In Which the Prank War Begins

In this episode, Mikki discusses the Red Wings game, the prank war, and the future of the podcast.

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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.

This is your hostess, Mikki, aka HockeySheWrote on social media.

And it is currently December 27th, which means we are in that very odd space of time between holidays when...

Nobody knows what time it is, what day it is or what's going on.

The only consistency in my life for the most part are the wild games.

And that's the only thing kind of keeping me on track.

I today have thought it's Friday multiple times and have had to remind myself that, no, we do have two nights before the wild play again.

We'll get to that.

First, I wanted to just talk a little bit.

I am loving hanging out with everybody here.

I love the feedback that I get, and I am really excited to kind of expand this in the new year, whatever this is, the podcast, the me talking hockey, the whatever.

And I am...

you know, cause here's the thing for me, hockey is just so important.

Not only, you know, I'm from the state of hockey, hockey is a big thing in my family and was a thing that kind of still unites my family.

Uh, hence why my mom, my dad, me, my sister, my brother all went to the winter classic and, uh, sat around in the negative six with our beer slushies.

But, um,

I just seeing all of these stuff with Taylor Swift and people being upset that Taylor Swift is drawing more fans in.

And that to me is really upsetting because here's the thing.

There are many gateways into sports and we don't need to gatekeep them.

It doesn't need to be.

Wow.

I love the technical aspects of this game.

I'm super into stats.

Because let me tell you, stats are not my thing.

When I'm writing articles, I'm looking for stats and I'm just like my head starts exploding and I'm here for the vibes.

And so I want to create a space where fans can get more of a vibey side of sort of a thing.

And

Sorry, I just broke my husband's keyboard.

Don't tell him anybody, OK?

Some people want a more personal connection, and I want to make sure that we have a space for people that's very

inviting um it's all about inclusion and about connection because i think a lot of other sports have kind of this off um off court off field off whatever personality um they have big personalities i'm thinking of um players like gronk or like uh who's the

the football guy that has the agent the italian agent guy like he big personality we've got you know um lebron james we've had michael jordan like they have personalities that are outside of the sport and that is kind of helping um drive along the other side that's not just the stats and we don't really get that in hockey

I'm not exactly sure why.

And this is not something where I'm like, we need to pry into people's personal lives.

It's just like there are not as many off-ice storylines.

And that can be something that can be really drawing people in and encouraging people to love a sport.

So that's kind of what I'm looking for in this space.

And I don't exactly know how I'm going to grow this, but I am happy to take you all along for the ride.

I do know that we will have some merch and technically it's already available, but I'm not going to push it yet because I want to vet it and I want to show you.

So that is all coming in the new year.

And now we need to move on because last night the Wild played against the Red Wings.

And last meeting, we know that the last time they played the Red Wings, that ended up being the last straw for Dean Evason.

He was fired the next morning.

And I'm still going to say I miss Dean.

I miss his expressions and the way he punches his coaches.

See, that's an off-ice kind of a thing, kind of.

Anyway, so in came John Hynes and coming into this game, they were six and oh on home ice under John Hynes.

So Detroit came in.

They were probably expecting the Minnesota Wild that they played, you know, a month, six weeks ago, however long it's been now.

And that is absolutely not the same team that showed up the wild right away.

They came out swinging and they were like, just wanted everybody to know that they are not the same anymore.

And after the holiday break, now they're starting.

They had Ryan Hartman back in the lineup last night, and they're going to be getting more players back in the lineup soon.

I'm hearing Spurgeon possibly this weekend.

And that's just, you know, they took 38 seconds to score the goal to score the first goal of the game.

38 seconds into the game the wild have scored and they spent most of the rest of that period just dominating the ice was tilted they were just anytime the wings would get out they would just bring them push them right back into their um the wings defensive zone

Now, they did end the first period tied and there were kind of some points where it looked like, OK, the Red Wings are trying to battle back.

We should be careful coming out in the second.

