge as well. And there's just going to be, you know, just these guys are going to come up with incredibly cool ideas that are going to make, you know, probably the John Chororelloes of the world. Tedges spoke right off his head. Yeah, I think it's great to promote those players too.

Like an Alex Ovechkin doesn't need promoting. Like everyone knows who that guy is. Like I think it's a chance for some players who are doing some really cool things that maybe aren't as well known to the casual hockey fans. put those guys on the stage. I'm with Sarah, though, the Blackjack. So living in Vegas, I don't gamble a bunch, like almost none. But when I do, it's at the Blackjack table.

And I am so fascinated to see these guys, it's going to be, all right, you're going to have a 17. And in Blackjack, you're sitting at 17, 18, 19, whatever. Like, you're clearly staying because you can't take a hit. But when you're shooting the cards and you can actually see, like, it's almost, like, it changes the strategy. Like, these guys are going to be cocky. they're going to say, no, I can hit the two. Like, I'm at 19, but I can hit the two.

And then you miss it and you bust. I don't know. I am fascinated by the blackjack, the shooting the cards at the blackjack. I don't know if it's just because I'm in Vegas and I'm just kind of around that stuff. But to me, it's going to be so much fun. It's creative. You're giving me a panic attack, though. So Bernie Kozar used to be a minority owner of the Florida Panthers.

And we were at a casino in whole Quebec once during training camp. And he was split in tens playing blackjack. And it's one thing when you had a gazillion dollar. split in tens. But when you were somebody like me and you were ruining the table for everybody else, it's like, it just, I just wanted to get out of that casino quick enough. So that's the type of thing. I'm a little worried about there. So I can talk gambling all day if you want to change the topic. It's going to be a lot of fun. Like I said, they're, they are Vegas. They're, they're making this as Vegas as they possibly can. To, to turn the subject to the Seattle Cracken,

we're looking at this midway point of the year. And they've only, they've only, you know, won 14 games of 45. And I have tried to not compare them to the Golden Knights. Like, I know it's, it's easy to like, well, at this point in the season, the Golden Knights, like the Golden Knights didn't lose this many games in their entire inaugural season. And obviously, that's not a fair comparison, because that was a once in a lifetime, just ridiculous miracle season. But at the same time, the Cracken did have very beneficial rules the same way the Golden Knights did. And it's obviously not going very well, not just not as well as the Golden Knights, but not well at all. Michael, I know you did a lot of work with the, like the mock drafts and all that going into it. When you look at how things have

unfolded through 40 games for Seattle, what do you think has gone wrong? What do you see? Well, I don't think it's the worst thing in the world for them to be terrible, right? I mean, they're still going to load up on prospects and picks, but I do think they need to change paths. I think what did happen is Ron Francis got very, very stubborn in try to make a bunch of different moves leading up to the expansion draft and just never coming down in price. I mean, the way it was explained to me, and I, you know, hopefully I'm hearing it accurately is that at least from, from, you know, different type of brokering deals, he was asking for pretty much a first and a third for everybody. And I just think that when nobody was paying the price and he

wasn't willing to come down, it just, I mean, how do you go from, like obviously he was going to be an unfair comparison that he wasn't going to be able to do exactly what George McPhee did. and make a ton of different trades, but how do you go from what what Vegas was able to do and taking advantage of everybody and making a gazillion trades to making zero. Nothing. I mean,

you know, nothing. And so, you know, I think they started to think, all right, well, you know,

we, they turned William Carlson into this. They turned, uh, Alex, you know, they turned all these great, great,

you know, uh, players that turned out to be great playing elevated roles in Vegas into these, you know, go to players that they'll do the same thing. But you look at, the players they took and they were very different types of players. So, you know, I just,

I just think their path was very, very bizarre. And, and I think they're paying the price. But, you know, luckily for them, I mean, this is not the worst in the world. If you look at teams like the Minnesota Wild and the, you know, I think that even the Florida Panthers back in the day, they were so successful early that they never got those top picks and prospects. And it really, they're still probably paying the price like a team like Minnesota was paying the price forever for not picking the top 10. And I think that's what's going on now is at least they're going to be lousy and get some lottery picks here.

