So here we go Wild fans, here's our remaining March schedule. Again, we need about 11 wins from the season's remaining games, so lets break down the rest of the Month here.

More after the jump:

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Roman Voloshenko

Whatever happend to Roman Voloshenko!?!?!?
I know that he went back to Russia, but the last stats I could find on him were from the '08-'09 season. Nothing for this year.

Do the Wild still own his rights? If yes, they should see if he wants to come back to the AHL for another shot at making the NHL club next year. That kid could score goals... in his first year in Houston he had 33 goals (60 points) in 69 games.

WHERE DID HE GO????!!!!????

MN Wild official statement on 3/8/2010: "Cal Clutterbuck abstained from doing anything overly exerting today. He suffered a charley horse in yesterday's loss to Calgary and is listed as day-to-day."

I was always under the impression "charley horse" was merely slang for a muscle cramp.  And if so... how does that take someone like Clutterbuck out for half a game *and* put on a day-to-day status?  Am I missing something here?  We were at the X for the Wild/Flames game, we saw that hit, and I've never seen Cal drop his stick and scurry off so quickly.  He could barely put any weight on his left leg.  We overheard someone mention that he may have caught a blade just above the knee and below the breezer, and gotten cut as a result.  If so, and he re-opened the wound when he tried to come back on the ice, I could understand him being taken off the ice for the rest of that game, and even being put on day-to-day until things healed up again.

So I'm wondering, what would be the purpose of glossing over this injury if it *is* more severe?  What's the point?

(I'm assuming #22 will not be on the ice tonight against Florida, since they've called Kalus up from Houston and he plays that position.)

Of course, I could be completely off base and making mountains of molehills....

Okay. So the Wild are several points out of the playoff race. We know that they have a slim chance of making the playoffs. As Buddha pointed out, they need to go 14-4 in order to have a chance.

But suppose they do make that 14-4 run. That's winning 3 games, losing 1, winning 3 games, losing 1, winning 3 more games, losing 1, winning 3 games, losing 1, and then winning 2 games. A bit streaky, but possible nonetheless.

What then? Our Wild might make the playoffs.

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Alright, don't shoot the messenger here.  Stacey Brooks is a sports economist and blogger (Hawkonomics).  He's also a co-author of the book, The Wages of Wins.  He and some colleagues have studied the productivity of NHL goalies and they have produced a Wins Above Average stat that rates productivity.  I believe they are relating this to how valuable each goalie could be to teams, thereby giving them an idea of how much cap space should be dedicated to them.

The results may surprise Wild fans.  Apparently Niklas Backstrom rates as the NHL 5th *WORST* goaltender using this metric.  He is given a -1.999  WAA rating.  Josh Harding rates higher than Backstrom, but still not very productive with a -.4155 WAA.

What say you, Wild fans?  If you don't like his methodology, do you have a better one?

Hi Folks,

I do not work for this site below.. this for info purposes only

the site below will carry a bunch of section playoffs today (Sat 27th)starting at NOON!

they will cover the section finals and state tourney

so share this with out of towners and fans of Minnesota high school hockey

or if youre at work and want to know whats going on with the game

enjoy the season

:)

www.mnsportsnetwork.com

Photos here

I attended my first Minnesota home hockey game since the North Stars played in Bloomington, and I must admit, I was floored. I picked a great game to attend (my uncle has great seats), and thankfully the Wild put up a better effort than they did against Atlanta. At any rate, I brought along my camera and took a few pictures of today's game.

(I just moved to MN from San Diego where admittedly hockey isn't too popular. I am glad to be back in the State of Hockey....haven't lived here since I was in elementary school.) 

I'm happy to see frequently updated info on this blog. It's important to have a non-StarTribune/FSN/etc non-biased source of info. :)

Long story short, the Wild simply don't know how to lose properly. Sitting tenth in the standings behind Dallas is one thing, but the Stars have lost 30 of their 53 games this season. They simply have the good taste to stretch those games into overtime, as evidenced by their 11 OTL's this year. On straight wins and losses, the Wild are actually in the top eight of the Western conference as of today (figuring in a tiebreaker scenario over Calgary). Maybe it's time for Wild fans to join the movement to change the way the points are distributed in terms of wins and losses?

I've acutally worked out what the West would look like today under a couple of different scenarios. Here are the results:

http://www.examiner.com/St_Paul-Sports.html

Watching NHL on the Fly kind of curious about potvin calling the Wild a long shot to make up the three points to grab the eighth playoff spot.  I say who says we can't make up the twelve  to grab the 3 seed?  The Wild are improving all the time and doing well against the Div. which makes up the bulk of the remaining schedule.  Edmonton is dead and the three teams above the Wild all have pretty big question marks.  Calgary is imploding and dropping through the standings like a brick.  Vancouver is about to set out on a 13 or 14 game road trip, they will not play as a team at the Garage until mid March,  If they get a bad start to this road trip, the whole thing could go south in a hurry.  Colorado is playing well, but they have a lot of young players that have never playe3d at this level and this is grueling schedule coming up.  I like the way they ar3e playing other than the ever shortening lapses.  I am not saying they are gonna do it,  I just don't think it is as much of a longshot as some people especially the national media.  and hopefully it can get some convo going in here.

My Blackhawks fan roommate lost his mind after Saturday night's game, broke our patio door, and accused the Wild of being a team that "can only win in shootouts". Since he is a jackass and I absolutely had to prove him wrong, here is what I wrote up and sent him. I figured it might be helpful if any of you have any unreasonable friends that may have accused the Wild of the same thing. Enjoy.

