For the first time ever, the Minnesota Wild have beaten the Utah Mammoth in regulation — which is strange, given that they’re in the same division, meaning they see each other often.
Throughout their six previous meetings, Utah has had the upper hand almost every time, with one shootout loss last season as an outlier. Neither head coach has had a great explanation for it, but the one behind the Wild’s bench seems to have finally figured it out.
It was a 5-0 decision — the worst deficit the Mammoth have seen this season, surpassing their 4-0 loss to the Chicago Blackhawks on March 1. With two such losses in a 10-day span, you might think things are going poorly for the boys in blue and black, but that’s not the case. They secured seven of the eight possible points in the four games between.
“I think we played two really hard periods,” said Mammoth coach André Tourigny after the game. “We fought hard. I think we made two individual mistakes.”
While the fault for a game like this can’t be placed on just one guy, the individual mistakes to which Tourigny was referring may have been Sean Durzi’s pinches. They have cost the Mammoth four goals in the last two games.
For our newer hockey fans, pinching is when a defenseman leaves his post and heads north to try to win the puck back, rather than letting the play come to him. It can pay off in the form of an easy takeaway, but it’s risky because if it doesn’t work, it causes an odd-man rush the other way.
It bit (or should we say “pinched”) Durzi in the butt twice on Monday and twice on Tuesday, with the puck ending up in the Mammoth’s net on each occasion.
It’s not a sign of a bad hockey player, it’s just poor judgement on a case-by-case basis. It’s a simple fix in the sense that Durzi just needs to decide to take less risks. There are, of course, situations where pinching works, but there’s always risk involved.
“Seems like we’ve never had quit in our group, all year,” said associate captain Lawson Crouse. “Obviously, it sucks we gave up one late, but not for the lack of guys trying. We’re trying to do the right things out there. Obviously, tonight it didn’t happen. We’ll learn from it and move on.”
Home cookin’
Like most Minnesota kids, Bobby Brink grew up dreaming of playing for the Wild. That dream came true when the Philadelphia Flyers traded him there ahead of Friday’s trade deadline.
The team was on the road at the time of the trade, so this was his first game at home in front of friends and family. He told ESPN’s Kevin Weekes after the game that the amount of tickets he gave out was “too many to count.”
Unfortunately for him, a high-speed collision with Logan Cooley caused him to leave the game about nine minutes in.
Brink returned just before the end of the first period — and he’s glad he did. Two minutes into the third period, he put a shot past Karel Vejmelka for his first goal in his hometown team’s colors, with all those people there to watch him.
“Felt pretty good. I had chills. It was a special moment,” he said in the interview with ESPN. “... You dream of something like this as a child, coming into these games, hearing the goal song and the fans go crazy. I remember when I was one of them, so it was pretty cool.”
Additionally, Nick Foligno registered an assist on Ryan Hartman’s late goal, giving the former Blackhawks captain his first point as a member of the Wild.
Foligno joined his brother, Marcus Foligno, in Minnesota in a deadline deal. Nick, the elder brother, turns 39 in October, so he didn’t have a ton of time left to play with Marcus. The Blackhawks gave him to the Wild for free to do right by the player.
Marcus Foligno is currently out on a week-to-week basis with a lower-body injury. He last played in the Feb. 27 game against Utah at the Delta Center.