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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 host, Miki, and it has been a few days since I have released a podcast.
I had kids homesick, and it's really hard to record because my husband had to work, and the studio is in his office.
So anyway, here we are.
This might be a little shorter, mostly because the last game was the Stars game in Dallas.
And...
We all know how that went.
Just generally, I literally, in my notes, I wrote stars, and then I wrote a frowny face.
That's just how I feel.
I mean, everyone was so excited going in.
It was Jesper Wallstead's first NHL game.
And while I understand the thinking behind putting him in,
You know, at the same time, it's like, why?
Why did they throw him into that situation?
But even beyond that, even like Rock Faber wasn't playing his best, but even he was like the only one doing anything.
He broke his stick when he was on the bench.
I mean, he just looked, he would just look so upset.
So I'm recording this on Friday tonight.
The Wild are playing.
I just talked to my brother about this.
Arizona's tomorrow.
Islanders are next week.
Flyers.
Tonight's the Flyers.
So, you know, I tonight we have Flurry in that.
And it looks like Gustafson might be back soon.
So tomorrow it could be Gustafson if he's back.
Or, you know, I'm kind of hoping that they'll give Volstead a game at home and kind of give him that experience because he deserves that.
You know, he deserves to like have that home crowd cheering because then Gustafson could always come back and play on Monday.
But we are sliding into the second half of the hockey season here.
and the wild are towards the bottom.
Uh, and I am, you know, rose colored glasses and I will always, you know, I will fully admit that, but I feel like the wild can still reach a playoff spot if they are really buckled on and work for it.
Um, part, you know, partially these injuries have just not helped.
Um, you know, they were playing great when John Hines came back, came in, they, uh,
what were like 11 and three under him for a while.
And then all these injuries are happening and it's like, they were able to kind of hold it together for a while.
And then it just, it has just not been great.
So I'm hoping that Wally will get a game at home because he deserves that.
Anyway, this Dallas game was really weird because you know what, for the first two periods and even a little bit at the beginning of the third, um,
Even though they weren't playing great, the Wild could have come back.
They could have gotten further into the game.
At the beginning of the game, you had this weird eight-minute span of time where there's no whistles.
They just back and forth and back and forth.
And then there was the two-minute delayed penalty.
They blew the whistle, delayed.
Dallas was able to keep it away from the Wild for two full minutes.
And I felt really bad for the ref because he has his arm up the entire time.
the entire two minutes and while i'm sure that i could sit here and hold my arm up for two minutes i think it would get really tiring when you're skating around and doing it all at the same time i also uh i don't know but i wonder like can he switch arms you know like is there a specific arm and can he switch you know so if this one gets tired can you switch to the left i don't know the answer i may have to look that up
And then I would say, you know, the Dallas scores and then Heinz challenges for offsides and wins.
That means we are three for three coaches challenges.
We all remember last year, Portie and Everson would challenge so many things.
And I don't think he ever succeeded.
Maybe, maybe once, but it was just ridiculous.
So after two periods, Wilder down 3-0.
And that, you know, really sucks.
You can see they're not playing well.
But at the same time, that score, 3-0, that score is not, you know, a huge difference.
And then a little while into the third period, Boldy scores, making it 3-1.
And at that point, it's kind of like, okay, you know, the Wild could really just put on the jets and go.
But they didn't.
We all know they didn't.
So I'm done talking about that because it just makes me sad.
But I do want to talk a little bit more about Walston.
First of all, let's be very, very clear that that Dallas game was not his fault.
That baby goalie was thrown to the Sharks and nobody was helping.
You know, Brock Faber was doing his darndest, but
Even he was not playing great.
I don't know what was going on.
I don't know why.
But you know what?
He tried his hardest.
His parents are in North America now.
His dad was in Dallas.
And his dad's a goalie coach.
And I felt so bad for him having to sit and watch his son lose in that game.
I almost think it's better that his mom...
wasn't able to make it to Dallas, something about she had visa trouble or something.
So she had to go to she went straight to Minneapolis.
But, you know, just because I as a mom.
