Another day, another blow-out

The Minnesota Wild are now officially slipping into the bottom echelon of the worst teams in the Western Conference. After hoping the Wild would be able to answer Jacques Lemaire's call and step-up their game Tuesday night, they instead played yet another terrible game where there was virtually no passing, defense, or scoring from Minnesota.

It didn't take the Sharks long to get the scoring going for them when Joe Pavelski scored a mere 2 minutes and 39 seconds into the game. The Wild played a decent rest of the first period, not surrendering any more goals and out-shooting the Sharks 10-8 in that period. Unfortunately, that was the end of any hope for the Wild. I have no idea what Lemaire said in between the first and second periods, but it looked like the Wild would have nothing of it. The Sharks came out shooting in the second period and ended up scoring a total of three times in 13 minutes to put the Wild completely out of reach, en route to a 4-1 win.

With the Wild's complete lack of hustle and aggressiveness, it's hard to say when the Wild might snap out of this funk. The can't score goals to save their lives, and they can't play defense to make up for the goal shortage. Two days ago, Jacques Lemaire called out his skill players to tell them they had to step up in a big way if the Wild were to be successful. I don't know if the players had Lemaire's words go in one ear and out the other, or if the simply cannot step up their game enough right now. Through 30 games this season, the Wild are sitting at 16-12-2, just barely good enough for 6th in the Western Conference. In those same 30 games, the so-called "skill" players such as Pavol Demitra, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, and Brian Rolston all have 20 points or less, with Demitra sitting at the bottom with a measly 14. Meanwhile our defense has combined for a +/- of -9, with the ever-disappointing Martin Skoula sitting at -8. Comparing that to a mediocre team like Anaheim whose defensemen are a combined +5, I think we can say the Wild's defense is a little less than stellar. Now I'll be the first to admit that the Wild are definitely hurting without Mikko Koivu. With Koivu out, that shuffles the whole lineup around, forcing Demitra to stray from his normal forward position into the center slot, thus pretty much killing any chance he has of scoring with the way Lemaire plays the center position (never stray past the opposing face off circles). But there is no reason that even without Koivu the Wild should be doing this bad. They have scored 2 goals or less in 4 games in a row, and 16 total games this year. I agree that when Koivu comes back they will score more, but unless they can get Niklas Backstrom his confidence back too, the Wild are stuck in the middle of the tight Western Conference.

From here, Minnesota's schedule does not get any easier. They face the Nashville Predators (11th in Western Conference), the New York Rangers (6th in the Eastern Conference), and the Detroit Red Wings (1st in the Western Conference) all in four days in the middle of December. I wish I had some ideas to throw out that I think would help the Wild, but unfortunately, I'm drawing a blank. The simply need to have every player step up like they were at the beginning of the season and play the game of hockey. The season is more than 1/3 gone, and I would hate to see the Wild keep sliding down the standings with the high expectations that they had going into the season.

The Wild's next game is on Friday night, where they will be facing the hated Anaheim Ducks. This would be a very important win, not only because it would put them back in the win column, but because Anaheim is a team that, after last years post-season, I would assume every Wild player would love to beat.

Be sure to check out the big black eye that will hit Major League Baseball tomorrow (Thursday) at 2:00 o'clock when the Mitchell Report comes out highlighting what George Mitchell found in his long investigation into steroids in Baseball.