In Which Duhaime Wins a Fight in Florida

In this episode, Mikki compares the back-to-back games in Florida, which is a tale of two teams. She touches on injuries, fights (including Duhaime's massive win!), and off-the-wall merch ideas. She also discusses the Fleury trade rumors.

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Wild vs. Lightning Recap
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Host

HockeySheWrote

Wild Hockey Fan | Cozy Mystery Writer | Mom of 2 | MN Raised | She/Her | Hockey Takes that No One Asked For

What is Her Wild Side Hockey Podcast?

Her Wild Side combines hockey knowledge with a side of vibe checks. The weekly show will have game breakdowns, any topical news about the MN Wild, and fun things going on surrounding Wild's social media. This show aims to be informative while also sparking good conversation about the Wild and hockey in general without having to keep everything serious.

Hello, welcome to Her Wild Side Hockey Podcast.

I am your hostess, Miki, aka HockeySheWrote.

And boy, do we have a lot to talk about today, because the last two days, I'm recording this on Saturday morning, is the tale of two teams.

Both of the teams are named the Minnesota Wild, and both of the games were in Florida.

But somehow...

totally different teams.

It's almost astonishing.

So we're going to jump right in.

We're going to talk about Tampa Bay first.

Now, I will say, for the most part, Wild played great the first and second period.

They really they stuck with Tampa Bay.

They did what they could.

I really enjoyed that John Hines put Dakota Mermis and Damon Hunt in.

And while I know that

Damon Hunt makes a few mistakes here and there.

I feel like he's really improving.

And I do feel like he's a great choice to have in.

Dakota Mermis has done really well and earned his spot.

And it was just nice to see both of them in.

Now, this whole game was, I think the announcers described it as battle hockey.

And I feel like that's kind of what the Wild play all the time.

But they were right.

It was just so back and forth.

And then people were starting to get feisty.

We had Brock Faber, who actually took a cross checking penalty, which is not like him.

But like I said, he was feisty.

Part of it is that Hagel, who he cross-checked, really sold it and kind of flopped so hard that he ended up injuring himself.

I'm not sure if he hit his face on the ice or on his teammate's stick that was in front of him, but the flop was what hurt him and not the cross-check.

So poor Faber has to go over to the box.

And he was so confused.

He does not know what a penalty box is.

And he does not understand because he even had a four minute penalty.

He doesn't understand.

What do you mean?

I'm not going to play for four minutes.

Like Faber does not understand a break.

He does not get a break.

I feel like he's kind of like Capri soft in that instance where they're just like back on the ice.

Like, Nope, I need, I'm back on the ice.

Like I've, I've taken a 10 second, 10 second rest here.

Let's go.

Um, and in this point, I think this is the point in time where the announcers, cause this was on national TV.

The announcers were talking all about how, you know, seven years from now, uh, Faber's probably gonna be the captain of the team.

He's going to play for 15 years in Minnesota for the wild.

And, uh,

Like I was like, oh, that's so great.

I love it.

They're talking about him because you are so right.

Faber is doing amazing and he's definitely going to play here for forever.

At the same time, my brother texts me and he was completely peeved that they did not mention that Faber is from Minnesota.

Like, yeah, they said that he would play for Minnesota and they said that he would be the captain of Minnesota, but they did not mention that he is from Minnesota.

That was apparently just a big sticking point for my brother.

But then the second period, there's this confusing Tampa Bay goal.

I think it was second period.

There's this confusing Tampa Bay goal that the puck basically goes in as someone is stepping onto the ice out of the penalty box.

And they went back and forth for quite a while trying to figure out, is this a power play goal or is this an even strength goal?

And I think it even changed in the app back and forth.

And they did finally say power play goal.

But I mean, it's kind of a good question because, you know, what do you do at that point?

Do you like try to watch a camera of the penalty box and a camera of the goal line and then like see where they intersect?

I don't know.

It was just this very confusing thing.

Instance.

But again, first and second period for the Wild were great.

They go into the third period.

They're down 4-3, but they're within one.

They are doing great.

And then Middleton...

scored a great goal.

He is now at a career high in goals, points, and almost in assists.

I haven't checked after the Florida Panthers game.

