can someone fill me in on this Marek Zidlicky guy we got from Nashville. I gotta say, I did not watch too many Predators games last year

We traded Ryan Jones. Apparently we was a minor leaguer, was he any good? He must of been if another team wanted him.

Sorry for my ignorance, I'm relatively new when it comes to following hockey hardcore. I like to watch the game, I really did not follow it closely until last year

Well, the past several days/weeks/months have been fueling my frustration with the management of this team.  We just let whom I believe was our best player go because we didn't want to pay him $5M/year!  If anyone thinks Brunette replaces Rolston, they need to enter rehab!  I have been a season ticket holder since day 1 and I am getting REALLY frustrated with Risbrough's performance.  This team has shown no motivation to win other than the Johnson, Parrish, Demitra move.  Gee, Doug had no issue paying Johnson this kind of money after a poor season in the hopes that he would regain his offensive product and yet we are willing to let a proven leader and performer go bye bye for the same level of money.  How do you not pay Rolston when you know there is no one on the market that can replace his all around ability and contribution.  It is getting really hard writing the check for next years tickets with the hope that this team will truly care about putting the talent that is required to win on the ice! 

The only way I am happy now is if we sign Hossa and he isn't coming here because his slovak buddies told him Jaques style will kill his numbers.  Get ready for Marian to be gone in two!

You are riding on the belief that all the hockey fans in MN won't stop buying tickets but I beleive the Stars proved they will if you don't give hope of an ability to do something in the post season.  

Well, I just found my way over here from TwinkieTown where I have been a reader and writer for years. I am as big of a puck fan as I am hardball, so lets get this going.<p>

I am pleased to see that the Wild picked up Bergeron for one reason, he supplies a heavy shot. Besides that, his salary is low, and it won't impact the cap very much. The undersized, horrible Plus/Minus rating does scare me. The wild had a puck moving small d-man for the PP last year in Nummelin, but he barely saw the ice to be a PP specialist.<p>

Pros and Cons are nothing without seeing how he gels with the squad. But the idea of having a Hard shooting lefty on the blue line, potentially paired with Burns or Schultz, is desirable. Afterall, if he is paired with one of them, his Plus/Minus should get better...however, if he is paired with Marty "Old Skool-aah" we could be scared.<p>

Thanks for having me Hockey Wilderness, don't be suprised if you see some more posts from me.

Hey Hockey Wilderness,

Today is the big day. We've switched your community over to the new SB Nation sports blog platform. My name is Trei, and I'm here to help you get adjusted to the new home we've built for you. If you have questions or trouble with the new system, post a comment in this thread and myself or one of the team (lovitt, sixfoot6 or odacrem) will try to point you in the right direction.

Before we begin, I want to let you know we still consider this a beta platform, so don't be surprised if you find a few bugs or if everything isn't exactly right yet. We hope you'll take the time to report any problems you encounter at bugreport@sbnation.com. We'll be continuing to make changes and improving things.

Please take a few minutes to read about what's new below. But if you just can't wait to jump in, here are some quick things to check out:

1. Sign up for your SB Nation network account and claim your old blog accounts
2. Once you're logged in, press your  Z  key in any thread with new comments
3. Explore your dashboard and setup your profile
4. Read the guide to the new FanPost editor
5. Install the FanShot bookmarklet and post videos to Hockey Wilderness from YouTube or images from Flickr
6. Click the "Rec" button on posts and comments to help other people find the good stuff.
7. Customize display options on your Edit Settings page

What Has Changed

SB Nation Network Accounts - the Big Change

Readers across all of our blogs told us they wanted one account to use on every SB Nation blog. To make this work, we're requiring that everyone create a new SB Nation network account. In most cases you should be able to keep your old username, but a few of you may have to choose something new, since every other community in SB Nation will be going through this same transition. We tried to be as fair as possible in deciding who gets to keep which name, using a formula that takes into account length of membership and frequency of activity.

We want to make it as easy as possible for you to participate on all of our blogs, but we don't want to encourage everyone to start visiting rival team blogs and initiating flame wars. To maintain friendly communities we ask that you explicitly join each blog in order to participate. It's a two-click process, but it does means accepting each blog's community guidelines. Just as you join each blog individually, you can be banned on each blog individually.

