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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 hostess with the mostest Mikki, aka Hockey She Wrote, and I'm coming at you the day after Christmas, so December 26th.
There is still one more day until hockey gets back on track, but I have to say I am glad that the NHL actually takes a holiday break.
You know, I can't imagine having with football.
They play on Thanksgiving.
They play on Christmas.
They play.
You know, I just I feel like I like that they take that time at least to be like, OK, you don't have to travel.
Spend time with your family.
Just a nice little break.
And it's also nice this time because, you know, we've got a few injuries while they're dealing with.
So hopefully this little break might help with that.
This last couple of weeks has been a little strange in my world.
Just everybody is sick.
Every time one of my family members gets healthy, someone else gets sick.
So it's just been like this constant stream.
So my writing, my podcasting, everything's been just a little bit off while I just try and figure everything out.
Now that Christmas is over, that's like one big thing off of my list where I can kind of concentrate a little bit more on writing and all of that, although my kids will be home.
But I wanted to record today because, like I said, we have this little break here.
We come back tomorrow night, Wednesday night.
And I just wanted to talk about kind of where we stand now.
You know, where are the wild at?
How are we doing?
Spoiler alert, we're doing really well.
And just make sure we're all on the same page.
So first of all, I hope everybody had happy holidays, no matter what you celebrate.
Hopefully you had whatever kind of a holiday you would like, whether that's with a ton of people or solitude, which in some cases would have been nice.
But I did have a good holiday.
And we finally told my kids on Christmas Eve that grandma and grandpa are taking...
my two kids, plus my husband and I to Disney world in February.
So they are very excited.
And that's kind of the next big thing on my plate that I need to figure out and plan.
But anyway, so back to hockey, where do we stand now?
You know, it's, it's funny.
I'm thinking back to when I started this podcast and I,
The Wild were just... They were doing horrible.
No one was playing well.
I mean, Marco Rossi and Brock Faber were basically the only ones playing well.
The goalies were not saving anything.
The defense were not defending.
The offense was not putting it in the net.
Like, just...
It felt like nothing was clicking and they traded Calen Addison and then they got Bogo and then they fired Dean Evason.
We've got all this front office stuff going on, which is still kind of going on.
It's not actually solved.
But we are finally at this point.
where the Wild are winning consistently.
Under John Hynes, they have only lost two games.
I can't remember.
I should have looked this up.
But I want to say they've played somewhere between 10 and 12 games with John Hynes as their head coach.
So that's an incredible track record.
And as we think back to a lot of the players that just were not doing well, it's like everyone's starting to pick up.
Everyone is starting to kind of things are clicking.
Lines are clicking.
Defensive pairings are clicking.
We've got, first of all, Kirill Kaprizov.
He is back.
And everybody knew this was going to happen.
Although, again, I read so many people being like, he's a bust.
You guys, Kirill Kaprizov is an absolute superstar.
There is no doubt about it.
Even if he is not playing well, he is an absolute superstar.
And you know what?
He was feeling it.
I mean, you know that it was wearing on him.
He was having a really hard time mentally.
But he's back.
He had two back-to-back overtime winners.
And they were like just beautiful plays, beautiful goals.
The second one was with Johansson, had that amazing pass, and he just put it right in.
Anyway, Kirill is back.
I'm so happy to say that.
And I'm happy because he's just a good guy, you know?
And it's really nice to see him happy and smiling again.
And I believe it was Pat Maroon even mentioned that when he was in kind of the postgame, that it's nice to see Kirill smiling again.
And it really is.
We've also got two goalies that are doing really well now.
You know, for a while they were going back and forth and neither of them were doing well.
Gustavsson started to kind of click again after the Sweden trip slash Thanksgiving.
And he's kind of been back to Vesna form.
And Flower, he's back at it.
He has been...
making the most amazing athletic saves.
And I know sometimes it's kind of hard to watch, you know, it's, it's easier to watch a goalie who has a calmer style like Gustavsson,
But Flower, I mean, he makes saves like that kind of because he wants to.
You know, he wants to put on a good show.
And he does.
So he is only two games away from 1,000 games played and two wins away from passing Patrick Roy on the most wins for a goalie.
That'll be amazing.
And if they line up like that, like...
It really is just like written in the stars, you know, but it's nice to have Fleury back in top form.
And I've been reading more about his, he's kind of accepting this backup goalie position with so much grace.
It's gotta be hard for him because again, he is still in top form.
he is playing well you would never guess if someone had you watch flower and some of his saves and said how old do you think that that goalie is i don't think anyone would say anything over 30. and that man is 39. that man right there is 39.
Um, he just, he deserves the world.
I do think it's hard after this season.
What is he going to do?
Because we've got Gustavsson and then we've got Wallstedt down in Iowa.
And honestly, he is probably ready next year.
He's probably ready to at least take on a backup, a backup position.
But then what do you, what are, where does Fleury go?
Because I don't think he's going to want to be done until he is done.
At the same time, it's nice to retire before you are completely played out.
This is not my decision to make, so I don't know.
But I hope that he's just able to make a decision that he wants.
So let's see what else.
We've still got Brock Faber putting up top minutes.
This kid is playing typically over 30 minutes a night.
There was one in the last four games, there was one that he played 28 minutes and the other three were like 30, 31 and 33.
And I'm going back to my hockey robot stance.
He is just the best.
And obviously, this is not something that can keep up.
This is not like a long-term plan.