He might have beaten that already, too.

But what I love is that he was basically left completely alone in the front of the net.

Like,

The defenders, the lightning players, they're covering Zuccarello.

They're covering Rossi.

They're covering Kaprizov.

And Middleton just skates right up the ice and just right in.

Like, they're just like, oh, Middleton, like he's a stay at home defender.

We don't really have to pay attention to him right now.

Let's focus on the superstars.

And that was a mistake.

I did like that right after that, Kevin Weeks at the desk was talking about how much Minnesota loves Jake Middleton.

And honestly, how can you not love the man?

I've gone on about this before, so I'm not going to stick around in this point very long.

But just not only does he have this great personality, but Middleton has kind of come onto this team and just his play has just he is doing so good.

When he came on the team,

the only thing that I knew when he was traded to Minnesota was just that he was kind of a tough guy tough guy defender doesn't score and look at him now he's playing top minutes he's playing next to you know usually Spurgeon but Spurgeon is out which we'll get to um he has played next to Brody and he's played next to Faber I mean

Minnesota has this reputation of kind of being like almost like a rehab for players, meaning that when they are slumping or maybe not doing so well, a lot of them, they will come to Minnesota and all of a sudden they are just doing great.

Look at Philip Gustafson.

Look at Jake Middleton.

Look at Maroon and Bogosian.

I mean...

It's just I like that Minnesota.

I don't know if it's because people feel comfortable here.

And obviously this isn't for everybody.

It's not like every single person that comes to Minnesota.

This happens to.

I'm thinking of Tyson Jost, which I miss him.

But it's just it's nice to know that maybe they feel so comfortable that they are able to try out new roles like Middleton, trying scoring, you know, and just trying to be more offensive and just doing things that they wouldn't have been comfortable doing somewhere else.

But after that, the whole game went downhill.

And yeah, that was rough.

The end of the game was rough.

So right before the Tampa Bay game, the Minnesota Wild announced that Spurgeon was out for the rest of the season.

So everybody was already in a bad mood.

And then with the way the play went downhill in the third period, it was just like, what is going on?

And I feel really bad for Jared Spurgeon.

He has to have first he's having surgery on his left hip and then four weeks later having back surgery.

Like this poor man.

That's rough.

That is rough.

Either either one of those surgeries would be rough, but having to have both of them, they're saying that he should be back, you know, and good to go before training camp next season.

which is good to hear, but that's still a big loss on the blue line and a big loss with the captain, you know, so they're going to have to have some other, you know, I know that, you know, Foligno steps up.

I know that Zuccarello steps up and they're just going to have to have some other voices in the locker room that make sure to kind of take that role.

There was one confusing point in time here where Michael Rossi scored a goal and the Minnesota wild Twitter page posted it.

With the caption, Coco Chanel.

And I was so utterly confused at first.

I actually went to look up Coco Chanel's Wikipedia page because I was like, I don't think she's from Austria.

Is she?

Because I thought, okay, maybe they were trying to make a reference like that.

Although if they were going to do that, isn't Arnold Schwarzenegger?

austrian you think they go for him that seems like a more likely match anyway she's not um coco is from france uh and also her famous perfume which i was like i don't think it's 23 but maybe she made a 23 perfume no it is number five finally someone explained to me that they call him marco

And once that was pointed out, it seemed like that was just so obvious that I'm not sure why I didn't get that.

But just the initial confusion was just baffling to me.

We also had Freddie Goudreau injured.

So, again, we're kind of we're just on this parade of injuries still because there's even more I'm going to get to in the next game.

But so we had Spurgeon before the game.

Goudreau get hurt during the game.

Yeah.

Um, one thing I'm going to touch on is that between the two Florida games here is that there has been so much speculation about Mark Andre Flory and what is going to happen at the trade deadline.

And I know Bill Guerin is wanting them to make a big push to make the playoffs.

And, you know, I have my rose colored glasses on and I'm going to agree with him.

I think it is doable.

I think they have to really push hard, but it could be doable.

It is possible.

But people are saying, you know, so if they get to the trade deadline and there is not a way to get to a playoff spot.

Would not only would Bill Guerin trade Marc-Andre Fleury, but to trade him, Fleury would have to agree to waive his no trade clause or no move clause.