You can claim old accounts from multiple SB Nation blogs, and your new username will be retroactively attached to all your old comments and diaries. So now you'll be able to access all your writings from your single profile page... like magic.

To get started, click here to claim your old blog accounts and create a new SB Nation network account.

FanPosts (the Section Formerly Known as Diaries)

We changed their name. Why? Because we took this major upgrade as an opportunity to leave behind some vocabulary that never made much sense for a sports blog. SB Nation is the network of, by and for fans, and these are the blog posts we make. So we call them FanPosts. When you're at a bar telling someone to check out your online sports opinions, you don't have to suggest they read your diary.

FanPosts are displayed differently on the homepage - we include your avatar to give more credit for the time you spend writing great posts. The new post editor has a WYSIWYG view that provides easy formatting. It also auto-saves drafts so you don't have to worry about losing your work when you compose a post within the web browser. And you can now associate teams, players and games with your posts: these tools promote your FanPosts on our new team, player and game pages - across the entire network.

The new system does not work like the old diary editor. For example, in HTML mode the new editor doesn't auto-create a new paragraph from two line breaks. But it does offer a whole array of new features. Look for the blinking help button on the right side of the FanPost editor for quick tips, and take a look at our full guide to writing FanPosts on the new platform.

IMPORTANT - if you write your posts in Microsoft Word or some other off-line editor, you will get the most reliable behavior if you cut & paste your post into the HTML view of the FanPost editor. And if you do that, remember to wrap <p></p> tags around each paragraph so your text doesn't run together.

Visual Redesign

This one is probably the most obvious change of all. Like other major websites working to improve readability for their audience, we've adopted a fixed-width layout optimized for the 1024 x 768 resolution used by the majority of Hockey Wilderness and SB Nation network users. Use the switcher below the user menu if you prefer the wider layout designed for 1280 monitors. We've introduced a top navigation bar with quick links into old and new sections of the site. We also polished a few edges, made some things larger, others smaller and moved a few boxes here and there. More changes and adjustments to come.

Search

We've completely replaced the old search engine with a new one. We're excited to make it easier to find old posts and comments, but we've only taken our first pass on the tools we're offering. We're focused on making search even better than what you had before, so please know that we're aware search is missing key features and we're working on it.

What's New

Schedule, Scores, Stats and Roster

Hockey Wilderness now has all the basic information about the Minnesota Wild and hundreds of other teams. During games you'll see a regularly updated line score, and as the season progresses we'll track team stat totals and leaders. This is just our first step, so look for us to publish more detailed and archival stats in the future. The best part about all this sports data is that we've integrated it directly into the blog so. We now have special pages that aggregate all blog posts written about games, players and teams.

Recommending FanPosts

Some writing deserves more attention and more conversation. If you want to bump a FanPost up to the top and keep it there for awhile, just click the 'Rec' link under the body of the post. When a FanPost receives enough recommendations it will make the recommended list.

Auto-refreshing Comments

You no longer need to refresh the page to see new comments. If you're logged in, new comments will automatically appear on the page every few seconds. When you post a comment, the page will not refresh either. If you want to quickly cycle through all the new comments, you can press the C key on your keyboard. Unmark a new comment after you've read it with the X key. And use the Z key if you want to umark comments as you're cycling through them.

As you use these shortcuts to cycle through comments, press the R key to reply to the current comment. All these helpful keyboard shortcuts are listed at the top of each comments section for reference.

Recommending Comments

Now you can reward those folks who take the time to look up stats and make smart arguments in the comments. Next to each comment there is an 'actions' link that you can click to find the recommend and flag options.

Flagging Comments

To help the moderators on a site, we've built-in tools that let you flag comments that are spam, trolling or just plain inappropriate. Only moderators can see those flags.

FanShots

Many members of the community just want to post that one link, video, photo or quote, but don't need a full FanPost. We've got you covered: FanShots let you share YouTube videos, Flickr or PhotoBucket photos, quotes from articles, portions of chat transcripts, top 5 lists and simple links. If it's a video or image we'll put a thumbnail on the homepage when you post it.

For those of you who are experienced internet hunter-gatherers of Minnesota Wild material, install the bookmarklet onto the links bar of your browser and share FanShots with the community from wherever on the web you find that killer quote or photo.

Archives

It's much easier to find that post about a certain deadline trade or prospect retro feature. You can browse by year and month.