And, you know, they came out in the second.

It's kind of still the same story.

Red Wings are trying while they're really pushing and they went in to one now.

You know, there's this other stat going on where, first of all, when the wild score first so far under Heinz, they have won, I think, all but one.

Again, stats are not my thing, but.

I really should look up these things, but I'm sorry, I just don't.

Anyway, but then they're leading to one after the second period.

The third period, they came out and they were like, we need to say goodnight to the wings, shut the door, and move on.

We need to move on.

So within... Well, first a brinket ties it up.

So two-two.

And the wild are just like, nope.

No.

This is not okay.

We are not going to allow this on home ice.

We are going to do something about it.

So...

They decided to score three goals within the span of two minutes and seven seconds.

We had a Ryan Hartman, we had a Moose goal, and we had a JoJo goal.

Another JoJo goal, by the way, because he scored earlier in the night.

Everybody, it feels like, so all three of these guys, obviously, they spent the beginning of the season struggling in different ways.

And they've kind of found their game at different times.

And Jojo found his game last night because he came out with two goals and an assist.

He was absolutely on fire.

I do not know what lit the fire under him.

And honestly, I don't really care because he was just feeling it.

And I am glad that he's got that spark back now.

And then we did get one more goal from our good old superstar, KK97, Kirill Kaprizov.

And the Wild are now 11 out of 14 under John Hines.

They have won 11 games out of 14.

And thinking back to the beginning of this season, that did not feel attainable.

That did not feel attainable.

But next up, we do have a back-to-back this weekend against the Winnipeg Jets, which is going to be an interesting matchup.

First of all, there are two afternoon games, 1 o'clock, 1 o'clock.

Saturday is in Winnipeg.

Sunday is in St.

Paul.

And I feel like with that kind of a schedule, I feel like the Wild have a slight advantage because the Wild can fly out tomorrow and just have one less day of travel.

or like, you know, a short time between, um, they've only got the in between.

Does that make sense?

It makes sense in my head.

Um,

Anyway, we're going to move on, and maybe someone else who is following my train of thought could perhaps complete it in a message to me.

Thank you.

Anyway, like I said before, Jared Spurgeon is maybe back.

They did reassign Daemon Hunt to Iowa, and that could be for a few reasons.

First of all, Iowa plays tonight.

And they are struggling down there.

They've got quite a few injuries.

And Daemon Hunt has been a healthy scratch for, I want to say, three games in a row now.

And he needs ice time.

He is young and he needs the ice time.

And getting him that, especially with a team that's hurting, is really going to be beneficial to him.

And it could also help that Spurgeon may be returning this weekend.

So between all of that,

Things are looking good for Winnipeg, for us playing Winnipeg.

I do want to say that Moose, he said this line in one of his interviews lately, and they've been using it a lot with promotional stuff, which I absolutely understand.

It's awesome to play here.

Again, state of hockey and the Xcel Center, there is nothing like it.

There's nothing like the roar that goes through the building when the Wilds score.

Everybody is pumped.

Everybody.

And you can just see in some of the celebrations of the players how much they love it and how much they feed off of that energy.

And I feel like that is an important part of the Wild and what they do and how they're doing, especially at home.

I think the fact that while there may have been detractors online,

Nobody really left the bandwagon of the wild.

Nobody jumped off for the most part.

They might have like pretended to jump off, but they're still like hanging on the side because through those losses, people still showed up.

Fans showed up.

They cheered them on even in the most disgusting displays of hockey that I've ever seen.

And now they're,

because of that energy that has continually been there, now the Wild are back and they are winning at home.

Now, here is my final little miscellaneous portion of the podcast, which is Bag of Pucks and future considerations.

I'm going to start off with the biggest off-ice storyline right now for the Wild, which is the prank war that is currently happening between Marc-Andre Fleury and Brandon Duhaime.

First of all, if I was going to pick a fight with somebody, a prank war fight, I would not pick it with Marc-Andre Fleury because he is a master.

