GDT: 10/15/2013 - Minnesota Wild @ Toronto Maple Leafs - 6:00 - FS-N, SNET-O

[Mansfield]

gg guys. lol we don't know why we won either...

pominville always killed us when he was with the sabres, looks like he'll be continuing that tradition...

 

[Sproo]

The Wild PR folks are pumping the fact that they only allowed 14 SOG. But it's really not that impressive. When you basically spot them a 2 goal lead, they're gonna sit back and not take a lot of chances.

Bingo. Full disclosure: I'm a Leaf fan but was watching the Minny stream. Also, I was only able to see the last half of the game. But by the end of the game it was really getting tiresome how the broadcasters kept harping on how bad Toronto was and how dominant Minny was. By no means do I think the Leafs were dominant, but from what I saw they were playing a pretty safe, conservative game and doing a decent job at keeping the Wild to the perimeter. You know, protecting a lead to win a hockey game. Kudos to you guys for icing a pretty good hockey team (except maybe Heatley ), but your broadcast team were pretty over the top today.

 

[McMatthews]

Bingo. Full disclosure: I'm a Leaf fan but was watching the Minny stream. Also, I was only able to see the last half of the game. But by the end of the game it was really getting tiresome how the broadcasters kept harping on how bad Toronto was and how dominant Minny was. By no means do I think the Leafs were dominant, but from what I saw they were playing a pretty safe, conservative game and doing a decent job at keeping the Wild to the perimeter. You know, protecting a lead to win a hockey game. Kudos to you guys for icing a pretty good hockey team (except maybe Heatley ), but your broadcast team were pretty over the top today.

I watched the Minnesota stream as well and I didn't think it was bad at all.

Naturally, they focused more on the Wild. It wasn't that bad.

 

[ewoksonhoth]

Bingo. Full disclosure: I'm a Leaf fan but was watching the Minny stream. Also, I was only able to see the last half of the game. But by the end of the game it was really getting tiresome how the broadcasters kept harping on how bad Toronto was and how dominant Minny was. By no means do I think the Leafs were dominant, but from what I saw they were playing a pretty safe, conservative game and doing a decent job at keeping the Wild to the perimeter. You know, protecting a lead to win a hockey game. Kudos to you guys for icing a pretty good hockey team (except maybe Heatley ), but your broadcast team were pretty over the top today.

Don't worry, we already know they're crap.

 

[Stu]

Grumbledore was magic for you guys.

Best of luck, such an odd game but we've had a few like it already this season.

 

[Stephen]

Once upon a time we were Norris Division rivals, and now Toronto and Minnesota are like strangers in the NHL. So weird.

 

[Hero]

We shouldn't of won this, great game by your club. A lot of future stars.

 

[Fel 96]

Just saw the highlights on TSN. I'm not even going to comment.

Way to go, my TV service provider. Putting the game on a non NHL Center Ice channel so I couldn't watch it.

EDIT: Screw that, here's my reaction after watching the highlights.

 

[Sproo]

I watched the Minnesota stream as well and I didn't think it was bad at all.

Naturally, they focused more on the Wild. It wasn't that bad.

I don't know. Since moving away from Toronto I almost exclusively watch streams and actually enjoy hearing broadcasters from other cities. (Toronto commentators are not that great anyway, IMO). Obviously I expect some bias, but for this game it was really too much. They made it sound like Minnesota deserved a half-dozen goals in the third period when the reality is the Leafs did at least half-decent job on keeping the shots to the perimeter.

 

[Swervin81]

Don't worry, we already know they're crap.

I was contemplating watching the FSNorth feed, but then I remembered how irredeemably bad Anthony LaPanta is.

 

[sparxx87]

Feel bad for the kid. He had no chance on the 1st one, 2nd was a stinker and the 3rd was one you'd like to see him get, but wasn't really a bad goal. It's tough on a goalie though, the 1st goal was also the 1st shot, then the breakaway was the 2nd or 3rd. Hate seeing that, especially if Backstrom gets back before he gets in again... It's an ugly stat line to get sent down with. Hope he gets in again soon and plays well..