Avatars

Upload an image so folks can see your custom avatar on your profile, your FanPosts, and all your comments.

Network Profiles

Now that we have unified SB Nation network accounts, your profile will be your central hub for all of your activity on any blogs where you are a member.

Network bar

The top bar stays with you on all SB Nation blogs. It's a quick way to login and logout. When you're logged in, you'll see your avatar and screen name which links to your profile. The icon to the right leads to your Dashboard area where you can edit your settings, profile, account details and any FanPosts or FanShots you've published. As we add more blogs to the new SB Nation network, the My Blogs menu will be a handy way to navigate between the blogs you've joined.

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There are plenty more small changes and additions we've made, so please take a careful look around and explore this new system. We appreciate your patience and hope you'll help us improve the new platform for this and all the other SB Nation blogs.

And in case you missed it, you'll want to start by claiming your old blog accounts and creating a new SB Nation network account.

Ever wanted to know all of the players' nicknames? Well, I searched and found them all!

Continue reading this post »

Wow, Brent Burns has been on fire lately with his two game winners last weekend. Kind of surprising, given Lemaire's coaching style.  If he can be consistent with it, it could really help to push some of the other guys to work that hard.  He's so quick!  With the game against the Vancouver Canucks tonight, I'm hoping that we get to see a little more of this great energy tonight!

Despite criticism and shortened playing time from coach Jacques Lemaire, Marian Gaborik has been showered with yet more accolades from the NHL. Gaborik was named the "First Star" out of three NHL stars of the week a few weeks back. Gaborik posted eight points and a +9 rating in the Wild’s three wins in four games week.

Part of the reason the NHL took notice of Gaborik’s play could be because the Wild played the Detroit Red Wings on January 10 and somehow managed to beat them in Detroit. Rarely do the Detroit Red Wings lose, much less lose at home, and Gaborik was a big part of it, scoring the winning goal in the shootout. Getting Minnesota Wild tickets only gets more difficult as the Wild’s play improves and Marian Gaborik becomes more nationally recognized as an NHL superstar. Luckily, you can still get Wild tickets here.

It was sure nice to have the Boogy Man back on the ice.  I went to the Wild vs. Ducks game on Friday partially because I hoped that Boogard would dish out some heavy retribution on May for his sucker punch during last year’s playoff series between the two teams.  Unfortunately, that never transpired but it was still nice to see him patrolling the ice on the look out for anyone taking liberties with Gaborik and the rest of the skill players of the Wild.  The interesting thing was that he actually got some decent ice time and had a few scoring opportunities.  I wish that Lemaire would put him on the power play to post up in front of the net.  Who knows, he might actually score some goals.

The big question early on in this season has been who will end up playing betwixt Marian Gaborik and Pavol Demitra.  Early on Jacques Lemaire has switched it up quite a bit, especially with Walz sitting out a game with an injury.

So I looked at the NHL Head-to-Head Ice Time tool to get an idea of who has been playing with this line.  The results below are the percentage of his ice time that Marian Gaborik has shared with the other Wild forwards through the first three games:

Demitra -- 81.4%
Walz -- 37.2%
Parrish -- 36.2%
Koivu -- 13.6%
Moore -- 7.9%
Veilleux -- 7.6%
Sheppard -- 4.5%
Belanger -- 3.7%
Rolston -- 3.3%
Radivojevic -- 3.3%
Boogaard -- 1.4%
Bouchard -- 0.8%

Walz is clearly the frontrunner considering that he missed one game and still is in the lead, but Parrish, Koivu, and Sheppard have also seen some significant time.  I'll try to update this for a while until Lemaire settles on somebody (if he ever does).

hey everyone,

i've just stopped by to give everyone a peak at a new hockey blog i'm a part of over at www.hockeynerds.com.

hockeynerds aims to just give an outlook on all the teams in the national hockey from a bunch of average joes who don't have a whole lot better to do than talk hockey.

the site is still void of a minnesota wild blogger so if that's something you'd be interested in, why not apply to become a nerd with the link at the top of the page.

if blogging isn't your thing, at least join the forums and support your wild, because so far they're pretty alone on that board.

if you check it out, thanks a lot for the support. and if not... well then, have a good day :P

http://www.hockeynerds.com