And I don't know if Duhaime is just that dumb and stubborn so he doesn't want to give up, or if he maybe perhaps is trying to overtake the role of prankster.

Because we all remember...

The styrofoam peanuts that they the packing peanuts that they stuffed into Duhaime's car and absolutely filled it.

Uh, that video again is one of my favorite.

I'll try and link it in, um, the description in the show notes because he's driving Dewar home.

And so they opened the doors of the car and all the packing peanuts just come spilling out and do him as like, get in the car, get in the car.

Do we get in, get in?

And cause he's all mad.

And Connor Dewar just stood there and like watches them fall out and just was like, makes absolutely no move to get in the car.

He's just like, I am not, I do not want to be a part of this.

But so the prank war, it all started when Brandon Duhaime decided in a between periods interview to about three times reference Marc-Andre Fleury as being 50 and how well he is playing for a 50 year old.

And like, holy moly.

So everyone knew what was going to come.

Nobody knew what the prank would be.

And this prank war is not going to be over anytime soon.

Started with the jacket.

So he came out, Duhaime came out of the game wearing this.

And actually, I mean, he pulled it off.

Fur collar jacket.

It was plaid with no shirt on underneath.

All right.

Okay.

And as someone that I saw on Twitter said, he basically just made him look like a sex machine.

So then we move on because Fleury is not done.

Then last night after the Red Wings game, there's a picture of Brandon Duhaime wearing big fluffy boots.

Unfortunately, he had left his Apple Bottom jeans at home.

He did bring the boots with the fur and he pulled them off.

We did find out this morning in an interview with Lou Nanne that apparently

Not only had Flower given him these boots, but that he had also nailed Duhaime's shoes to the floor.

He was not going to take any chances with this.

So then this morning, they come out for practice.

And now Duhaime says that this is not from him.

But the secret Santa, the flurry secret Santa, purchased a pink cane decorated with flowers to help the old man in the goal.

So at some point, Flower, just an absolute legend who is going to play into it and is just there to have fun, decided to use the cane to play the game.

So now...

You know, I don't know if that's the extent of Duhaime's turn with the prank war or perhaps if Flower, regardless, will will do something else against when they're like in Winnipeg.

I do not know.

But Flower is not someone that you want to mess with because not only is he smart and everybody loves him, he also has lots of money to pay people to help him with pranks.

Or just to pay for the pranks in general.

Now, there was a previous prank that he pulled, I believe when he was on the Knights, where he took all of the furniture out of one of his teammates' rooms and arranged it in the hallway instead.

Everything.

Bed, nightstand, every single thing out of the room.

That is impressive.

To have the time and the people to help you with that, that's impressive.

That says something about him.

Now, that is an ongoing thing that we're going to keep tabs on here at Her Wild Side Hockey Podcast.

So make sure you tune in for all of the behind the scenes on the prank war.

There's a couple of things that have been going on this week.

Three days, two days.

One is that I don't think I talked about the Wild on 7th episode that dropped last week, which two weeks ago, which was with the Wags, the wives of Goligoski and Spurgeon.

And I'm just going to say, first of all, top notch guests, because I have always said it's not that I want to be like friends with the players.

Honestly, I just want to be friends with their wives because they seem like so much freaking fun.

I like it.

It's like FOMO when you see their pictures because you're just like that looks like so much fun.

Now we had Trevor Zegras.

We all know we saw him do the Michigan.

It was good goal.

But what I loved is finding out that previously he had been talking to a young child who was a make a wish child.

And Zegras was her favorite player.

You know, he got her all sorts of stuff, signed all sorts of stuff, talked to her, like all that stuff.

And after the Michigan goal, after that game, he texted her and he said, that was for you.

And just the level of thought and sweetness in that really kind of tamps down on my general dislike of him.

Because I...

To have kind of just that level of, yeah, I'm going to make not only do I do all these things for her already, I'm going to make her her night a little special and I'm going to dedicate that goal to her.

