Scouting Report: Minnesota Wild

Today’s Scouting Report pops out of the Gameday Preview since we have a guest author. Joshua Sargent, the Minnesota Wild Correspondent for NHLHotStove.com lends his severances to give Blues fans the skinny on the Minny.

You can find him on Twitter, @Josh_Sargent.

The Minnesota Wild have a Huge Weekend coming up here versus the St. Louis Blues. Both teams are on the bubble for the playoff race in the West and play a pivotal Home and Home series Friday and Saturday. While the Blues are trying to catch up to the Wild they Wild are looking to gain ground on the rest of the West and solidify a position in the postseason.

Who’s hot? ALL of the Wild Goalies to start, it doesn’t matter who is in net. Since the beginning of January they have posted four shutouts, four one goal games between the three goalies (Niklas Backstrom, Jose Theodore, and Anton Khudobin), and a 2.06 GAA.

As for forwards Martin Havlat, Mikko Koivu, and Matt Cullen have all been on fire with several multi-point games over the last ten. Havlat has 4 goals and 2 assists in the last 7 games. Although Andrew Brunette just played in his 1000^th game it doesn’t look as if he is just going to roll over for anyone. Burno put up 2 goals versus his old team in Colorado last Thursday.

The Wild special teams are not to be over looked. Ranking 7^th in the league and scoring at a 20% clip on the man advantage they defiantly make full use of every opportunity. When down a man they are killing penalties 83% of the time, not to mention that the Wild have not allowed a PP goal in the last 12 opportunities.

The Wild are still missing key forward Guillaume Latendresse who doesn’t look like he will be ready until March at the earliest, but defenseman Marek Zidlicky could be returning to action in the near future. Zidlicky has been out of the lineup since the end of December but is skating with the team. Marco Scandella is still out with a concussion when he was hit in the head January 14^th facing Colorado.

Since the beginning of January the Wild have gone 11-5 winning seven of those games on the road and posting a 3 game home winning streak. If the Wild get an early lead on a team between periods winning is almost a sure thing. When leading after the first period the Wild win at a .773 clip but that is nothing compared to leading going into the third period. Having the lead to start the third period the Wild have NOT LOST in Regulation all season, and have only taken one loss in over time. Taking advantage of this team is no easy task and could be difficult for the Blues, if the Wild get a lead they could find themselves in a deep hole