Minnesota Wild: God-awful without Lemaire? Or just unlucky?
by Hawerchuk on Oct 26, 2009 9:15 AM EDT
5 comments
Through nine games (including Friday's game against the St. Louis Blues), the Minnesota Wild have been horrible. At 2-7-0, they're 2nd-last in the NHL, ahead of only Toronto, a team whose failures are well-known. But Minnesota has some new problems: defense. With Jacques Lemaire coaching them, defense has always been a strength, but in their first year without him, they've fallen apart.
Let's put some number on that decline:
|
2009-10 |
2005-09 |
|
|
Save Pct |
886 |
918 |
|
Goals |
3.33 |
2.44 |
|
Shots on Goal |
26.0 |
27.2 |
|
Missed Net |
10.7 |
11.6 |
|
Blocked Shots |
13.1 |
12.1 |
|
|
|
|
|
Total Shots |
53.1 |
53.4 |
Minnesota is giving up fewer shots on goal than they did when Jacques Lemaire was the coach, but those shots are resulting in substantially more goals against. So is this unparalleled in Minnesota's recent history? Not really - over a nine-game stretch, they've posted a save percentage worse than 886 nine times since the lockout. Their worst performance was in games 9 through 17 of the 2007-08 season, when they went 2-7 (like this year) and had an 876 save percentage.
So even with Niklas Backstrom in goal and Jacques Lemaire behind the bench, the Wild still have two or three stretches every season where they're as bad as they've been so far this season. But usually their offense doesn't collapse at the same time, so they win more than two games during their defensive swoon. And it hasn't happened at the beginning of the season before - both bad starts and good starts tend to get magnified because they started from zero.
One last thing to look at - how far away are the shots on goal Minnesota is giving up?
|
2009-10 |
2005-09 |
|
|
Average Shot Length |
32.0 |
35.9 |
In the last four seasons, Minnesota never gave up shots from this close to the goal. The next worst figure was 32.4 feet - during a stretch last year when they went 2-9 in late February and early March to take themselves out of contention for the playoffs. And now they're worse than that, the worst performance Jacques Lemaire's vaunted defensive system put together in four season? I guess the Minnesota Wild are toast...
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This is not encouraging at all. I wonder if it has as much to do with Lemaire as it may have to do with the loss of Gaborik or the style of play of their new players. I know I still miss Lemaire’s postgame inerviews though …
Interesting question. The Wild were very good without Gaborik last year, so it’s probably not his departure that’s an issue. But it’s surprising to see that over the last four years, Lemaire’s team was never so unlucky that their reached this performance low. That says it’s not luck – whether it’s personnel or system that’s to blame is unclear.
I'm starting to wonder if Burnsie hasn't quite recovered from his concussion
Or, at least has some permenant damange of which he is suffering? I’m serious, he doesn’t seem to be himself for more than 3 or 4 sequences a game. Of course, he isn’t guilty alone, as stalwarts like Johnsson and Schultz have also been AWOL.
The problem this year, much more than system, has been fundamental mistakes, IMHO. Primarily, turnovers, and the terrible resolute consequences that have seemed to stem from them of recent. Thank God for Backstrom or it would be much, MUCH worse.
Interesting stats above, but the sample size is too small for 09-10 for me to be convinced of anything, yet. Yes, there are problems, but I think I’ve got to give it more time.
Let's Go Wild!
I’m unconvinced that the Wild are any worse than they were last season as a team (although your figures strongly suggest that they may be worse defensively).
For example, in terms of scoring chances over the first ten games (I’ve yet to score the latest two games against Chicago and Nashville), the Wild had 158 scoring chances for and 162 scoring chances against. This corresponds quite closely to the team’s shot for/against totals over the same period (293 SF, 287 SA).
In other words, they appear to be an average-ish team in terms of the underlying numbers. I’d say that there’s a reasonably good chance that they turn it around.
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