Iowa Wild starting to 'gel at the right time' in improved November

Des Moines — The Iowa Wild have started to find cohesiveness this month.

“It just takes some time,” first-year head coach Brett McLean told The Hockey News Saturday night.

True, indeed. After all, there’s new faces this season both behind the bench and in the lineup. There’s the completely new coaching staff in McLean and assistants Ben Simon and Patrick Dwyer. 

There’s plenty of new faces on the roster both at forward and on the blue line, too, the latter being especially young.

On top of that, because of the Minnesota Wild’s injuries early this season, Iowa has seen more of its players called up than normal and on extended stays.

Captain Dakota Mermis hasn’t played a game yet this season in Iowa. Daemon Hunt has been back and forth between Minnesota and Iowa, and Vinni Lettieri has been up in Minnesota since Oct. 23. 

Sammy Walker also played two games earlier this season in Minnesota, and Nic Petan and Jesper Wallstedt were also absent this past weekend as both accompanied the Wild on their trip to Sweden for the NHL Global Series.

“I think our guys have done a really good job (of) being able to take that responsibility or opportunity and kind of take advantage of it,” veteran forward Jake Lucchini said of the recalls, “and I think that’s been kind of a big key in why we’re having success right now.”

This doesn’t even account for injuries, for example, as Lucchini — one of Iowa’s top scorers with six goals and 11 points — was out of the lineup this past weekend.

So, between all of this, there’s been a lot of adjusting that has had to take place, and there’s been some growing pains.

Iowa went 2-4-1 and was outscored 29-15 in October, where Lucchini said it felt like “it was kind of back and forth.”

“The slow start to the year I’d say a lot of it is on me, too, just — as a new head coach — not maybe knowing what to focus on at the start of the year,” McLean said. “And I think we were trying to institute a whole bunch of new ideas where we should’ve just focused on a few and really locked those down.

“That's more what we're doing now, and we seem to be getting some good results out of that. So I'd put maybe the slow start more on me than on anyone else.”

Iowa has flipped the script in November. The Wild are 4-2-1, have outscored opponents 19-16 and sit third in the Central Division with a 6-6-2 record. Iowa won three games in a row from Nov. 5-11 — the first win streak of the season — before dropping both of its games this weekend to the Rockford IceHogs.

The Wild did extend their point streak to four games Saturday in their 4-3 shootout loss but saw it come to an end in their 3-1 regulation loss Sunday.

But the belief is they’re ready to take a step forward, evidenced by their three wins in a row and four-game point streak over the past two weeks. “It took a little bit of time,” Adam Beckman said, “but I think that we’re kind of heading in the right direction right now.”

Added Lucchini: “I think we’re finally kind of coming together as a team. We know how guys work with each other and things like that — and we’re starting to kind of gel at the right time.”

McLean says it took about 10 games for the coaching staff to find their process, which has coincided with the team’s improved results in November.

“Now we’ve kind of found our groove and our strengths and our weaknesses and who likes to do what,” McLean said. “It just takes a little time to find that and again we feel like we’re starting to find that — and it seems like as we’ve gotten our rhythm as a coaching staff, our team’s kind of gotten in a bit of a rhythm, too.

“It’s funny how that works out. I don’t know if that’s coincidence, or if that’s just probably the way the process works out in most cases.”