It's a beautiful thing.

Secret Santa is currently happening with the wild, and I'm really hoping we get some more insight into that because Secret Santa is always fun.

Hopefully you've all experienced a good Secret Santa.

I have before.

I've been on the receiving and the giving end of great Secret Santas.

They can be a lot of fun, and I would love to see what this locker room does with it.

We have Kris Letang last night.

Six assists in a game.

Six.

And five in the same period?

It's almost unthinkable.

And I want to say I'm sorry, Islanders fans, because, oh, wow, that was quite a blowout.

But, I mean, I am not a fan of Letang after his whole, like, shtick of shoving the stick up into his own face.

But I'll give him a small amount of leeway to say, nice job.

There was a whole thing with Danil Yurov, who is one of the wild prospects in Russia.

He's playing in the KHL.

I believe he's 19, maybe 20 now.

There was this big to-do on Twitter because one of the Twitter...

handles i don't uh hockey now russia i don't know um follows russian hockey and like gives updates on what russian players are up to apparently yesterday was the deadline for signing contracts is kind of what first came out and so everyone's been watching you're off because originally the plan was for him to come over next summer that's alongside liam ohgren from um sweden

And I'm never going to get this right.

Marat Khusnutdinov. There.

Sometimes I just have to stop and think.

There we go.

All show from Russia.

They were all going to kind of come over together.

But now he's kind of leaning toward resigning in the KHL for one more year.

A lot of people have gotten a little concerned about that.

But I'm going to say,

That he wants to be an NHL player.

He wants to play for the Minnesota Wild because last summer he actually came to rookie camp in St.

Paul.

That is not normal for a KHL player.

Not at all.

Not by a long shot.

Before Kirill Kaprizov came over here, the Wild had no contact with him.

None at all.

They were not allowed contact with him.

So to have Yurov take the initiative to make the first step, keep in contact, and then actually come to Minnesota is such a good sign.

And I think having Kaprizov here is going to help with the other Russian players wanting to come over, feeling more comfortable.

And so Yurov, you know, it's on his way.

But then someone else pointed out, Michael Russo messaged Yurov apparently.

And Yurov said that the deadline yesterday was only for new signings or trades.

And he would simply be re-signing with the club he already plays for.

So that can happen at any time.

And again, he is young.

He's 19, maybe 20.

And that's going to be better for him.

There's not really a spot in Minnesota.

there's always a spot in Iowa, but it's going to probably be better for him to get all of the major ice time that he's been getting in the KHL versus coming to Iowa and maybe not getting as much as he would, or maybe not getting the same quality because this year his, the club that he's on has been giving him really good ice time, really good quality chances.

You know, they have not been healthy, scratching him like,

the club he was with before.

So anyway, there was just a big kerfuffle and we still do not know what Yurov's plans are.

And that's okay because we are not going to panic.

We are going to send out the good vibes to Yurov.

And we're going to just tell him that whenever he makes it over here, we're welcoming him.

Now, the last thing that I'm going to say is

is that I did not go to the open practice this morning, but I have people I follow, friends who post pictures and videos, which is so fun.

And at the end when they were cleaning up the pucks, Brock Faber was just like sitting dejectedly in the net.

Maybe not dejected, but just like he was just like, bleh.

But he's always happy.

And I think I have figured out that Brock Faber is not only a hockey robot, but also a puppy.

He was giving off very tired puppy vibes.

And that's very fitting for him.

I want to say not quite a golden retriever.

I'm not sure what kind.

Oh, that's my dog.

Sorry.

That's my dog.

Anyway, so that's all I have anyway.

Maybe Ralph is mad because I was talking about other dogs.

Sorry, Ralph.

Anyway, so I will see you all after the two Winnipeg games.

And until then, keep up the positive vibes.

You are all beautiful.

You are all part of the Hot Girl Hockey Club.

And I am always glad to have you here.