Well played game by the Wild, they deserved the win... You run into a hot goalie some nights, that's hockey! Really impressed with the puck pressure though, especially the back pressure. The forwards do a good job. It makes the D job easier, and they created 2 or 3 breakaways and several other odd man rushes.


Fletcher has done a great job building this team. They're well coached and seem to have all the key elements of a contender... I expected more from the Wild last year, unfortunately you lose your starting goalie and it's lights out for most teams. (Although Harding was decent) This team looks to have taken another step, I could really see them making some noise in the West!

Good luck the rest of the way! Oh, why didn't DUMBA55 play? I was hoping to see him.

 

[tomgilbertfan]

Feel bad for the kid. He had no chance on the 1st one, 2nd was a stinker and the 3rd was one you'd like to see him get, but wasn't really a bad goal. It's tough on a goalie though, the 1st goal was also the 1st shot, then the breakaway was the 2nd or 3rd. Hate seeing that, especially if Backstrom gets back before he gets in again... It's an ugly stat line to get sent down with. Hope he gets in again soon and plays well..

Well played game by the Wild, they deserved the win... You run into a hot goalie some nights, that's hockey! Really impressed with the puck pressure though, especially the back pressure. The forwards do a good job. It makes the D job easier, and they created 2 or 3 breakaways and several other odd man rushes.


Fletcher has done a great job building this team. They're well coached and seem to have all the key elements of a contender... I expected more from the Wild last year, unfortunately you lose your starting goalie and it's lights out for most teams. (Although Harding was decent) This team looks to have taken another step, I could really see them making some noise in the West!

Good luck the rest of the way! Oh, why didn't DUMBA55 play? I was hoping to see him.

Dumba didn't play because he's 19, and the Wild want him to get some games off to watch and observe the game to further his learning.

 

[57special]

i don't know why people hate toronto so much. don't get it.

It's a Canadian thing.

 

[Avder]

Different Mikael Granlund names in tonight's GDT:
TOTAL: 49 Different Combinations

You missed one.

Re-read my epic post. I used two names

 

[DeuceMN]

I watched the Toronto feed tonight and I was kind of surprised at how reasonable the announcers were, not nearly as biased as I was expecting. Makes the Oil announcers look even worse

And Scandella tonight made my ass twitch. Seriously, I think my ass is actually twitching from just how ****ing bad and stupid he was.

Oh, and Heater..... I just don't even know where to begin.... Get a box, stick him in it, and just mail it somewhere, anywhere, with the slowest mail possible. Put some air holes in it, a little water, and please, never ever ask where it turns up.

 

[purexed]

The politeness of Leafs fans is catching me off-guard.

Yeah they're nice and civil here, but over on their board they're all ejaculating over Kessel's "unselfish" goal as if he went into a fiery building to save a child.

 

[Avder]

Bingo. Full disclosure: I'm a Leaf fan but was watching the Minny stream. Also, I was only able to see the last half of the game. But by the end of the game it was really getting tiresome how the broadcasters kept harping on how bad Toronto was and how dominant Minny was. By no means do I think the Leafs were dominant, but from what I saw they were playing a pretty safe, conservative game and doing a decent job at keeping the Wild to the perimeter. You know, protecting a lead to win a hockey game. Kudos to you guys for icing a pretty good hockey team (except maybe Heatley ), but your broadcast team were pretty over the top today.

I watched the Minnesota stream as well and I didn't think it was bad at all.

Naturally, they focused more on the Wild. It wasn't that bad.

No no, he was right. Our broadcast team is pretty terrible. Admittedly LaPanta is a considerable upgrade over the guy we had doing play by play a couple years ago, but Greenlay is just one of the worst color guys in any sports broadcast, ever.

Once upon a time we were Norris Division rivals, and now Toronto and Minnesota are like strangers in the NHL. So weird.

I know man. Back when we were tossing realignment proposals out left and right, the majority of mine had Minnesota, Chicago, Detroit, and Toronto in a re-formed Norris that also usually had Winnipeg and St. Louis, and occasionally Buffalo and either Colorado or Ottawa.