But I just, I think he was too stubborn and I'm amazed that they were not able to make any type of trades. I'm glad you brought up Francis because I feel like a lot of people missed this in the beginning when they hired Francis. It was all positive, but nobody kind of thought about what he did as GM of the Keynes. And he barely made any trades. All of a success that he did have came from drafting.

So I'm curious to see who he gets. the draft, but it's going to be a long process. He is stubborn when it comes to trading. And that's not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but it is the reality and it's extending here. I also think they didn't expect the goaltending situation to be what it is. Yeah. And then to spend that type of money on goaltending, like, you know, it made no sense. You make the move for Drydra. Then you go out and get Gruber and then you look at a guy like Capo-Cacken and who's a rookie and he's 10-1-2 and he was there for their taking. And there were a lot of great goal is there for the taking and he didn't do that, you know, it just seemed like they invested their

money in weird areas too. So I think they're definitely paying the price. I think they got a little too smart for their own, you know, their own, you know, senses there. Yeah, I agree with both of you. I think, Michael, you mentioned they got different types of players. I think the crack in, we're hoping for this season, we're going to play low event hockey. Like, we're not going to get a lot of chances. They're not going to get a lot of chances. It's just going to be kind of low event. And those are the type of players they took grinding players, maybe not the, the same. up-tempo fast players that Vegas went with. And you look at the stats.

I mean, they're 25th in scoring. And they've allowed the second fewest expected goals in hockey. So, like, they're not allowing a lot of chances. They're playing exactly how they wanted low event hockey. But then to Sarah's point, you allow the second fewest goals, expected goals against. You expect to have low-scoring games. But the problem is the goalies have been awful. I mean, Philip Grubauer is the worst goal in the league and goals saved above average.

The second worst is Kevin Lankin in at minus 12 and a half. Grubauer is minus 25 and a half, like more than double the next worst. And, and you mentioned Dryger, like, they don't, they have three goalies on the roster. None of them have a save percentage in the 900s. That is, like, you're not, you can't, no matter what you do, you're not going to win hockey games with goaltending like that. So I think it's a combination of that. And I agree with, with what Michael said, I think Vegas having the instant success, like Vegas's plan was Cup and Six, like, we're, they got all these first round picks. They were going to slow play it and build through the draft. And then they just stumbled upon a team that could win. And they completely changed the

path, traded all those picks. And they made all these trades. And I think that is kind of why we expect Seattle to make trades. Like, you don't build slowly because that's not how Vegas did. I think we, like if Vegas hadn't gone all in and made all these trades, we'd be looking at Seattle through a different lens saying, yeah, they're not very good, but they still have plenty of time to build. But at the same time, I, I agree, Michael, the Golden Knights came out of that expansion draft, if they had sucked like everyone expected. Like, let's just say the Golden Knights were bad. They still had, I think, three extra first round picks, two extra second round picks,

and then a bunch of prospects, like Alex Tucker, Shea Theodore guys that hadn't really broken in the league yet. Seattle's got one second round pick from Winnipeg, and that's it. When you look at excess draft picks, they've got absolutely nothing. So, yeah, maybe they can build through the draft, but they're going to have to absolutely nail it because they didn't give themselves any extra capital to work with. Yeah, it was masterful what Kelly and George did. And I remember, you know, it was Labor Day in 2016 or seven. Their first season was 1718, right? Correct. So yeah, so it was Labor Day, 2016. I was sitting in

Bill Foley's like old, it was like a warehouse type thing where, like, their original offices. And it was just me, George McPhee and his assistant that worked for the Washington Capitals. And George, by the way, when he, like, comes out and they locked himself out. He had a call. So we're doing this interview. And he's telling me about how he's going to build this team. And I remember thinking, like, this is going to be really, really fascinating to watch. Like, I just, I did not think that they were going to be this good.

