Wild vs. Oilers GDT, Home Opener...

Wild vs. Oilers game report

Four power play goals lift Wild to 4-2 victory in home opener
Written by Derek Felska
Thursday, 14 October 2010 10:52

In 1996, Danny DeVito produced a film starring Cameron Diaz and Keanu Reeves with supporting cast members like Courtney Love and Dan Akroyd in a romantic comedy called Feeling Minnesota. The plot goes something like this, Freddie (Diaz), a former stripper is marrying Sam in order to repay a debt to a nightclub owner named Red. Yet Freddie ends up falling in love with Jjacks (Reeves) and they run off together. Sam finds them and is jealous and looks to shoot Jjacks but accidentally ends up shooting Freddie, who is wounded but lives. Somewhere in between your typical lame jokes and gratiuitous kissing Freddie and Jjacks rekindle their relationship after a falling out and they live happily ever after. Kind of screwed up don't you think? Well, that 'feeling' could also describe the Minnesota Wild at this point. Like Freddie's (the team) character in the film, the Wild are a formerly dysfunctional team hoping to repay the debt of gratitude owed to its fans by placing a good product on the ice, despite being married to a system put in place by Wild Head Coach Todd Richards (Sam) that may not suit the current lineup to its fullest. Freddie (the team) is not that happy and still wishes it was with Jacques (Lemaire aka Jjacks) instead as it feels a greater level of comfort in that system. The team tries to improve its condition with some coaching changes as well as a few tweaks to its roster but the jury is still out on whether that will work. So will Richards' be able to show team management and its fans that his system can win or will he be like Sam, shooting the object of his affection and failing miserably? Will the fans clamor for a new coach that embraces defensive hockey like Jacques (Jjacks) like Michel Therrien perhaps?

Tonight will go a long way in helping answer some of these questions as it pits two teams with very different trajectories against one another. The young, dynamic and rejuvenated Edmonton Oilers who have taken advantage of their years of misery in the standings, at the draft to acquire quality young talent like Magnus Paajarvi, 1st Overall pick from 2010 Taylor Hall and Jordan Eberle who is already a co-leader in points for this youthful squad. Meanwhile, the Wild seem to be sliding in the opposite direction. With a few quality players like Mikko Koivu and Matt Cullen flanked by a cast of underachievers, 3rd line calibre role players and NHL journeyman in search of better results its hard to feel overly optimistic about the course of the season after you've already dropped two games to another young and inexperienced team after falling twice at the hands of the Carolina Hurricanes. So if you had to choose; which one would you go with? A team on the rise or a team on the decline? Wild coaches, management and fans hope they're wrong, but they're none too hopeful and it will be interesting to see how they are recieved when they hit the Xcel Energy Center ice for its first home regular season game of 2010-11. Will the fans be "Feeling Minnesota" or will they just feel sick to their stomach? (click on the link for the rest of the article)

Enjoy!

Backstrom is painful to watch!