Wild coach John Hynes critiques the team's mental approach after a loss, stressing victory isn't guaranteed and demanding a shift in their winning mentality.
ST. PAUL, Minn. — John Hynes did not sound like a coach frustrated by one bad bounce or a single mistake.
Instead, the head coach pointed to something deeper after the loss. The team’s mentality.
“The way I see it is like I talked about, it’s mentality,” Hynes said. “But at the end of the day, winning is not inevitable.”
Hynes believes the Wild are at their best when they commit to a specific identity. Direct hockey, strong defense, and an edge that makes them difficult to play against.
When that slips, the results follow.
“There’s a process you have to go through to win, and there’s a style of game that every team has an identity and every team has a style that they need to play and when you don’t do that, then you leave yourself vulnerable to get beat,” Hynes said.
It was not a good start for Minnesota. Only two shots in the first period to the Flyers' ten. It just seemed like the Wild were being too cute and trying to be fancy.
“We think we’re just going to come out and win a game because we think we have a good team. But we’re not a team that can come out and play perimeter, that tries to pass the puck into the net, isn’t stingy defensively, doesn’t play direct, and I think you see the result of that. And when we play a certain style and when we have that commitment, we’re one of the top teams in the league.”
Essentially, the Wild cannot afford to drift into a perimeter style of play that relies on skill alone. Thursday's game proved to be that.
Minnesota made pushes during the night, but Hynes said the urgency and identity the team relies on was not there from the opening puck drop.
“Yep, and that’s a mindset,” Hynes said when asked about the team playing down to opponents. “That’s something that we addressed in between periods, and I'll certainly address that and work towards that again tomorrow.”
The thing that is weird is the Wild can show up to a big game against the Dallas Stars, Colorado Avalanche, Tampa Bay Lightning, Carolina Hurricanes and the Vegas Golden Knights.
They are 8-3-1 against those teams this season.
Goaltender Jesper Wallstedt said the Wild have shown they can compete with the league’s best teams, but games like this make those results harder to build on. Or, that they don't even matter if you can't beat the teams out of the playoffs.
“Obviously, if you don't take points from these games, the points from the big fight don't matter as much,” Wallstedt said.
“It feels like you do such a good job with playing the top teams, and then you kind of maybe underestimate the teams are, not worse, but lower in the standings. Maybe that's something to take with us.”
Hynes expects the response to come quickly.
“We’ll address that tomorrow, and I’m anticipating that we’re going to have the right mindset,” he said.
"So, to me, we just weren’t mentally where we need to be. Like I said, every game presents different lessons that come out of it but this is one that now needs to be readdressed and we have to understand that winning is not inevitable.”
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