---

This is why you're stupid.

I will be analyzing team shootout statistics from the 2005-06 season (the first year the NHL went to the shootout format) forward. For relativity purposes, I will be choosing 3 other teams at random to include in my research. Those teams will be: the Pittsburgh Penguins, the St. Louis Blues, and the Dallas Stars.

Here are the shootout records for each team for this season so far:
Wild: 5-3
Blackhawks: 4-7
Penguins: 6-6
Blues: 6-6
Stars: 6-6

The first thing that jumps out is that the Wild have actually played in the LEAST amount of shootouts among the five teams, and three less than than the Blackhawks. But of course, one half-season is not a large enough sample size to draw significant conclusions from, so here are the cumulative statistics from the previous four seasons:

Wild: (5-3, 3-8, 10-7, 5-3) Total: 23-21 (11.0 SO/yr)
Blackhawks: (4-7, 5-4, 6-7, 2-6) Total: 17-23 (10.0 SO/yr)
Penguins: (6-6, 7-4, 10-6, 1-6): Total : 24-22 (11.5 SO/yr)
Blues: (6-6, 3-5, 6-6, 4-9): Total 19-28 (11.75 SO/yr)
Stars: (6-6, 5-3, 9-4, 12-1) Total: 32-14 (11.5 SO/yr)

From this information we can effectively determine that the difference between shootout appearances per season is small enough to render it useless. The Wild averaged one more shootout per season than the Blackhawks. More? Yes. But one extra appearance during seasons consisting of 82 games is hardly enough to justify your accusations. Still, there is a lot more information to dig out of this before I can make any sort of conclusion.

Adding the '04-'05 to '08-'09 data to this season's current totals, we get this information:
Wild: 28-24 (52 total shootouts, 54% win pct)
Blackhawks: 21-30 (51 total shootouts, 41% win pct)
Penguins: 30-28 (58 total shootouts, 58% win pct)
Blues: 25-34 (59 total shootouts, 42% win pct)
Stars: 38-20 (58 total shootouts, 66% win pct)

To me, the only relevant information we can draw from this is that the Blackhawks and Blues struggle to win shootouts, and that the Stars are historically stellar in them (although the 12-1 mark from '04-'05 does slightly obscure the relevancy of the stat). "BUT THE BLACKHAWKS STILL HAVE THE LEAST AMOUNT OF SHOOTOUTS!!!11", you might say. Yes, they have exactly ONE less than the Wild and only seven less (about 1.5 a season, counting this first half of the current season) than the seemingly overtime-happy Dallas Stars. Again, an amount minuscule enough not to hold weight in any argument.

Still, I must do a bit more bit more digging. Your argument was: "The Wild only win shootouts". Fine. I will calculate the ratio of total wins to shootout wins and ponts. It is only fair to do it this way because, a better team will, naturally, have more opportunities to win games late than one that sucks (I will call this the "Florida Panthers Rule") This will be most effective way of determining if this slight-minded argument has any sort of weight. First we will total up each teams total points from the '05-'06 season forward (including this season):

Wild: 47, 89, 98, 104, 84 (422 total points)
Blackhawks: 66, 104, 88, 71, 65 (394 total points)
Penguins: 57, 99, 102, 105, 58 (421 total points)
Blues: 43, 92, 79, 81, 57 (352 total points)
Stars: 49, 83, 97, 107, 112 (448 total points)

The next section will be deciding factor of how stupid either you are, or I am. There will be two percentages. The first will display how points came from shootout WINS, and the second will display how many points came from TOTAL shootout points (Remember: a team receives two points for winning a shootout and one for losing).

Wild: 13.3%, 18.9%
Blackhawks: 11.0%, 18.3%
Penguins: 14.2%, 20.9%
Blues: 14.2%, 23.9%
Stars: 17.0%, 21.4%

There are a lot of interesting things that pop up with this information. The first being the Dallas Stars' results, which conclusively proves the aforementioned "Florida Panthers Rule". It isn't that Dallas has to rely on shootouts to win, it's just that they have done a whole lot of winning the last 4 and a half years, and a team that wins a lot is inherently going to be playing in a lot of more meaningful third period and/or overtime situations. Not only that, but they have been able to get it freaking done in shootouts, with a completely insane 66% win percentage. Again, this represents four and a half years of information. 66% over four and a half years is ridiculous.

OK, now that the Dallas Stars have been effectively dismissed of any untrue accusation, let's take a look at the information I really want, that of my beloved Minnesota Wild compared to the Chicago Blackhawks.

Over the last four and a half seasons, the Wild have scored 0.6% more of their points via the shootout than the Blackhawks. That's right: three-fifths of one percent. Not even close to being a large enough number to hold any sort of weight in a debate. Basically, that 0.6% translates to 2.5 points. No, not 2.5 points per season, 2.5 points over four and a half years. That means, the Wild gain approximately one-half more point via shootout than the Hawks per season. Last time I checked, the NHL doesn't award half-points. And as a result, the winner (and still undisputed champion!) is me.

Not only that, but the Wild actually ranked dead last in "shootout reliance" when compared to the other three teams (when Barry Melrose starts throwing around this absurd statistic on SportsCenter, I expect to be fully compensated). I don't think this says anything about any certain team. But it does prove that arguing this phantom "shootout reliance" thing is completely stupid and utterly ignorant.

And that, my friend, is why you're stupid.