WILD HOCKEY!

[schmitty3]

I was at the game tonight. The X was rocking at the end there. Can't think of any other team that would have fans like that when they are that low in the standings this late in the year. Maybe Winnipeg. It was a fun game at the end.

[Bear55]

I didn't see the game, how did Zucker look?

[OnAFly]

I was furious by the end of that. How does FLA not win that game? We were terrible for 2.5 periods! Oh well. Maybe we'll wind up in 4th and get lucky in the lotto.

[OnAFly]

Here we go again. Just when it looks like the Wild could be helping themselves with a nice draft pick, we decide to pick it up with 7 games to go.

We still have the 4th pick, but are 1 point away from having the 7th pick.

[YiGGiN4SLoBS]

Would you expect anything less? You knew we would turn it on after the games became meaningless! Happens alot around here!

[OnAFly]

That's the worst part, it's NOT meaningless!!! We are now getting an OT point which now puts us at least at 7th.

[Bryce]

Good to see Foster still has that boomer of a shot...that he can't get even remotely close to the net.

[Bear55]

Really Wild? REALLY! Come on now you just passed up 3 teams with that shootout win and you are on a 3 game winning streak, time to get back to playing AHL hockey. Or at least NHL hockey that isn't good enough. 3 games to go, lets suck it up and slide up a few spots in the draft.

[schmitty3]

Even though these last few games have been bad for the draft, they have been some great hockey games. First time in a long time i'm actually interested in watching the whole games. They have been really entertaining.

[Bear55]

It did seem like the first line was clicking, they will need to next if we are to actually make the playoffs.

[archerystud]

Hopefully this late "winning" streak will attract a good FA or 2 in the off-season. At this point it's the only thing it can be good for.

[Bear55]

Just read on another site we should win most of the draft tiebrakers with teams because we have a lot of wins in OT or shootouts. So if we tie pts with a bunch of teams we should be ahead of them in the draft, I guess that is something to hope for.

[Musky Buck]

Right on Bear, we sure had some spirited scraps the other night. Will those spill over into our next game with Chicago ? Speaking of Chi-town, you tube with good speakers, Jim Cornelison is by far the best national anthem singer I've ever heard, go check him out but good speakers do it mega justice if you can hear him over the roar of the fans.

[OnAFly]

OK, we are at 79pts and play the #6W Blackhawks tonight and the #7W Coyotes on Saturday.

The two teams just below us are Toronto and Anaheim. Both have 78pts.

ANA plays at #14W Edmonton and at #11W Calgary. Hopefully they win a game.

TOR plays at #11 Tampa and at #15E

If we lose both games and both ANA and TOR win at least one game, we will take the 5th spot. NYI would have to win out and we would have to lose out to make the 4th. It's a good thing we went on a winning streak

[OnAFly]

And the foot shooting continues:

Both TOR and ANA won, but we decided to score with under three minutes left and then win in OT. So, we are back in the same postition. We need to lose, TOR and ANA need to win and we'll be in the 5th draft position.

Right now, depending on who wins and loses, we could end up in the 5th spot or the 9th spot.

[scsavre]

the MN Wild, the hottest team the last 2 weeks.........Well, atleast its fun to watch. We have good prospects, Im not worried about the pick.

We need a few free agents anyway.

[Bran32]

I would rather see this team come together like they have the last few and show that the beginning of the season wasn't a fluke and that they are not that bad!! Maybe this little streak opens up a few free agents eyes!! Gots lot of young talent coming!!

[Bear55]

You are right Bran, as much as I wanted them to pick higher it's not a bad thing the team kind of put things togethter at the end of the year.

We shold still get a very good player at 7, small odds we move up in the lotto but anything can happen.

We have a 4.7% chance to move up in the draft if we win the lotto, an 85.4% chance to pick #7 and 9.9% chance to pick #8. If we win the lotto we can only move up 4 positions so that would have us picking 3.

[OnAFly]

Eric Christianson scoring with 3 minutes to go against Chicago cost us 3 draft positions and gained us absolutely nothing.

[Bear55]

Eric Christianson scoring with 3 minutes to go against Chicago cost us 3 draft positions and gained us absolutely nothing.

Yep it sucks to think about but they also won a pile of games in the behinning of the year they had no business winning. We just have to work with what we have, I have faith in our management to get us a quality player and a little luck never hurts when it comes to drafting guys.

[OnAFly]

CF has done a much, much better job drafting, this is true. I would have like to have that high end guy though. It seems like the odds of a guy making it drop off very quickly as the draft goes on.

[schmitty3]

Anybody seen what Coyle and Phillips are doing in the playoffs? 20 and 21 points in 6 games!

[OnAFly]

I know, I thought it was a typo at first. That's just insane.

[Bear55]

Saw that too, St. Johns might be the best team in the history of the CHL and they are only playing a first round opponent so I don't want to get too crazy excited but it is eye popping to see those kinds of numbers. It should be fun to see what they can doing the rest of the playoffs and of course next year in the AHL/NHL.

[Bear55]

Oilers won the lotto, picking 1st years in a row. They might be scary good in a few years. Lots of young talent.