ST. PAUL, Minn - The Minnesota Wild (2-1-0) defeated the Los Angeles Kings (1-2-1) on Monday by a score of 4-3 in a shootout. Here is the data I tracked from the Wild's win.
If you want to know what each stat means and why I am tracking these, read here.
Above is the power play data from the Wild's win. They scored three power-play goals in the 4-3 win. Kirill Kaprizov, Matt Boldy and Jared Spurgeon had the goals.
Above is the 5-on-5 data. As you can see, there weren't a lot of shot assists in this game. Only five total after having 12 in the last game.
Monday's game was the second consecutive game where the Wild did not score at 5-on-5. Luckily for them they scored seven power-play goals in that span.
Can they take the power play's shooting mentality and apply it to 5-on-5?
"Yeah, exactly. I think that's what we need," Wild head coach John Hynes said. "The power play, like I said, when you have that much talent on the ice, I think to me, they're so competitive on the puck, and then they do have a shot mentality. They're not overpassing or trying to play a little bit too cute. So that's why the power plays had success. And I think just five-on-five, we got to get a little bit more of that."
Rossi added: "Yeah, it was lacking, maybe. But I think it's important to keep going. We have chances a couple of times, but we just don't grind enough in the down low. Maybe a little more like smarter puck decisions, you know, especially on the wall, when there's a scrum. Don't force plays, maybe, just like a little rim out for a D and just like, try to win the puck battles. That's a huge thing. But overall, I think we can't really focus too much on that. Just keep playing and keep the confidence up."
Above is the data for the Wild's defense pairs and what they allowed and didn't allow off the rush. It is a stat I tracked a bunch of last year but never used. I think it is super important and worth posting. Especially if the Wild keeps switching up the pairs.
Zeev Buium had been with Spurgeon the first two games but played with Zach Bogosian on Monday. That pair allowed four shots off the rush on nine attempts, which was the worst of any pair.
The best pair was Jake Middleton with Spurgeon. They only allowed two shots off the rush on 11 attempts but they did allow a high-danger chance which was one of only two off the rush at 5-on-5 that the Wild allowed.
"I think particularly, I thought we gave up some rush play that we normally don't do; just getting on top of people in the offensive zone when the puck transitions back to our own end," Hynes said before the game on Monday. "We let them skate a little bit too much through the neutral zone without having people above them. I would say that was probably the biggest area that we addressed coming into tonight's game."
Hynes talked about before Monday's game that the goal was to limit chances off the rush. They Wild allowed nine shots off the rush at 5v5 on 31 attempts that I tracked. They were 71% effective when it came to limiting shots off the rush.
It will be interesting to see how things change as the season goes on.
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