I don't know if I could sit and watch that, you know, I don't know if I could watch my my baby.
But it's kind of cool.
He is the youngest goalie in the NHL this season.
He just turned 21, I believe, and maybe 20.
He's young, which is funny because he is currently paired with Marc-Andre Fleury, who is the oldest goalie in the league.
And apparently this is only like the third time that this has happened since the expansion draft, where one team has both ends of the spectrum.
And I am really glad that he has Fleury because even though their goaltending styles are different,
Fleury just has such a wealth of knowledge and is happy to help.
And I think that is just so invaluable for Wallstead.
One thing I did notice is Wallstead looks huge in the net.
And I don't think he's actually that much bigger than, you know, Fleury or Gustafson.
But for some reason, he just looks like, you know, the Great Wall of St.
Paul.
Oh, and I do think it's also cool that he's the first Swedish goalie to be taken in the first round.
That's kind of a cool fact.
I am really excited.
I know he's going to be going back down to Iowa soon, but I love that we got to see him for a little while.
I love that he got to come up and have some experience.
And you know what?
He's not ready for his NHL, like a full time NHL job.
And nothing to do with him.
It's his age.
He just needs more development.
And it seems like a lot of goalies, they don't really come into the league young anymore.
I mean, Fleury came in at 18, and that is pretty much unheard of now.
it seems like all goalies kind of need a couple of years in the AHL more, more than other positions do.
So, you know, it seems like 24, 25, it's kind of that sweet spot for age for when they come in and are really like hitting their stride.
Like look at Gustafson.
That's kind of what happened with him.
You know, he was, he's mid twenties.
I mean, I think he's getting late twenties now, but he, this is when he's hitting his stride is right now.
So I think when he gets sent back down, I hope that fans are not upset about that, because first of all, there's nothing else you can do.
Second of all, we have two good goalies and, you know, everyone knows that this is temporary right now.
So we just need to kind of.
Kind of go with it.
But speaking of injuries and temporary, it seems that Jonas Brodine, Kirill Kaprizov and Philip Gustafson all skated this morning.
They're not playing tonight, but they have a possibility of playing Saturday or even if not, then there's another game on Monday.
So we are going to see some of these some of these cracks being filled back in.
And, you know, I am hoping that.
That will help some things, you know, because at this point, what else do you do?
You know, people are joking like, oh, well, you get another coach because that worked the first time.
And obviously you can't do that, but they've tried a lot of things and there's just not much they can do.
So moving on, this is kind of a shorter one.
Yeah, I'm at 10 minutes right now.
That's OK.
Future considerations in a bag of pucks.
First of all, one thing I said this.
week on social media is that it's always really fun to watch a trade that came out of nowhere, just like completely out of left field, as long as it doesn't have to do with your team.
So, of course, I am talking about the Drysdale trade to the Flyers for Cutter Godier.
And I believe they also got a draft pick.
something like that.
But first of all, that whole situation was crazy.
And you know what?
I don't blame the kid for not wanting to play on the Flyers.
And I think people need to realize that he is a young kid, basically still a child.
And he does have the ability to make decisions in his life.
If he doesn't want to play in Philadelphia, he doesn't want to play.
And I don't... People are just getting so up in arms about it.
The only thing that I do think was that he did wrong is when he was at World Juniors and...
The Flyers had sent a couple of guys from the organization, basically, to talk to him.
And he flat out refused to even see them or his agents or anybody.
I feel like at that point, you at least need to talk to them.
That was my one beef with this whole thing.
Everything else, you know what?
I don't know.
But Drysdale being traded for him...
I am actually really surprised that Anaheim was willing to part with Drysdale.
He felt like a big, such a big part of their team.
And I'm going to be honest, I do not watch Anaheim.
So I might be somewhat off base, but I just got this idea that, you know, they have a
rebuilding around, I assumed, you know, and I'm talking about Zegras, I'm talking about McTavish, I'm talking about Drysdale, you know, and it seems like, okay, they've got them, they can kind of build around them.
so for them to part with Drysdale, it was just something that I didn't understand, but talking with my brother this morning, he's thinking that, you know, maybe now that we've seen this Drysdale trade, um, maybe they will start getting rid of other, you know, try to get more assets in, uh, trade Zegras possibly, and just get more draft picks, get someone else, you know, I don't know.
