Last night in St. Paul the Wild told us all the very sad tale that they just don't have what it takes to be playoff contenders. They played a very uninspired lack luster game like they were on cruise control and the two points did not matter to them at all.
Winning teams have clearly defined leaders and they not only show up night in and night out, but they also are front and center taking the blame when their team is not playing up to the expected standard. The best leaders also hold closed door meetings with all players present and take care of internal issues themselves, so that they do not infect the team's play on the ice.
The 2015-16 Minnesota Wild have an extreme lack of leadership from a player standpoint. Zach Parise, Ryan Suter, and Mikko Koivu have come up very small in the leadership department both individually and as a collective unit. Not one of them stepped up and accepted their part in Mike Yeo's dismissal. It was not all Mike Yeo, the players have to share in the responsibility that they too played a significant role in getting the team into the predicament that ultimately caused Yeo to be fired.
Last night I watched a Wild team go through the motions as if it was a lazy back end of a back to back in early October, instead of a must win home game after three days off, against a team that the Wild have historically dominated. Darcy Kuemper played well between the pipes and made some spectacular saves, but the eventual game winning goal is a shot that must be stopped. Good goaltending is a staple of contending teams. The great teams know that their goaltender is a rock and they know he has their back and will make all the saves that he is supposed to make. That trust allows the players to do what they need to do to create the offense to give them the best opportunity to win the game. In the key moments of the game when the game is on the line, the great goalies do not let any soft goals leak through them, as Kuemper did last night.
Last night there was another game being played that had just the same playoff ramifications as did the Wild game. That game was the Red Wings hosting the Winnipeg Jets. The Wings had dropped their previous three games and have the pesky Philadelphia Flyers breathing down there neck just two points behind with a game in hand heading into last night's game.
The Jets jumped out to a 2-0 lead after the first period. So here are the Wings facing a non-playoff team at home, down 2-0, having lost three in a row. They could very easily have let doubt start to creep into their minds, and say, maybe this is where the 24 year playoff streak ends. Not the Red Wings, they have a culture of winning that has been passed down from great leaders like Yzerman and Lidstrom, to Datsyuk and Zetterberg just to name a few. That culture is what has made this version of the Red Wings a playoff team, because they are far from the ultra talented teams that were winning Cups in the late 90s and into the 2000s. That leadership is what ultimately turned a 2-0 game after 1 into a 2-2 game after 2 and a 3-2 Red Wings win in the end.
Winning in the NHL is a culture and it must be built and cultivated from the top of the organization down. It is about everyone pulling their own weight and rising above their own level of expectation. Winning starts in the locker room and translates onto the ice where the games are won.
It is time for a culture change in Minnesota.
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