It's a full no move clause.

And while that's kind of an interesting like thought process.

problem, just to think about where he could go, I'm going to go ahead and just say that I don't think he would waive the no-move clause.

One of the reasons that he signed for two years here in Minnesota is because he was tired of moving his family around, and he didn't want to just do a one-year contract.

He was traded to Minnesota.

He didn't want to have to go to another team after that.

You know, he is 39 years old.

He does not want to be moving around all the time.

But if the right team comes knocking, would he agree to move?

You know, if there is a team that has a young goalie who needs a veteran presence as a tandem...

Fleury's not going to move to be a backup.

He's a backup here.

He likes it.

He's good.

He's not going to move to be a backup somewhere else.

But if there's a young goalie that needs a tandem, would he?

It's an interesting thing.

So I actually wrote an article, and I found five teams that are struggling with goaltending.

And they're teams that are in playoff contention.

So I am going to link that in the show notes.

And if you want to take a look, go ahead.

And like I said, who knows?

But let's move on to the Florida Panthers game.

Because this one is a little happier.

It has its up and downs.

But right off the bat, right off the bat, Marc-Andre Fleury goes behind the net to get a puck.

And Lockwood from the Panthers.

is going around the back of the net, too.

And he ends up clipping Fleury.

Fleury, as Lou Danny was saying on the broadcast, you don't hit a goalie.

So goalies are not prepared to be hit.

You know, other positions, you're going to know that if you're over by the boards, it is possible for you to get hit.

You know that if there's someone coming, it's possible they're going to hit you.

Goalies do not do that because that's not okay.

But Lockwood ends up clipping him.

And Fleury is not expecting it, spun around and goes down.

He looks like he's in pain and he does manage to get up.

So at that point, it was kind of like, OK, great.

But.

OK, this and this collision was a total accident.

I mean, obviously, you know that this kid did not mean to do that.

But at the same time, it's his responsibility to make sure that he doesn't hit the goaltender.

But as soon as he clips Fleury, there's a video from kind of the side angle.

Bogosian raced over, throws all of his stuff down, grabs him in a headlock and starts just wailing on him.

And I am not someone who like, oh, I love violence.

I don't think many people are like that.

But

There was something about the idea that.

No, you do not touch him.

And Bogosian has made a splash here in Minnesota.

He has been a really good presence in the defensive core when we have been losing players left and right.

He's been pretty steady.

He's been and he's been physical, right?

And it's funny because I don't think he's fought anyone so far when he was here.

But I can see why I would not want to go up against Bogosian.

He was just, like, scary.

But, so, Lockwood goes to the penalty box.

He comes out.

They go, you know, I don't think there was a face-off after that.

But he comes out and immediately fights Duhame.

Duhame, when he fights, he usually loses.

I mean, we love you, Duhame, but a lot of times he ends up losing or kind of tying, you know, kind of like, oh, okay, good game.

He beat the tar out of this boy.

Like, this poor kid, he left the game after Duhame wailed on him down to the ice, and he did not come back.

He played 20, like, 26, 36 seconds of the game, and he did not come back.

And in a way, again, I hate to, like, cheer for a fight like that, but, like, Doohim was bringing it.

And then, as if this is not enough, Gajevic had been in the box, comes out, and fights Felido, right?

Because of Lockwood.

Oh, no.

Foligno was in the box.

This is getting so confusing.

Because let me tell you, we're not even halfway through the first period at this point in my notes.

Like, there's just, there's so much going on.

So Foligno had been in the box.

He gets out of the box.

He's skating across to the bench.

And Gajevic was like, hey, let's go.

So Foligno drops the mitts.

They fight.

Foligno turns around and goes right back to the box for another five.

And again, so this is halfway through the first.

We are 10 minutes into this game.

And we have had three fights.

During this time, we also did have Kirill Kaprizov score a power play goal.

Which is nice.

This is the first time that he actually scored a goal since he came back from injury.

And it was like a classic vintage KK97 goal.

So then Minnesota goes on the PK again.

It's a back and forth.

It's been all special teams for the most part.

There's hardly ever any five on five.

