NHL Power Rankings Week 21 Recap – The Minnesota Kaprizovs

Quick Hits

The New York Rangers don’t appear to be done on the trade market as they are supposedly the top candidate to land Patrick Kane. It is unusual to see a team make such a big play for two star players at the trade deadline after already landing Vladimir Tarasenko, but maybe creating this super team for one playoff run will give them the best chance to make it through an incredibly difficult Eastern Conference.

After a 4-0 week and five game win streak overall, the Chicago Blackhawks have been surprisingly good. The managed to beat the Toronto Maple Leafs, Vegas Golden Knights, and Dallas Stars in the past five games. A leading cause for this sudden streak? Kane has been producing like crazy. Now that a trade is apparently imminent, he has taken it upon himself to show that he still has it by recording seven goals and 10 points in his past four games. Although he is now being scratched for roster management purposes, he got the Blackhawks a few more wins before being shipped out.

As if the Boston Bruins weren’t impressive enough this season, they can also add goalie goal to the list of things the team has accomplished. Linus Ullmark, a leading candidate for the Vezina Trophy and maybe even the Hart Trophy already, launched a puck down the ice late in Saturday night’s game against the Vancouver Canucks to record an empty net goal.

And now, lets move onto the week’s big stories

Have the Minnesota Wild Found their Offense?

Last week, the Minnesota Wild went 3-0-1 to make up some major ground in their division, specifically against the Dallas Stars and Winnipeg Jets. The Wild had been struggling for a while, largely due to the offense completely drying up. Over the month of February this far, the Wild have scored just 21 goals in 11 games. Luckily the team is defensively sound and has still managed to put up a 5-4-2 record.

After their incredibly successful record last week, has their offense returned back to something around normal? Not quite. They managed nine goals in four games. So, slightly better. But nowhere near where it needs to be in order to compete sustainably in the environment the league is in this season. The reason they were able to win so much was only giving up six goals.

A major problem the Wild have been facing is their inability to generate anything when Kirill Kaprizov is not on the ice. There was a stretch in this slump where the team hadn’t scored without him on the ice in over 400 minutes. This is contributing to a situation where the Wild have the second lowest shooting percentage in the league at even strength.

This level of reliance on one player is not remotely sustainable. Come playoff time, it will end up being far too easy to shut the entire team down when the opponent can focus all their efforts on stifling one line knowing the other three forward lines are unlikely to generate any offense.

The Wild have a small cushion on a wild card spot at the moment, with four points and a game in hand over the Calgary Flames. With the trade deadline approaching, will the Wild be able to do anything to address their depth scoring? Given their cap situation past this season, anything they do would likely have to be a rental. Unless the front office is willing to sell futures for a season the team is barely in the playoffs, they will have to find the solution from within.

The Yzer-plan is Back on!

Things have been very up-and-down for the Detroit Red Wings this season. A strong start that made the team look ready to compete followed by a devastating slump that made it look as if the team was nowhere near ready, even just a couple of weeks ago. And now here we are after an incredible turnaround with the Red Wings sitting just one point out of a wild card spot.

After a significant amount of roster turnover (and a new coach) heading into this season, maybe it was just a case of needing some time to gel and develop chemistry? Usually, with a new coach, a team will get a 10-15 game boost as players try to make an impression with the new staff. Then performance falls back to a more expected level. But as the season has gone on, the Red Wings players seem to have found their niche, the way they have to play in order to be competitive.

They are not yet a team full of offensive firepower and star talent. So in order to be successful, they have to work together as a team and find a way to stifle the top players of the other team. The Red Wings do not generate many shots or chances. They are fifth last in the league in shots per game, and even lower in scoring chances generated as they are second last in the league in that category.

For the Red Wings to be successful with this roster, a commitment to team systems and strategy revolving around defense is essential. Over the past 15 games, the Red Wings have gone 10-5-0 while giving up 35 goals (2.33 goals against per game). In their other 43 games, Detroit went 18-17-8 giving up 3.46 goals per game (149 total goals against). A quick glance would suggest that the skaters have figured out the system, gotten some chemistry, and learned how to utilize what they have to grind out wins.

That wraps things up for this week’s NHL Power Rankings recap! Who is ranked too high? Drop a comment down below!

main image credit: Embed from Getty Images