Fast forward a year. I'm at the expansion draft in that arena. And I'm listening to the names are taking. And I'm like, who, what? You know, like, I was almost, like, had no clue. You know, I remember when they took William Carlson. I'm like, what? I can't remember who they had a chance to take from Columbus.

It was Corpusolo. The Blue Jackets gave them a first round pick to not take Corpusall. It just shows you what I know. But so when the Seattle was doing the same thing, I'm like, well, you know, maybe it'll happen again. You know, they have this great analytics team and all this stuff. And obviously, it hasn't happened. But I just think, you know, regardless of the types of players that took the fact that they

weren't able to make any trades and, you know, that he thought he was going to get multiple draft picks to get the wild, say, to not take Carson Sousy, or for them to not take Carson Sousie and Bill Garon not to pay up, you know, then maybe after then come back the day before it's there, right, we'll do this instead. And he didn't do that with any team. It was just really, really bizarre to me. And I think they're going to pay the price for a while now. Definitely.

All right. The last thing I want to get to before we go to break is I thought Sarah had such a creative story. We all, as writers, we're all looking for like the mid-season. Like, I like to do report cards. I know Michael doesn't like to do report cards, but you're thinking of some way to wrap up the middle of the season. And I thought Sarah's was brilliant, writing a poem for each player. First, take us through the thought process. And second, I need to know your favorite poem, Sarah.

Well, here's the thing. Report cards are good at, like, your heart's in it. And if that's the kind of reporter you are. But everybody can tell. What I love about the people that read my articles is that they kind of get what I'm about. And they would know that I was just mailing that in. I know I get comments. They're like, all right, you didn't.

try. So I'm like, what can I do that still sums up the midseason while being kind of creative? So I kind of put that idea of like short sentences about players into, I always tweet poems when something funny happens and they get a lot of traction and people like them. So I'm like, why don't I just do that with everybody? So everybody got a little roses are red. I think my favorite was roses are red, Dom Lusvigin is shaking. Derek Stepan's got 13 timely points in 33 games, depth scoring is not something the canes are faking because we've been going back and forth about if the canes have enough depth scoring or not. And that's like the weirdest complaint about the canes to me because of anything, they need a bigger star, not more depth scoring. So

Dom and his model are shaking. Beautiful. Bruce, so when are we getting the poem story from you? See, you know, that's the thing. It's like, for me, that is not mailing it in. Like, nailing it in for me would be doing the report cards because that's easy. Like, I have no creativity when it comes to my writing. And so I would not have been able to even go that route. It would have taken me days to come up with a bunch of poems for wild players. Yeah, you're right. It's not my personality. I don't like doing report cards. I used to do them. There were two great examples when I worked for the Sun Sentinel when I did report cards that made me decide that I don't ever want to do them again. One, I gave out defensemen a D. And I'm walking, it was Gold Coast

Ice Arena, Pompano Beach. And it was his end of the year thing. And he checked, he's walking by me and he was so pissed with me. He actually checked me into the wall. I was like 21 years old. And I turned to him right. I turned to him right in front of Brian Murray. And I said, if you check like that in a game, I would have given you a C. And so that was a Brian like how to basically break us apart. That's amazing. I'll tell you off there, which defenseman that was. Beauty. And then the other one was Brian Murray himself. So we, the wild, the Panthers were on a 10 game road trip out west. It was split by the all-story game. in Vancouver in 1998 and they went like winless in like seven to I can't remember the exact numbers it was like winless in seven winless in three and they were horrendous and I did my midseason report and Brian Murray they had fired Doug McLean that year and Brian was the coach in the GM and I gave him an F for both and I made we're in Anaheim and you guys have both been to Anaheim I come by the visitors locker room I make a left during that hallway and Brian comes from the other end and the entire time that he is walking toward me, he is motherfucking me.

