**
When Jack Eichel scored his 19th goal of the season against Minnesota's Devan Dubnyk, it marked a major milestone in Buffalo Sabres history.
Eichel's power play goal was assisted on by Samson Reinhart.
Reinhart's buttery smooth cross-crease sauce had Dale Hawerchuk's autougraph on it. Simply exquisite mitts on these two young stars.
Perfect pass from Sam to Jack for the go-ahead goal. #MINvsBUF pic.twitter.com/k0wRaeSmR5
— Buffalo Sabres (@BuffaloSabres) March 5, 2016
Eichel assisted on Johan Larsson's second period PPG and now has 19 goals and 25 assists this season. Reinhart now has 18 goals and 12 assists this season.
Eichel and Reinhart are now the first Buffalo Sabres rookies to record 30 points or more since Thomas Vanek (48 points) and Jason Pominville (30 points) accomplished the feat in 2005-06.
Fittingly, Vanek and Pominville are on the ice here today.
All things old are new again, eh?
*** Watching the Minnesota Wild take warmups in Buffalo right now leaves me with the feeling the Minnesota are on their way to another early exit from the Stanley Cup Playoffs in the next couple of months.
That is if they even make it to the playoffs.
The Wild are a perennial playoff tease team.
They get you excited with their skilled, talented, all star-laden roster during the regular season, however, when the bullets start flying for real in late April they always seem to fade meekly into the sunset.
The Wild enter this afternoon matinee tied with Colorado and Vancouver for 8th place in the Western Conference standings. All three teams have 70 points.
Typical Wild. Start the season like world beaters. Go into a three month hibernation December through January. Then, fight like Hell to try to earn the eighth seed in the West.
Be careful what you wish for, Wild fan.
Your team will not be upsetting Western superpowers like Chicago, LA, Anaheim, San Jose, and St. Louis in the Stanley Cup playoffs.
Hell, there is no guarantee that the Wild even make the playoffs.
With the veteran core that the Wild boasts of and the impressive cache of future stars already in their roster, its alarming that this team is fighting for it's playoff lives right now.
I'm not impressed with the Wild's 7-3 record in their last 10 games.
That's just a by product of the firing of their long time head coach Mike Yeo. John Torchetti is the interim head coach who is tasked with having to light dynamite sticks under the butts of several Wild millionaires. He's done a good job of getting max effort from players who were withholding their best efforts from Yeo. Wild players are being held to a higher standard of accountability now that their supposed "bad coach" has ben sent to the unemployment line. Truth be told, I like Mike Yeo as a head coach. He's a smart hockey man. He deflected a lot of criticism from his players over the years by placing the onus of his team's at times ho-hum commitment to winning hockey on himself.
In late February, Wild GM fired Yeo with whom he worked in the Pittsburgh Penguins organization for years. The two men were close friends, however, in the end, Yeo had to go because his veteran leaders like Mikko Koivu, Thomas Vanek, Jason Pominville, Ryan Suter, and Zach Parise let him down. Repeatedly.
Let's face it. Firing the coach for "losing the room" is a lot easier than firing multi-millionaires who fail to block shots, give up soft goals, make egregious turnovers in their own end of the rink and don't light the lamp like they are paid handsomely to do on a nightly basis.
To my eyes, the Wild are a great offensive team and a so-so defensive team. They have star players at all key positions but they don't scare you. In other words, I see the Wild as a very easy team to play against. They don't strike fear into the hearts and minds of opponents. They lack gritty, tenacious players in their bottom six forward group and throughout their D corps.
In my opinion, Jamie McGinn would have been a perfect fit for the type of player that the Wild are missing right now. Chuck Fletcher could not convince his good buddy Tim Murray to make a trade for McGinn at Monday's NHL trade deadline. Fletcher also missed out on trading for Florida's gritty scorer Brandon Pirri.
Guess how many Wild players have over 100 hits this season.
Three.
Chris Porter (143), Charlie Coyle (117), Nino Niederreiter (106).
Blocked shots are an issue for the Wild, too.
Jared Spurgeon (130) and Ryan Suter (119) are the only Minnesota player to block more than 100 shots in their 64 games this season.
Minnesota's loss was Anaheim's gain. Bob Murray ran the table and added McGinn and Pirri to an already formidable, mean, big, skilled, intimidating Ducks roster.
The Chicago Blackhawks added sandpapery forward Dale Weise at the trade deadline.
Again, Fletcher swung and missed on a physical forward.
The song remains the same with the Wild:
Hard work beats talent when talent refuses to work hard.
Who will get fired when the Wild miss the playoffs, or make the playoffs and get punted in the first round of the playoffs?
Chuck Fletcher?