Wild----lack of leadership??

[lungdeflator]

I keep thinking of this inability to get past Chicago. Three years in a row now. At the beginning of this year I thought they would go deep in the playoffs, if not to the finals. Then after their run at after the all-star break and beating the Blues in round 1, I thought for sure this was the year to get past the Hawks.

Why can't they do it? Is it lack of experience from the young guys?

After thinking about it, it seems like it is more lack of leadership from the captains and head coach more than anything. When Koivu is off his game a little, he usually can win some faceoffs to contibute a little bit. If I remember right, he had a terrible series against the Hawks, faceoffs included. Parise and Suter seemed to have little to no impact as well. When we pay all 3 of those guys what we are, shouldn't they be the ones stepping up and saying "We will not get swept by the Hawks"? Shouldn't they be demonstrating that they want to beat the Hawks with their play on the ice, hence encouraging the younger guys to do follow suit?

Yeo also seems like he lacks some leadership at times. And the second round of the playoffs against the Hawks is not a time to lack. He seems too soft for the older players like Koivu. I don't care if he is the captain or not, sometimes a message needs to be sent, sit him down. If only for a period, he will probably get the message. Yeo seemed like he didn't want to make the moves to russle up some energy or fire from the team.

Maybe I don't know anything and am grasping for reasons that make sense for the 3 year Blackhawks stonewall. BUT....this is the same coach and same 3 guys that are the CORE of the team for the last 3 years. The team has changed around them, but how can the team beat the Hawks when the 4 core guys are afraid of them?

[CaptainMusky]

I think far too many people criticize what the wild were not able to do but don't give credit to what the hawks have done. They are battle tested. I believe the wild have 10 guys under 25 in the lineup. Hawks had 4. Experience is key and they have lots of it.

[bobberineyes]

I don't think it mattered how the hawk series went,we just don't have the experience AND leadership in our lineup to go deep. Top to bottom we might be deep on paper but we have lots of holes that needs to be filled. Watching how the other teams control the puck and play is a night and day difference. Me,I would give yo yo one more crack.....then send him packing.

[bbfenatic]

When it comes to playoff time there is no doubt the leaders and vets need to step up and carry the load ours did not, the younger players need to at least play up to their capability and few did, and your goalie has to play better than he did during the regular season and Dubs did not....and probably could not as he was out of his head to get us into the playoffs.

IMO unless the youngsters really need to make huge strides going into next season and/or we shake up the lineup or we are not going very far again...I said it before many times and I will say it again...when you go down the lineups vs other upper level teams player for player we just don't stack up....yet. I do think we have some great young talent but they need to be surrounded by excellent leaders/vets. If anyone needs to look in the mirror and step up up big time next year it is Suter, he was lacking is every aspect of his game IMO.

One more observation...might be time to get rid of as much of the avg older talent we can...get younger than we even are today and ride them...IMO the 2-3 year guys might step up better and overall we may get just as far as we have recently but with more excitement and brighter future for the team....just a thought as I don't see a whole lot of value in our vets other than a handful at most. Again Fletch is in a very tough position IMO.

Yeo can stay or leave...personally I don't see him as much of the problem as I used to.

[OnAFly]

Wow, it's been a while since I've been on here.

We played the Hawks game. We didn't get pucks deep when we needed to, we didn't have someone humping Kane's leg every second he was on the ice, our best face-off man suddenly lost his touch.

I was out of the country for all of the Blues series and the first two games of the Hawks series, so I didn't get to see any of that. I did see game 3 of the Hawks series and that pretty much summed up what I heard about the other games. Game 4 wasn't much different.

We have to play a perfect game against the Hawks to win. The Hawks don't have to play a perfect game against us to win. I don't think it's leadership. I think it's guys like Kane, Toews, and Hossa. They don't miss their chances.

[Bear55]

Personally I think we ran out of gas, the 2nd half run took it's toll on the whole team. Everyone looked off against the Hawks.

I will also agree with BB, we lacked serious skill against the Hawks, their high end players have always been better than ours. Suter is great but not eve close to keith on the offensive zone. Parise is also a beast but the Hawks have several guys just as good or better. We just aren't going to get a player of Kane's skill and that is fine but we need to win with depth and consistency. We had that against the Blues but lost it against the Hawks.

I'd give the team we have now (give or take) 2 more season's to get it done, after that it's time to dump some of the vets for younger legs. All the pieces are there, we just need them to mature and gel at the right time of the year. I really thought this might be the year it happens but obviously we weren't ready yet. No reason to be down on them, we looked really good for a long time this season and took out a heck of a good Blues team.

As long as the vets can hold their pace and we see improvement from the kids (not sure we can call them kids much longer) we will be in great shape. Sign Dubs and others to reasonable deals, get off the roller coaster and fix the PP and we will be right back in the hunt next year.

[CaptainMusky]

One of the things that people talk about so much is we have to build this team to beat Chicago. Yeah, they beat us 3 years in a row in the playoffs, but there are many other teams in the Conference that we have to worry about more IMO. Look at Anaheim. In the Conference Finals with a convincing win over the Hawks and right now they are $19M UNDER the cap for next year! That is incredible. They will only get better and they are scary good now.

Hawks have around $5M and we have around $10M. Chuck has some work to do, but its not nearly as much work as the GM from the Hawks. This could be their last chance in all honesty. Their team will be nothing like it is this year IMO based on what they have to sign and the money available.

I agree the leaders need to step up when you look for them to do so. I have a feeling our lineup could be quite different next year and I agree if there is someone we are high on in Iowa, bring them up and lets ride them. That may be the case due to Cap reasons next year. We might not sign some of our Free agents because of the deal we need to pull together for Dubnyk and then we roll with more youth. I am not necessarily opposed to the youth movement, but you have to be very careful because you can hamper development if brought up too soon.

[Bear55]

Yep forget about the Hawks, if you are good enough it doesn't matter who you play or when you play them, just have to get it done. They loaded up this year because they will have some serious cap issues in the future. I have to give the Hawks a ton of credit, they did to us what we did to the Blues, basically shut it down defensively an score back breaking goals, they just did it whole heck of a lot better than us. It also sucked that Crawford found his game in the 2nd round because we could have used a few softies, he owned us last year too. Dubs was not as sharp but clearly not the main reason we lost.

We still have a bright future. Parise, Poms, Vanek, Zucker, & Nino are all capable of 25+ goals next year. If Granlund and Coyle can take that next little step we are going to light people up. I'm also pretty excited to see what Dumba can bring next year.