So I just, just unleashing me. And I was scared to death. And that day, we had this thing where I ghost wrote, a primary column every week to go with my Sunday column in the Sun Sentinel. And I had to go back to the hotel afterwards with him to ghost write this story. And he was so pissing me. And I, anyway, I sheepishly take my rental car. I drive back to their hotel. I'm sitting in the lobby waiting for him. And he said,

sits down with me and we do the column and honestly you would have thought that nothing had ever happened. Like he's like he just got his frustration out and then he was perfectly fine with me. But from that point on, I just hate doing report cards. So tonight I'll just do like my game where I'll make sort of a midseason report because the wild finally hit game 41 and I don't do the A, B, C's. And trust me, with this wild team, it'd be easy to do report cards this year because everybody has been just, I mean, their entire team has been absolutely awesome.

Every player. It's crazy. you mentioned depth scoring, Sarah, the Wild's depth scoring. I know we'll talk about it here that the Wild's depth scoring is like nothing I've ever covered in my life. And so, yeah, I'm not a report for a person, so I absolutely respected Sarah's work. Thank you. Awesome. All right.

Like Michael said, after the break, we are going to dive deeper into the Minnesota Wilde's first half of their season. So stick around. All right. So the Minnesota Wild are third in the central, but as Michael's been saying, it's a little misleading. One of the better teams in the West, they've got two all-stars and career. Real Caprisov and Cam Talbot and playing really, really well. Like you said, Michael, depth scoring, what's impressed you most about the wild so far this season? Yeah, I mean, you know, earlier in the season, guys like Dialla and Caprizo got off to slow starts and it was the Ryan

Hartman's and the Marcus Flinos and the Yule Eric Snacks and they're, you know, fantastic blue line that was really leading the way. So, I mean, you know, they got them through and then all of a sudden Caprizo hit his mark with Zuccarello, who they, the tag team of those two have been absolutely unbelievable. Zuccarello just had a 10-game point streak snapped on Long Island, but Caprice off his points in his last 11. And now Kevin Fiala is absolutely on fire. He's got an 11-game point streak, eight goals in that 11 streak. We've seen him get on these toward paces. So, you know, I don't think any of us thought that guys like Felino and Hartman would have a combined, like, I think it's 35 or 36 goals at this point in the season. Their goaltending has been good,

you know, especially Capocacan since opening night. He's 10-1-2 in his last 15. and 13 of those starts. And their blue line. I mean, that was one area where they, you know, they reinvented their blue line this year. They, you know, they bought out Suter. They lost Carson Sussi. They lost Ian Cole to Carolina, who was really, really good here last year. And, you know, lost Brad Hunt.

I feel like I'm forgetting somebody. And they come back with this sort of reshaped blue line with Ghalagoski replacing Suter and Kulikoff and Merrill coming here and Jordi Ben. And the blue line has been really, really good. And so, you know, they've been really impressive. And Dean Eveson, you know, if he's not a candidate to win the Jack Adams this year, I don't know. I don't know what broadcasters are thinking. You know, nobody could have ever anticipated the wild at this point would have the second-mast-point percentage in the Western Conference.

Yeah, you mentioned the goaltending. And it's funny that Cam Talbot is representing the team in the All-Star game, but he may not even be the best goalie on the team. Like, where are they at in terms of goal-tending? Like, is it a 50-50? Like, if the playoffs start today, are they playing both? Are they picking one? What do you think is going on with the goal team? I don't think they'd be pretty good.