It was, uh,
It was entertaining.
The other thing, we're still on the topic of trades.
I have seen so many batty claims about Ek being traded.
And I'm not I mean, and some of them were just like hypothetical.
I get it.
But as I have said, Bill Guerin would sell his own children, I think, before he got rid of Jewel Erickson.
I think that you would have to pry out of, you know, his cold, dead fingers before he would let him go anywhere.
And.
I don't really get into the hypothetical trade situations just because I don't know.
I'm not an expert on that.
I don't know what you would have to trade for who and what team and all that.
But just the fact that some people are taking it seriously is concerning.
Folks, there are some players on the Wild right now that could definitely be targeted in a trade.
Duhaime.
doer uh possibly maroon or bogosian or you know like sure they're not gonna trade eric's neck they're just they're not uh but as we are getting guys back from injury i was thinking about some of the ahl players that we have had up here and you know i really do have to give them props because
They, I mean, I feel like the Wild were getting to the point where there weren't a lot of players left in Iowa that could play in NHL.
They're just not ready.
You know, some of the younger guys are just not ready.
I'm thinking like Carson Lambos.
He will be ready at some point, but he just, you know, he's young and he's inexperienced and he needs some more time down there.
So I feel like, you know, he's one.
Who else?
Ryan O'Rourke.
I mean, you know, we were getting to the point where we just...
We're depleting things.
So now being able to send some of them back will be good.
Hunt is still here.
He is a healthy scratch for tonight.
And Mermis is here.
He's playing third pairing, I believe.
Patan and Raska.
No, Patan is benched and Raska is on the fourth line.
So, I mean, we still have quite a few AHL guys, but it'll be nice to kind of start filtering them out and get back our regular guys.
And this morning we were talking about next year.
My brother and I were next year with the wild.
Who do we still have?
Who needs to be signed at the end of this season?
And I hate to tell everybody, but I feel like both the dues are going to be gone.
That was kind of my brother was like, I kind of was like, you need to just realize that because obviously I love the dues and I want to keep them forever.
And honestly, for the most part, I want to keep all of our players forever.
And I know that that is not feasible and or realistic at all.
But I feel like those are going to be pieces that are moved and we will see who else can come up from Iowa and not even just from Iowa.
We've got, you know, Yurov possibly, Ogren.
I always have to stop and think.
Kuznetdinov.
Yes, we've got them coming over.
It just we have options and we're going to need to clear
And actually thinking about past players, the Flyers today are coming and Nick Delorier will be in the lineup.
He was a healthy scratch in their last game, but he will be in the lineup tonight.
And can I just tell you how much I miss D'Lo?
He is just he's such a tough guy and also like such a teddy bear.
And he was just so much fun.
But, you know, obviously we the wild can't keep everybody, especially with their salary cap issues.
And D'Lo got you know what?
He got a good deal in Philadelphia.
So I was happy for him to be able to get, you know, a little bit higher of pay a couple of years on the contract instead of just a one year.
So good for him.
All right.
I'm just rambling.
The last thing I did want to say is that the PWHL Minnesota team is doing awesome.
They are 3-0 right now.
They lead the
Women's League.
And I know that, you know, there's only, what, six teams, but they are so far undefeated.
And that is really fun.
They played a game on, I think it was Tuesday or Wednesday night this past week, and they still managed to pull in 5,000 people.
And I'm just going to say that is such a great start.
That's a weekday night.
You know, people are, oh, women's hockey, it's not going to take off.
You know what?
They drew in 5,000 people, plus people watching at home.
So I am really excited.
I'm hoping to kind of to cover more of the PWHL soon because I am enjoying watching it and I know other people are too.
So look for some of that starting soon.
But until then, I just want to say that you are all hockey beauties.
We are all Hawkgirls in this club.
We love hockey.
Ramble, ramble.
Okay, until next time, I am Mickey and I will see you.