Kukla's Korner Hockey

Kukla's Korner Hockey

About The 2-1 Loss By The Minnesota Wild To The Edmonton Oilers

03/11/2016 at 7:32am EST

from Michael Russo of Russo's Rants,

The gameplan was so obvious tonight on how to beat the Oilers, yet the Wild basically defied the gameplan.

Chip the puck, chase it down, win the battle.

Simple.

So what happened in the first period? The Wild finished with one credited hit. One.

I normally take hits, takeaways and giveaways with a grain of salt on the NHL’s subjective stat sheet, but that one David Jones hit was indicative of everything we saw in the first period: a team not following the gameplan.

Playing a blue line without four of six regulars, the Wild refused to get the puck deep. There’s not a coach in the league that wouldn’t have impressed upon his team to take advantage of such an inexperienced blue line by hitting them, cycling on them and tiring them out.

And yet, the Wild, from normally reliable defensemen Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin, to forwards like Mikko Koivu, Zach Parise and Thomas Vanek, kept turning pucks over all over the ice.

The overpassing against a goalie that has given up 11 goals in his last eight starts (Cam Talbot) was unbelievable. In the second period, Justin Fontaine got two guys driving the net and instead of letting her rip, he pulled up and tried to saucer a pass that was broken up. A shift later, Vanek did the same thing.

read on

Watch the game highlights below...

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About Kukla's Korner Hockey

Paul Kukla founded Kukla’s Korner in 2005 and the site has since become the must-read site on the ‘net for all the latest happenings around the NHL.

From breaking news to in-depth stories around the league, KK Hockey is updated with fresh stories all day long and will bring you the latest news as quickly as possible.

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