Yeah, I don't ever think they'd rotate. You know, they're going to have to pick one, in my opinion. But Capo's definitely been the most consistent lately. You know, Cam was playing really well in the month of December. And then he got hurt at the Winter Classic. And a couple of games before that, he started a struggle a bit. And he just, you know, hasn't gotten his traction back right now. You get, you know, aggravated the injury.

and all that. So he'll start tonight in Chicago, which is, you know, a little bit of a surprise because Kacken, the other day, stole that game in Long Island. And I'll be honest, you know, if I was a coach and I'm coming, the wild have beaten Blackhawks twice here in the last week and a half. I would probably try to wrap up the first half with the same goalie in that in Chicago. But, but obviously they're going to give Kamm that look tonight. So as I mentioned, I mean, Kacken and crumbled down the stretch last year. There was a point. he was nine wins in a row without Talbot when Talbot had COVID and then got hurt or actually he was flipped there, got hurt than COVID and Kacklin comes in, wins nine a row.

Then he was just, just fell apart down the stretch. But it has a really bad preseason, has a really bad season debut, and then ever since, you know, just keeps winning. And, you know, it's been really impressive. When I look at the wild, the thing that stands out to me is like, for so long, this team been like a fringe playoff team, like they're in the playoffs, but they're not really a contender. And to me, it was just the brand of hockey. Like Minnesota played, to put it bluntly, boring hockey. Like, they sucked the hockey out of hockey. And that's not the case at all anymore,

these last couple years. How has, like, we all look at Caril Caprisov. Like, like, obviously that helps injecting an dynamic star like that into the lineup. But how has this team, how, like, you're seeing it up close. How has this team changed from the team that is, is, trying to kind of play defense, clog up the neutral zone to a team that is perfectly fine playing a back and forth style of hockey and they have the skill to do it. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it starts with their blue line. You know, they, you know, Dean Everson preaches, like, I was talking to Dean. Actually, Sade, our Dallas Stars writer, is doing a story on how bad Dallas is offensively.

And he had a bunch of us, I don't know if you guys played a part in this to go to up to our coaches and ask essentially like, what is tactically do you do offensively? Dean gave me the greatest answer the other day. He talked about how, you know, when he activates the defenseman and a forward comes back to basically, you know, cover up for the defenseman, how it never makes sense to him that like three or four seconds later, if the defenseman doesn't get that pup down low, that then they switch again and the forward goes back down low and the defenseman comes back high. And usually when that happens, you're losing your puck battle and now the puck's coming out. So what he tells his guys is stay down there. And so they they are constantly moving in the offense. zone and it's not just Caprice Fiala Zuccarello.

It is everybody on this team. And so they are a fast team. That's the biggest thing that Bill Garan has changed in this lineup is they're young. They're fast. They've got size. They have a line that honestly, there is not one of 32 teams. There's no other team that has a line like this. Greenway Fiala, Greenway, Felino and Eric Seneck.

They are, you know, Jordy Ben says it's one of the best lines he's ever seen in terms of dominance off, you know, spending time in the offensive zone. and they're considered the wild's checking line, but they're all gigantic, and they can all skate like the wind. And that lion has played 185 minutes of five-on-five hockey together this season hasn't given up a goal. And they are just, yeah, it's unbelievable. So, you know, they just, they're well balanced. You know, their third line is considered Fiala. Boldie's come up from the minors and been great nine points in his first nine games of his NHL career.

you know, it's been, it's been pretty impressive to watch. Matt Poldy hasn't experienced a regulation loss in nine games. He just, you know, years from now when things are struggling in his career, he's going to look back on this and he's like, I thought things were going to be peachy, you know, I never, never even lost my first nine games. So, I mean, it's been, it's been pretty cool to see. I agree with you. I mean, I've, you know, Jesse, Sarah, like, I thoroughly, like, you know, when you've

covered the game as long as me, I'm cynical about everything. And sometimes, you know, we all have great jobs, but you go to the rink and you're like, and I can't wait to get home. They are thoroughly entertaining me this year. The Wild had a shootout loss in Colorado two or three weeks ago. It was one of the best hockey games I've ever seen. And they've just been a really fun team to watch, and it's very, very unwild-like.

