Quote:
Originally Posted by nmhen
@Henry Fool
All good. I respect your opinion, and appreciate the ability to have a civil debate with you.
The (hopefully vocal minority of) Wild fans who are just ridiculously provincial when it comes to hockey drive me crazy. I grew up there, and participated in the state-wide love of hockey. I'll put Minnesotans' love of hockey against any other state in the country. But, uh...that's not saying much.
Every Minnesotan in the NHL, or with a reasonable shot at the NHL, is not the best player in the NHL. Talk about obvious. But there are fans out there who really talk like they'd prefer the Wild was 100% Minnesota boys. And that we'd win the Cup, if not every year, then most years if that were the case. It's absurd.
I think the local fans drive the Parise/captaincy discussion more than the media does. Russo and Graff, the beat writer from the other paper, don't bang that drum really at all. But you're right that there are members of the local media who are not hockey-centric who do buy into the All-Minnesota-All-The-Time mentality, which is disappointing to me personally. We already lost one hockey team, you'd think we'd be sensitive to strategies that would kill another one.
|
Obviously my knowledge of the Minnesota media is infinitely shallower than yours.
I disagree that Koivu doesn't mesh with Parise, one of the players on your list, but it could be positive that they're separated. I actually think they play really well together, in fact too well: the problem is that they kind of make the grinding style work rather well which is attractive to Yeo in short term but isn't sustainable in the long term. In short, eventually they run out of steam and it's a style that's too easily countered in a playoff series.
Partly this is a team-wide issue. The one constant I've observed that the Wild get too little for the amount of effort they put in. And it fits all too well with with how both Koivu and Parise play. Parise creates a lot of chances with his effort but he also needs tons of chances to score.
I notice that Koivu has only 3 fewer points in 2 fewer games than Parise, so there must not have been any big change in Parise's production in Koivu's absence. However, having him play with Granlund avoids the trap of putting the two-way center with the grinding-hustling winger.