The way I did mine was to jumble the three easternmost divisions so they're striped east to west rather than north to south as they are now. Pacific remained as it is, but usually I had Colorado crammed in there because...well, mountain time sucks.

My reasoning was that since the hockey media only seems to pay attention to teams that play in divisions that include eastern time zone teams, a way to up the % of the league the media payed attention to from 50 to 75% was to mingle all the Eastern and Central time zone teams together. Also by breaking up some clusters (the former atlantic for example), it evened out travel a LOT. I also thought a solution to later starts would be for games to take place at an average of the two time zones. So say, if an eastern time zone team played a central time zone team, the normal start time for a game like that would be 6:30 central time. Eastern meets pacific would be 8:30pm eastern time, etc.

Oh well. Nothing we can do about it now until the league expands and goes through another realignment.

 

[Northland Wild Man]

My thoughts on this evening's entertainment:

I put the loss on Yeo and Kuemper more than anyone else. I blame Yeo for changing what was working with the personnel the night before, especially Harding. You always play the personnel that give you the best chance to win. Kuemper gave up 2 goals that I would characterize as soft and he potentially cost us a point. He's a good kid, but he's not seasoned enough yet.

I have to say the shots were there and I feel the Wild should have won this one as they deserved it. It's mind boggling how we used to constantly get out shot under JL but would win the games. Now we out shoot everyone but we can't win. This is why I don't believe in advanced stats in hockey, but that's another story.

We just weren't physical enough tonight. The shots are great, but the rebounds have to be pounded into the net. It seemed that someone always had the rebound lane blocked, or the rebound shot blocked or covered. We need to either muscle through the defense, or make them pay for blocking shots ect. Pominville's goal was a scramble in the crease. If we could have done more of that we would have won IMO.

This team needs finishers. I don't like to harp on Koivu, but the captain should be leading by example. He's a good set up man and that's great, but he has to bury his chances (he gets his fair share). Koivu must step up IMO before the team succeeds. Players just need to get the puck in the net period, and they haven't done it enough this year. Parise and Pominville are good at this, but I believe the Wild need another finisher to reach the next level.

I'm hopeful rewards will come with some time to really gel, but we still seem like a team that can't get what we deserve. It's great to have moral victories, but they aren't victories on the scoreboard and they really don't matter.

Also, Heatley sucks. I won't say anymore about that.

 

[Dr Jan Itor]

And Scandella tonight made my ass twitch. Seriously, I think my ass is actually twitching from just how ****ing bad and stupid he was.

Kind of hard to critique the defensemen tonight, in light of how the game went. I thought there were a couple times he skated the puck out of trouble.

 

[tomgilbertfan]

My thoughts on this evening's entertainment:

I put the loss on Yeo and Kuemper more than anyone else. I blame Yeo for changing what was working with the personnel the night before, especially Harding. You always play the personnel that give you the best chance to win. Kuemper gave up 2 goals that I would characterize as soft and he potentially cost us a point. He's a good kid, but he's not seasoned enough yet.

I have to say the shots were there and I feel the Wild should have won this one as they deserved it. It's mind boggling how we used to constantly get out shot under JL but would win the games. Now we out shoot everyone but we can't win. This is why I don't believe in advanced stats in hockey, but that's another story.

We just weren't physical enough tonight. The shots are great, but the rebounds have to be pounded into the net. It seemed that someone always had the rebound lane blocked, or the rebound shot blocked or covered. We need to either muscle through the defense, or make them pay for blocking shots ect. Pominville's goal was a scramble in the crease. If we could have done more of that we would have won IMO.

This team needs finishers. I don't like to harp on Koivu, but the captain should be leading by example. He's a good set up man and that's great, but he has to bury his chances (he gets his fair share). Koivu must step up IMO before the team succeeds. Players just need to get the puck in the net period, and they haven't done it enough this year. Parise and Pominville are good at this, but I believe the Wild need another finisher to reach the next level.

I'm hopeful rewards will come with some time to really gel, but we still seem like a team that can't get what we deserve. It's great to have moral victories, but they aren't victories on the scoreboard and they really don't matter.

Also, Heatley sucks. I won't say anymore about that.