Very cool. And another thing that's entertaining is the piece you came out with on The Athletic this morning on former baseball MVP, Justin Moreno, creating an outdoor rink, a field of dreams of sorts in Minnesota. I found it fascinating. I love anything outdoor rink. I am all in on any kind of story about an outdoor rink.

Talk to us a little bit about that. And also not just the actual story itself, but how you put it together with the multimedia stuff that we're doing to the athletic. I thought it was really cool. Yeah. So this was Dan Hayes' idea, our Minnesota Twins writer.

And he came to me in September, October, and he told me about this. And I had not even known that this was going on. And essentially what it is, is Justin Mourne and Joe Mauer. and Corey Kosky, some retired Minnesota Twins' greats, have a pickup hockey game every Wednesday, and they have all essentially the retired NHL guys that live in Minnesota.

It's an open group text, and if you want to come over, come over. It's guys like Mark Parrish and Paul Martin and Jordan Leopold and Blake Sloan and West Walls and Keith Ballard, Dustin Bufflin. I mean, Buff, who dropped off the face of the earth was there. He's all over those videos as well. And it's just, I mean, Nate Prosser, and it was, just a really neat, neat thing. So I immediately said to Dan, I said, we should get Mark Walloman involved. Mark is our NHL Enterprise writer. And I had no idea, and maybe you guys did

know this, that we had been sort of playing with the idea of sort of New York Magazine type, New York Times, science, you know, science type magazine, you know, multimedia projects where you, you know, have a documentary team come out, where you have photographers, where you do narrative podcast where you do things like this, and you sort of turn this into a big, big thing. And we were sort of the guinea pigs for this. And so Mark, we pitched him the idea. He loved it. And then he put it in motion.

He hired an incredible filmmaker that's based in Minnesota named Marius Anderson. He is extremely talented and extremely well credentialed. And he came out there with drones and had a, you know, basically one assistant and really made this story work in a lot of ways. And in fact, my lead that I wrote on the whole. whole way they picked the teams. It was essentially because Mariah's, like, I watched it all happen, but I hear all the dialogue because I was on the sideline.

And Marius sent me all the raw footage. And I heard all the back and forth there and how Bufflin wound up going out there and blindly picking the teams. And to me, that was the lead of the story immediately. And then Dan was perfect. Dan was like the perfect reporter. And then I was sort of the fly on the wall in the locker room. I hung out in the locker room for two hours.

Justin has this incredible backyard rank. He built himself a locker room, a warming house. He's got his Zamboni. It was a magical, magical night, and it turned out to be a really cool story. I love that. Really cool stuff. Yeah, I thought that was the perfect kind of story for that because you had the natural sound of the pucks, shuffling in the outdoor. It's so nostalgic.

And then the chirps. I loved hearing the chirps. Yeah. And West Walls, he just texted me actually while we were doing this podcast and told me how much he loved the story. And he said the things that he loves the most about being in the locker room was just the chirps. and Wes had some incredible chirps that we'd sprinkle in the story. And that's all I did. I honestly just hung out in the locker room and just any time like something hilarious

happened, I just sort of either whispered it in my recorder or wrote it down. And then I envisioned, you know, having sort of a scene setting lead and then having an ending that would be sort of in italics all the different chirps of what like the locker room setting was like and then ending with the actual championship game. And it was, it turned out to be really perfect. And Dan in the middle really painted a great picture of how. this whole thing came together. And it was as fun of collaboration as I've ever, you know, done. And so, you know, I'm really, really happy with it. We've been working on it for honestly

two months. We were there before Christmas. And obviously, it's February 2nd and it came out today. Mark Parrish's birthday today. So perfect story for it to come out on. And also the day that the athletic sale became final. So yeah, what's going on. Yeah. We're part of the New York Times company now. For sure. Very cool story. And like I said, I'm a big fan of the integration of the audio, the video, everything. And we are going to play some of that audio for you guys when we come back from the break. So stay tuned. All right.