So while they are on this PK, they have Marcus Foligno, Brock Faber, and Brandon Duhame all just hanging out in the penalty box.

And it was a little bit like Mama Moose has got her two boys.

She's got the little baby boy, and then she's got the big bro.

And they're all just hanging together.

watching the game from the box.

At one point, then Marcus Johansson goes down with a really crappy hit to the head.

And he left the ice.

He did come back in the third, which was very good to see.

But it was a little scary the way that his head snapped back.

But it was very sweet.

Brandon Duhame

after beating the tar out of another player, was, like, escorting the medic over to JoJo, like, holding the medic's arm, and, like, it was very sweet.

And then he helped escort JoJo back to the bench.

So that was all just... Yeah.

We're in the second period now.

Dewar is hip-checked so hard that he goes head over heels and leaves the ice down the tunnel.

And then, so at this point, the Wild are up 4-1.

Florida decides to pull Bobrovsky out of net because he has let in four goals on only like, I think it was like 12 shots or something.

Just not great.

And then, weirdly enough, at the same exact time, Marc-Andre Fleury leaves the ice.

Now, Anthony LaPanta on the broadcast was joking that this is a the goalies are he's showing solidarity.

It's a show of solidarity for them to both leave.

But there was a lot of what is going on.

Someone was suggesting that maybe they were going to play Flory on Sunday.

They wanted to arrest him.

And it was like, I don't think so.

And unfortunately, he was injured when Lockwood ran into him right at the beginning of the game.

Apparently, he tried to play through it.

He was doing okay.

He looked okay.

But I think at that point, he was just like, I need to be done.

Because if I keep playing, I'm going to injure myself more.

So he pulled himself.

And this is the first time...

Everybody commented this.

All of the announcers, everybody was talking about this is the first time that they have ever seen both goalies switched at once.

And at this point, you know, Gustafson comes in and I was a little worried because he just, you know, he came back from injury and he's had a hard time getting back into the rhythm of it.

And he's even said that, you know, he knows that he's trying.

And at this point, it's just like the wild can't have nice things.

There is just a stream of injuries, you know, so they announced that Flurry is not coming back.

Connor Dewar is not coming back.

And actually, just before I came to record, they recorded, they recorded, they reported that Dewar is on injured reserve and

And he will not be available for a few weeks.

They are recalling Jake Lucchini.

Which good for Lucchini because he did play well when he was up here.

But just another person out.

We have not heard about Fleury.

I do not know if they'll end up having to recall Wallstead or what.

We'll get there, I guess.

So once again, there is another fight.

Lomberg fights Duhame.

for when duhaime fought lockwood and sent him off the ice now this is when there was a really ill-timed interview on bali sports kevin gorg was talking to um a twins player and i i'm sorry i don't follow baseball so i don't know who he is he seemed really nice and he was like certainly saying good things and he was like excited to be at the game and that's great

but this fight is happening.

There's a split screen and there's, there's Kevin Gorg trying to talk to this baseball player.

And then the fight is happening on the other screen.

And so it's small.

You can't quite see what's going on.

And then all of a sudden the wild have two penalties, like not just the fighting.

And then they say there was a medic or a coach on the ice, but then never went back to try and show us who was on the ice.

Or not a medic.

I'm sorry.

Manager.

Manager or coach on the ice.

I still don't know what happened.

Someone was on the ice that wasn't supposed to be.

And I guess we will just never know.

It was just bound to be a mystery.

They're building a mystery.

So the third period starts.

That's right, folks.

We are only through two periods.

There has been so much happening.

Injuries, fights, goals, special teams, galore.

And while they're up 4-2, which is great, Gus is in net, and Florida scores two back-to-back to put them within one.

The score is 5-4.

And I don't know exactly how, but something flipped a switch in Gustafson, and he found his stride.

He was back on his game.

He had an amazing glove save with 48 seconds left of the game.

It looked like a sure goal.

It looked like they were going to tie it up with 48 seconds left.

And Gus was like, no way.

And his glove save was actually the NHL play of the night.

And I was like, yes, because Gustafson has been trying so hard to get back from his injury.

And after Florida scored on him like three times, he found whatever had been missing.

And then just to really put the icing on the cake, Hartman somehow banks the puck off of the boards and straight into the empty net.

