Granlund and Coyle Can Take Wild to Next Level - Today's Slapshot
Let’s just get this out of the way at the very beginning: Devan Dubnyk is the biggest key to the Minnesota Wild having a successful 2015-16 campaign. Last season proved that point pretty emphatically. Without him, they were on their way to becoming one of the NHL’s biggest disappointments — a highly paid team that seemed destined to miss the playoffs by a considerable margin. Then they acquired him from Arizona in early January, and he promptly went on a memorable tear that took Minnesota to the postseason as one of the league’s hottest second-half clubs, won him the Masterton Trophy, nearly won him the Vezina and... The goal for the Wild is obviously to make a deep playoff run, and that likely means (finally) finding a way to get past Chicago in a seven-game series. The fact that he’s coming off a year like that just drives the point home. If Zach Parise and Ryan Suter somehow stumble, that would a) be a surprise, given the entirety of their careers to this point and b) probably derail Minnesota’s season in a hurry. At this point, Mike Yeo and everyone else who has watched hockey over the last decade pretty well knows what those two will provide. Parise and Suter delivered their usual efforts last year though — and Dubnyk went on that crazy run — yet the Wild still bowed out earlier than they probably had hoped. Source: www.todaysslapshot.com
