A season high six game winning streak, a five game season sweep of the defending Stanley Cup Champs and Wild nemesis Blackhawks, combined with the Avalanche loss last night in St. Louis. The Wild are now in firm control of the eighth and final Western Conference playoff position by five points over Colorado with both teams having five games remaining.
The Wild are looking more like the team that we saw at the beginning of the season and a complete 180 from the team that we sadly got to witness in January and February. So which is the real Wild and just how far can they take this momentum?
Professional sports as a whole is a watered down product due to the money it generates. Salary caps have created parity that is great for teams bottom lines but terrible for producing the best product for the fans. Gone are the days of building a dynasty through strong drafting and shrewd deals. The norm has become managing salary caps and trying to circumvent them in any way possible to give yourself a competitive edge.
That in itself is a topic for another day, but the fact is there is no absolute dominant team, period. That said the team that gets hot, gets great goaltending and timely scoring can make a serious run. A quick look back shows that there have been multiple 8th seeds that have made it to the finals and in 2012 LA Kings (8th in the West) beat the NJ Devils (6th in the East) to win the Cup.
Getting back to the 2015-16 Minnesota Wild. They appear to have righted the ship under John Torchetti. The power play has improved significantly and lately the PK has been much improved after a rocky first few weeks under Torchetti. Devan Dubnyk is playing the way he did down the stretch a year ago and the balanced attack is coming around. Now it is way too early to get giddy about this, but one game at a time the Wild are looking a lot more like a contender than a qualifier.
Winners learn through adversity and adversity comes in many forms. The experiences of 2016 on this Wild team will have a significant impact on just how things end up. The playoffs are firmly in their grasp, no excuses now not to make them reality first.
The Stanley Cup playoffs are the most intense playoff tournament in all of sports and the Cup is by far the single hardest championship to win. It takes 16 wins over two months of just the most intense 60+ minute battles that only the strong can survive. Injuries are always a factor, creating opportunities for surprise performers to rise to the occasion. The team whose players raise their level of compete the most ultimately earn the right to be called champion.
The race for Lord Stanley's Cup will be intense and wide open. Just get in and you have a chance, miss and your prize, you get to watch what you missed out on. Sixteen teams get in and only one gets to hoist the Cup. All sixteen have a shot 8 can beat 1 on both sides, don't let records fool you.