Alright, everyone is going to have to bare with me. As I'm not much of a writer and neither proof read or edit, so expect typos. This is largely a researched stream of thought i'm putting on digital paper for others to see.

I've seen a lot of worry around the interwebs and twittersphere about the Wild's mediocre possession numbers, namely CF%. That like the teams of the past in Colorado and Maple Leafs, the Wild are winning based upon unsustainable PDO. And while there is some truth to that, in that Dubnyk, is playing out of his mind. There is evidence that it's relatively sustainable, and that the Wild are doing it in a way that was largely thought not possible. They are suppressing the hell out of quality shots and scoring attempts. To illustrate this, i'm going to compare this current iteration of the Wild vs our 2014 playoff opponent Colorado, and the 2012-2013 Toronto Maple Leafs. Two teams that made the playoffs with poor Possession numbers, that the coaches/fans defended as being fine because they suppressed quality shots and people were just throwing junk on net. This theory was largely laughed at, discussed as a myth.

First a chart of the relevant numbers i'll be using, all data from corsica.hockey and is 5v5 and score/venue adjusted and i've included their league rank for that season.

I'll go through them one by one.

First, CF%. The one we knew would be bad, because I already said it would be. As you can see Avs and Leafs were awful, while Wild are just mediocre. This will be key to my conclusions.

Now we move onto SC% and SCA/60, and here is where it starts to get surprising if you've only been looking at the raw possession numbers. Simply put, unlike the other teams, the Wild are absolutely crushing it terms of out chancing their opponents. As the subsequent columns show, they are doing that largely by being extremely stingy on allowing Scoring Chances. The other two teams were bottom third in the league in both respects. If you contrast this with their 20th ranked CA/60, its quite stark. I've long suspected Suter due to the number of minutes is more than happy to let you shoot from the outside, but try get to his net and you'll be put on your ass. It seems the rest of the D is following suit. This is evidence you're free to shoot the puck against the Wild, just not from a location you'll generate a scoring chance.

xFSv% is expected Fenwick save percentage, or put it simply the save percentage a goalie should have on unblocked shot attempts. As you can see, the Wild are number 1 in the league. Maple Leafs also show well here, while the Avs are doing Avs things and not doing well. I'm going to tie in the last column. xFsv% is based on a number of things, but shot type and location factor into it. So i'll tie in the final two columns that both the Leafs and Wild are excelling at, average shot distance, which is more evidence that the Wild are keeping things relatively to the outside. So what does this tell us? Basically while Dubnyk is playing awesome, and outperforming even his expected save percentage. If he regressed towards his expected save percentage on unblocked shots, the Wild would still be in a really good place. This is more evidence that the Wild are just not letting people get to positions they can score.

Finally, we've got xGF%. The expected Goals for ratio a team should have based on all their underlying numbers. At 53.86, the Wild SHOULD have the 4th best goal differential in the league, something you can't say for the other teams that thought they weren't allowing Quality Shots. And what do you know, they do. Something you can't say for the other teams on the chart.

Now what does this all mean. The Avalanche we can throw out as purely luck, they are poor across all metrics. The Maple Leafs do show well in expected Save percentage so they were keeping things relatively to the outside, but the shear amount they were out attempted, combined with the fact that they were also awful at generating offense doomed them.

And that's really the key to all of this. The Wild aren't bad offensively. They are average, I didn't post any offensive numbers but they are 16th at SCF/60, 15th in CF/60. They are shooting a bit above their head, and Dubnyk is playing above his head (although not nearly as much as you would think as evidenced by the xFSv%). But if those regressed towards their expected average, the Wild would still win a lot of low scoring, close games. The same can't be said for the other two teams.

To sum it up, it appears the Wild are basically the 2000 Baltimore Ravens of the NHL. They are suffocating any potential scoring chances out of the opponent, and have enough offense to win consistently. Sure we'd all love a Dallas Stars like offense, but i'm more than happy to watch our fantastic mobile D core consistently shut people out of getting scoring chances. The question is, is it sustainable and can you win a cup with this methodology? That's something i'm eager to monitor and find out.

But so far, the Wild are where they should be in the standings