RE: Harding
From russo's blog.
This was back-to-back nights, would have been four starts in six nights for him and five games in eight nights.

I really don't think we should have started Harding both nights. We should have been able to count on our back-up making the saves that Kuemper didn't tonight.

 

[Avder]

I agree. I never wanted to see Harding start both nights. However looking back we probably should have considered playing Kuemper against Buffalo instead.

Then again there is a good deal of truth to Yeo's reasoning. With each loss Buffalo will get more desperate, and desperate teams are often more dangerous than the established teams.

 

[tyratoku]

I think it really was the right call to not play Harding tonight.

Overplaying goalies can be disastrous. Look at Backstrom.

We need to guide Harding along slowly. One, because he's a goalie. Overwork them, and you're screwed. You could lose 'em for long stretches of time on minor things just because they've played too much. Two, because he has MS and can be a little wonky at times. Look at last season. He played very, very little because of it. Three, because we already lost Backstrom. We overwork Harding too far, we potentially lose him for a long time.

Then who do we have for a semi-permanent gig? Kuemper? Gus? Ha. Good luck with that.

Better to rest our guy every once in a while, even if it is against a team/game we should play them. It might hurt now, but in the long run it's better for the team.

I just cannot believe the hypocracy from some people(on this board and other places) that cussed out Yeo for riding Backstrom too hard last season and then ***** and moan when he doesn't ride Harding for the third game in four nights. Like, are they serious? It just doesn't make sense.

So far this season it looks like Yeo has learned quite a bit from last season. Line-matching. Line-juggling. Goalie-riding(or lack thereof). Getting a better powerplay coach. Opening up the system more. He's not perfect, but he's improving. Calling for a regression in the coaching department is the last thing this team needs right now.

 

[Avder]

Harding's MS issues are a lot less worrysome now than they were last year. Last year he had just been diagnosed and was getting his medications all set, and that took a long time to do. Major ailments like that often take a very long time before you get the medications at that sweet spot where you maximize that positive effects and minimize the bad side effects.

And remember Harding has access to a much higher standard of medical care than any of us could really ever hope to, so his medications and their effects were probably monitored daily rather than the every couple of weeks which is what most people with chronic conditions have to go through in the process of finishing the medication balancing act.

Now that's in the past and he's gotten himself in balance again, and obviously he has done a tremendous job. He looks to be in top form. I would say he is twice the goalie Backstrom is at the moment. And remember he came back and played in the playoffs for us and gave us a shot at each game he appeared in.

He's got his MS handled. I don't think he's as vulnerable to going wonky on us as you think he is. Sure there will be rare occurances, but these couple of years on his contract are years where he is going to work his ass off because he is living his ****ing dream here, and he's not going to let MS take it away from him yet.

Yeah, he's not a viable long long term starter. But where he is right now he is very viable, and I think he should hold on to the starting job once Backstrom comes back. Who knows, maybe putting Backstrom into a backup role will let him get his game back up a little bit through rest and practice.

 

[MNjens]

Anybody blaming blaming this loss on Yeo is a j***a** . The right move was to start Kuemper.

I don't blame anyone. Watching the game back now. I've counted 3 posts so far. Mitchell break away hit Reimers knob. Pommer had a one timer in in the slot with an open net that happened to hit Phanuefs stick when he was out of position. I know it sucks losing but its bad luck. They'll go in eventually.

This team has a a chance to be great once pucks start finding the back of the net. Cannot wait until Coyle comes back, and joins the second line. Grandiddy looked awesome tonight and our second line looks great on paper when Charlie comes back.

Not concerned about this team at all. Actually more excited for this team than I've ever been before. People forget the past ten years when we were the team being outplayed every night and we would be lucky to come away with a win. Feels weird to see this team out play every team we've seen so far this year.

Also don't know if it was mentioned earlier, but Heater is garbage.

 

[Northland Wild Man]

I don't know, Harding looked fine when he came in tonight. I understand the concern, but tomorrow is an off day for relaxation.

Maybe they could run a rotation like pitchers in baseball when Backstrom comes back. Harding starts and goes for 2 periods, and Backstrom comes in to close the door in the 3rd period.