6-4.

The Wild win.

Now, this is a completely different Wild team than who played the third period against the Lightning.

At least it seems that way.

It seems that way.

But the stats of this game are crazy.

Florida had 38 shots on goal to Minnesota's 24.

They also were commenting, and this is something that, I mean, it blows my mind.

And I've said Brock Faber is a hockey robot in the best way possible.

Because Faber, he played at the University of Minnesota.

He never ran the power play there.

He never did that.

He stepped into the NHL, and he is running the top power play unit as a rookie and succeeding.

He had three points on the night with three assists.

I know there's been some other areas where he's been slowing down a little bit, probably just because of how much he's had to play and the fatigue.

But he is still...

in third place for points, I think, for rookies.

He's in first place for assists for rookies, and he is just clipping along.

The special teams both had amazing stats, which is not something that has been happening lately.

The PK was 100%.

They killed all four penalties.

And one difference that they pointed out is that Ryan Hartman got a spot back on the penalty kill.

He had not been on the penalty kill for a while.

And, you know, he said that he had just been kind of waiting to be back on there because he, you know, he enjoys it.

And they put... Hines put him on the penalty kill and all the penalties were killed.

So hopefully that has been something that will continue.

But the power play also...

They scored on four out of the five power plays that they had.

That's 83%.

I feel like in the past it's been like 25, 30, like just pathetic power play percentages. 83%.

And then we've got Kirill Kaprizov scored two goals.

So like I said earlier, he had not scored a goal since he came back from injury.

He had a bunch of assists.

So he's still racking up points.

But he had not scored goals.

And he scored two.

Both of them just vintage KK97 looking like himself.

He now has 15 points in the last 10 games.

He has seven goals now and eight assists.

The other goals that he had...

No, those are before the injury.

Sorry, got confused for a minute.

Anyway, the vibes of this game were incredible.

Besides the injuries, which I feel like just a fact of life for the Minnesota Wild now, the vibes were amazing.

In my recap, which I will link below, I'll link both recaps that I wrote below, um,

I gave the highest vibe score that I have given so far for this game against the Panthers.

I mean, it was just off the wall.

Moving on.

So I'm going to close this out pretty soon, but I still have my I have a little short feature considerations in a bag of pucks.

My miscellaneous section.

First of all, I I'm kind of.

I kind of love that the Wild are really leading into this Tarps Off.

They started leading into it last year.

Now they are this year.

They've got a ticket package coming up where you get a shirt that looks like Jake Middleton shirtless.

I would love to shake the hand of whoever thought of making these shirts because it just is so incredibly wacky.

And the fact that they agreed to it was just even better.

I love it.

And then this morning, Nordy, you know, good old mascot Nordy, puts out a video of him shirtless running down the street in the cold.

And this all kind of ties into they dropped another Duke Cannon commercial with Jake Middleton earlier in the week here.

And of course, he has tarps off for the entire commercial.

But my favorite part was a friend of mine on social media posted that they had watched it without sound and they were wondering what in the world was going on because it was basically just shirtless Jake Middleton.

And he was like pointing to hair care products, shaking a salad and then riding a motorcycle.

And again, you know, Middleton, like, we love you in Minnesota.

And I want to update.

I was talking about the Philadelphia Flyers dog mask that they wear for the player of the game afterwards and how it was probably just like a bunch of viruses inside of it.

Someone did clarify that after each time someone wears the mask, they do clean it with a Clorox wipe.

And I both love that they keep it clean and also that they had to come out and announce that.

It just again off the wall.

One more thing is that I am actually really excited.

I have I have mentioned before that I have some merch that I am launching.

I ordered some for myself because I want to see it and wear it before I, you know, really push it.

But I'm so excited.

It is coming this afternoon.

So but I couldn't wait to record this.

So I will have to post a few pictures.

And I will post some pictures and link the merch shop, hopefully this afternoon.

And then all of you can get merch to be part of the Hot Girls Hockey Club.

And join me because we are all beauties.

We're all hot girls loving hockey.

And together we can keep up these positive vibes because, like I said, the highest vibe score last game.

And we are going to keep it up.

So I will see you next time.