The Wild salvaged their four game road trip with two straight victories after dropping the first two of the trip in Boston and Toronto. Devan Dubnyk delivered two straight shutouts while the Wild offense has been supplied by Jason Zucker, well the last 6 goals at least.
The impressive part of Zucker's six goals is that 5 of the 6 have come in the third period. Zucker has been clutch and is really turning into the player that Mike Yeo envisioned when he was the Wild bench boss.
If you recall Yeo, used to point out to Zucker, how Zach Parise prepared himself and performed shift in and shift out. He would challenge Zucker telling him that if he could play more like Parise, he would take his game to another level.
I believe that we are seeing the fruits of those discussions and that challenge between Yeo and Zucker. Jason is becoming a real go to player when it comes to crunch time for the Wild, which is exactly what Yeo had envisioned for #16.
The two straight shutouts by Devan Dubnyk are a great sign, especially this last 1-0 win in Philadelphia, where he looked the best we have seen him all season. Dubnyk is tracking the puck better and controlling pucks far better than he had been which is limiting Wild opponents second and third chances.
It is just a couple of wins, but the signs are there, that the Wild are snapping out of the funk and committing to the system as a team. Bruce Boudreau ran the team through a hard practice on Tuesday following the Boston loss, in an effort to get his team to buckle down.
That was originally scheduled to be an optional skate, but Boudreau felt his team needed a wakeup call, and a gut check . The practice was not your typical no pucks skate the team to death, kind of punishment, it was a battle practice designed to get the team back to playing the way they need to in order to win.
Boudreau stated that several of the players expressed to him, that was exactly what the team needed. Bruce went on to say that he had spoken with the leadership group of the team, and that it was no surprise that three hardest workers during that practice were, Koivu, Suter, and Staal.
The league has tightened up and the old adage "on any given night" has never been more prevalent than it is now. Two wins in a row is good, but in order to start the climb up the standings board, the Wild will need to bring that "battle attitude" every night . They have dug themselves a hole, now let's see how they pull together to work their way out.
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