And here is that audio from Michael's story with MVP Justin Mourneau and his Field of Dreams in Minnesota. Dan Hayes, Twins reporter for The Athletic. Michael Rousseau, senior writer, The Athletic. Justin Moreno in September, I found out, that he hosted this weekly hockey game during the winter with Joe Mower. And then it was like, oh, there's actually some hockey players to go to. And then you find out that they're pro hockey players and they're really good pro hockey players. As far as the hockey guys, Mark Parrish, West Walls, Nate Prosser, Jordan Leopold, Paul Martin, Keith Ballard, Blake Sloan, Dustin Bufflin.

It's pretty neat. There's a little bit of a field of dreams kind of feel to it because you're in the dark and there's this beautiful house. You know, you have these beautiful lights up against these maple trees. It's like magical. That's what I, that's the first thing I saw. And then you start walking down this long driveway to his backyard. And the only thing that I heard in the middle of pitch black and frigid weather are this, is the rumbling of a zamboni. And we go out there and he looked at such peace.

I mean, Justin Mourneau just was driving around on the Zamboni, resurfacing his ice with a smile on his face. I think people will see kind of what we have. here it's a little excessive you know there's there's a lot here it's it's it's a professional great chilling system there's a Zamboni that I have on the back of the tractor I mean there's a there's a lot of stuff here that to maintain it but I think to me it's just something that yeah it's a little bit crazy from the outside you look at it it seems like there's a lot there justin Moreno remember seeing him in 2018 right after he officially retired he was kind of down and he admits the first

part of his retirement was very very tough for him because he just didn't know how to adjust to life quite yet. When I retired from the game, it was one of those things where you're trying to find what you want to do next. It's very hard to fill that competitive void. And so much of my mind was consumed with the competition and whether it was trying to improve in the offseason or trying to win that game that night, when all that goes away, there's a big void there that you have to fill.

And I think it was a hard time for me to figure out what I wanted to do next. And this is a lot of what this story is. It's not just about the hockey. It's about what these professional athletes miss about. the sport and a lot of that is the camaraderie that they don't get after they finish their careers with a bunch of guys that have the same background that just love being together playing a sport and have such common stories war stories in a lot of ways to be able to come in here and understand that there's a

lot of people in the same situation you know as far as professional sports goes and there's still a competitiveness that that just can't be matched when you compete at the highest level and and that's a hard thing and I think to have a group of people that whether it's just to go back in time and kind of laugh with each other or to lean on and ask questions is it's a very valuable thing we had to let the host get the first goal right it's surprising to me to see how many guys we've had in the game but you know it's fun and it's it's something that is is kind of surreal and you know you're in the you're in the house you look out

the window and you go I wonder who's down there today and oh yeah well he won a cup with Dallas or you know so look out there it's it's it's kind of, I just have to shake my head sometime. Does Buff here? Did his Buff show up? Dustin Bufflin was out there, and Big Buff is an iconic figure in the NHL. And a couple years ago, he walked away from the NHL in the middle of a six-year contract, left $14 million on the table, just literally dropped off the face of the earth.

And here comes Dustin Bufflin, Big Buff on his yellow four-wheeler, over there usually plays in the game on this night he just came to for the locker room talk and to drink beer they had the fire going at one point buff actually caught his glove on fire it was pretty funny um as he was putting firewood into the fire it was just uh it was really neat why he's celebrating let's go the trash talk out here it's pretty mild compared to what you would hear on an hl rink look at how hard you shoot the fuck yo what do you think he just hand these out like candy it's it's a lot more country based it's a lot more U.S. say Canada type stuff and you know guys will start doing stuff and they'll say you know that's a it's a Canadian stereotype or American stereotype you know guys will start start going back and forth you know I told West Walls we're gonna need them out for the game we need his competitiveness out there and you know on the group tax he says well just dig dig deep like we always do as Canadians and go out there and find a way

to win. Where's the oxygen tank it's over it shouldn't hurt this much yeah you know when you see Joe Mauer's skating He's one of those guys that he can do absolutely anything, whether you're playing him in basketball, whether you're playing them in hockey out here in the yard. It's just how quickly he figures out the game and how quickly his athleticism comes out. It really doesn't look like he's out of place on the ice.