But to have him be able to do that, to be in such good shape and take care of himself and be able to play 30 minutes a night while we are still missing two other elite defensemen, that's such an amazing thing to have in the tool belt.
And then the fact that Jake Middleton has really stepped up.
At the beginning of this year, when Spurgeon was out with the preseason injury, they tried a Middleton Faber pairing and I mean, well, Faber was fine, but it just did not work for Middleton.
It just they didn't click whatever.
But they are clicking now and Middleton now is playing, you know, career high minutes and they are just knocking it out of the park.
So then we go back to, but what should we do when Jared Spurgeon and Jonas Brodin are back?
Now with Brodin, we're not going to have to worry about that for a while.
I mean, we know that he has a cast, which I believe probably the beginning of December he got that.
I think they gave him a six to eight week timeline.
So we still have a couple of weeks for him.
Spurgeon is hopefully going to be back soon, which I'll touch on in a minute.
But when they do come back,
The question is, what do we do with the pairings?
If Faber and Middleton are still playing really well together, I think we need to keep those two together.
Unless another pairing is not doing well.
Because right now, I mean, honestly, the defense is not
terrible.
The defense could be worse, and it was earlier in the season.
But I don't think it's fair to immediately split up Faber and Middleton to get Spurgeon back to where he's supposed to be.
As the captain, I think he is going to play wherever they ask him to play.
And no matter what, he's going to play well, because that's just how he is.
So it'll be interesting to kind of see how that plays out.
So like I said, Spurgeon, hopefully he's been listed as day to day.
And it's been one of those things where it's been kind of a game time decision, I think, for most of the last couple of games.
But the Minnesota Wild did reassign Jake Lucchini and Daemon Hunt back to the Iowa Wild on the 23rd, I believe, a couple days ago.
So that could be an indication that Spurgeon might be back.
You know, if we are not having kind of that extra, you know, Hunt was the seventh D-man.
So if we send him back, if Spurgeon goes back in and then Mermis or Merrill would be a nice one to kind of be the extra defensive insurance.
that would be great.
So hopefully that's an indication that Spurgeon is back.
And also reassigning Lucchini is hopefully an indication that Ryan Hartman is back.
I believe his injury was also listed as day-to-day.
So these three days that they had off, if that is just enough for them to just take a breather,
They didn't skate.
They didn't work out.
They didn't, you know, and just take some time and enjoy themselves.
Also, hopefully we can get those two guys back.
Now, we won't know that until tomorrow morning when they do their pregame skate.
So, you know, keep an eye out on that and we'll see kind of where that goes.
And like I was saying, we know that Brodin is going to be out long term.
Same as Zuccarello.
I think especially with I hate to bring up age, but, you know, as you age, you're going to take longer to heal.
That's just how it goes.
That's just biology.
So having Zuccarello with a lingering issue, he's 36 years old.
We need to make sure that he is healed and not try to throw him in early because that could be even worse.
But if we can get at least, like I said, Spurgeon and Hartman, two of them back in, I mean, I think we're really going into the new year in fine form.
And let's see.
What else have we got going on?
Marco Rossi still playing amazingly.
One of the top rookies in the league.
Every time I look, he's basically second in, like, I don't know if it's points, I think, for sure, under Connor Bedard.
And there's kind of this raging, I don't want to say argument, but it kind of is, that Connor Bedard is a shoe-in for the Calder, and no one else should even really get a look.
No one should vote for anybody else but Bedard.
And it was nice to see...
Michael Russo made a comment was basically was like, OK, but who do you think is the better rookie?
You know, Conor Bedard, who puts up a point but is a negative two every night on a losing team.
Or, you know, Brock Faber, who is skating 30 minutes a night and looking like a Norris trophy winner.
And it's an interesting thing.
I think it's really hard when you have these players who are so hyped up.
And don't get me wrong, Connor Bedard is good.
He can score goals.
He scores amazing goals.
At the same time, he's very young.
He's only 18 years old.
He still needs to work on his 200-foot game.
He is not good defensively.
And that will come.
That will absolutely come with time.
But does that mean that he should win the Calder regardless?
I don't think that's a fair assessment.
And I really hope that...
You know, the the writers that vote on all these trophies, I hope that they actually take other rookies into account because, you know, both of the Wilds rookies are just killing it.
They were the glue that held the team together.
And even when everybody else is starting to click now, Boldy, Kirill, they the goalies and they're they're still playing well.
You know, it's like their play did not drop off just because everybody else's was coming back online.
So I think that's where I stand on most things.
That's all my notes.
Like I said, this is going to be a short, a short little thing.
I mean, it's never really a short little thing because I could sit here and ramble about hockey for a long time, but I try not to get off on too many tangents.
Anyway, it'll just be nice to have hockey back because it's always,
Once the season starts, it's hard when there isn't hockey, which is funny because they play every other night.
You think that it would be like, oh, okay, we get one night without it.
But no, you kind of miss it.
I plan my nights around it.
I think especially when we're on a hot streak like we are now, it's hard to not watch it because it's just so exciting.
Although it would be nice to win in regulation.
So I'm hoping that we can kind of like bring that together.
Anyway, I am actually just rambling now.
So I hope all of you out there are keeping the vibes together.
Hot Girl Hockey Club is coming up.
And yeah, keep the vibes good.
You are all amazing hockey beauties.
And together we can give all the positive vibes to the wild and just see where the season goes.
So I'll be back soon.
Bye.