05-14-2022, 12:39 AMAvakael Wrote:

05-13-2022, 05:38 PMValpix Wrote: stealing a rant that i've posted before:

the wild are a team in one of the most rabid hockey hotbeds in the world. They have an unlimited budget, the potential for a fanbase rivalling any canadian team, and an astounding number of players who are local and would come home. They have one of the best logos in professional sports, an honestly great color scheme when they use creme, a great arena, and as far as I can tell their arena is close enough to both their fanbase and a downtown entertainment core that they should have no problems filling that bitch up with the rowdiest, craziest, most passionate fans in the NHL. They have, quite simply, fucking everything going for them.

And yet?

They're fucking boring. They maybe crawl into the playoffs, do nothing, and fizzle out. Nobody ever says "oh the wild will be dirt nasty in a few years." Nobody ever thinks its their year. The one year they made noise, they did so playing shutdown hockey and weren't even the most remarkable run of that playstyle in their own fucking conference

They are uninspired. Tepid. Forgettable. Their existence and continued, perpetual, inescapable, unchallenged mediocrity is an insult to the state of Minnesota. They are never good enough to matter, and never bad enough to rebuild.

They are milquetoast.

They are the mediocre, middle-menu, "nobody orders this but we are contractually obligated to serve it because if we don't people will ask questions" fare of the NHL, and its a goddamn infuriating disgrace.

The annoying thing is this is actually not true. They don't play boring defensive hockey at all. 5th in the league for goals this season (310)- for comparison, the Avalanche had 312. Kaprizov is amazing, but it's also been very fun this season to watch Greenway, Boldy, Fiala, Gaudreau, Zuccarello, Hartman, Eriksson Ek, etc. I'm completely at a loss for how they failed so badly to score in games 4/5/6 against a Blues team that didn't have 3 of their 6 starting defensemen beyond "the Blues wanted it more".

The point wasn't "they're boring as in playstyle," it was "they're boring as in they're just junk filler." And the one year they did make noise was their lone trip out of the second round in 2003, when they were trappy as hell but got out-trapped by the Ducks in a WCF so dull it set the sport back a full decade.