The level of play out here is definitely over my head. But it's fun. It's fun to watch those guys. You could tell how much time that they put into their craft. And I think we're all happy if nobody gets hurt. You know, just get out there and get a good sweat in, laugh and joke around and go home to the families on the skate. There's nothing quite like being outside on, you know, no matter what the weather is, whether the sunshine or, you know, you're playing in the snow, it's just different elements that you don't get inside. And it's just, it's a special thing to be able to come out here.

Nice! Whether it's with my friends or with my kids and skate at 10 o'clock in the morning on a Wednesday or, you know, get out here at 8 or 9 o'clock with my daughter. on a school night. There was part of him that longed for the camaraderie with his teammates. It was always something that he appreciated. His quote was, I didn't want to leave the clubhouse because I knew they'd never let me in once I was gone. So he basically created this game and he calls it his little sanctuary.

It's a place where all the guys can go and play and then go hang out in the warming house and talk about life. And maybe make fun of each other for something to happen on the ice and have a lot of fun and just hang around and be with the boys again. And the way he described it is it's a mini locker room replicated every week. I think sometimes we end up sitting in here in the Wormon House, you know, the locker room probably longer than what the actual game is. And it's part of us to catch our breath. But then part of us just spent a time together.

And very few people are retired at the age of 35. And if you're lucky enough, 40, so, you know, everyone kind of goes through these different phases. You get done as a player. You miss the game. You're trying to find what you want to do next. And then you come in here and you kind of tell stories about how, how great we all think we used to be and how we're trying to fix whatever's wrong,

whatever we see wrong with today's game. And then we talk about life and family and kids and all the rest of that stuff. So it's kind of a little bit of takes you back to when you were a player and you could spend a little time together. I don't know if everyone else sees it that way, but I see that as one of the things of being able to get guys together and just spend a little time looking back, but also people who were in a very similar situation.

I guess that's a rough. It's a nice game right here. I liked it. That's fun. It's cool. It actually looked really cool. And make sure you listen to Michael's podcast straight from the source. His guest this week was John Merrill.

I got to know John pretty well here in Vegas. He is an awesome character. All of Rousseau's podcasts are Can't Miss, but the one with John Merrill is for sure can miss. So make sure you check out his podcast. That's straight from the source. And thanks for joining us today. Michael, it's been great talking with you. I hope to have you on soon.

Yeah, anytime. Thanks, Jesse. Thanks, Sarah. All right, everyone, we've got a bunch of good stuff on the athletic podcast networks this week. Shane Done, GM of Team Canada at the Olympics, joined Ian Mendez and Haley Salveen this week on the athletic hockey show. Also, NHL Ironman Keith Yandel was Craig Custin's guest on the athletic hockey show USA. Also, check out Arthur Staples New Rangers podcast, The Garden Faithful, which debuted on Tuesday. Thanks for listening to The Athletic Hockey Show.

please follow us on your favorite podcast platform and don't forget to leave a rating and a review. Subscribe to the Athletic Audio Plus on Apple Podcasts to get all the bonus content from our entire network. This week, it's Mendez and Down Goes Brown who provide bonus content for subscribers. To hear it, you can start with a 30-day free trial, then just 99 cents a month after that. And right now, you can get an annual subscription to the athletic for just $3.99 a month when you visit Theathletic.com slash hockey show. The Athletic Hockey Show continues Thursday with Ian Mendes. and down goes brown. For Sarah and Michael, I'm Jesse. See you next week.