Canucks: No, the Wild aren’t a favourable matchup
By Alex Hoegler
The Vancouver Canucks look like the much better team on paper, but the Minnesota Wild will pose a serious threat here.
On Tuesday, NHL commissioner Gary Bettman revealed the 24-team playoff format for when the league resumes its 2019-20 season, with the Vancouver Canucks drawing the Minnesota Wild in the qualifying round.
The two clubs will square off in a best-of-five series, with the winner advancing to the round of 16. The losing club, on the bright side, will have a chance at winning the 2020 NHL draft lottery.
Over the past few weeks, I’ve seen several folks on Canucks Twitter express plenty of confidence in a play-in series against the Wild. Now, there’s no doubting that Vancouver has superior depth and star power all across the board.
But for some reason, the Wild have always been a giant headache for the Canucks. And if you ask me, I think this is one of the worst possible qualifying round matchups for head coach Travis Green and company.
This dates back to the Jacques Lemaire coaching days. You know, when the Wild would always seem to grind out those 1-0 or 2-1 victories. And who can forget Vancouver’s collapse in the second round of the 2003 playoffs, where they blew a 3-1 series lead to a Minnesota team in its third year of existence?
Even with Lemaire long gone, Minnesota’s identity hasn’t changed much. They rely entirely on shutdown defence, with zero bonafide superstar scorers on the roster. Before the season went on pause, Kevin Fiala (23 goals, 54 points) was the only player with 50 points.
Dating back to the 2017-18 season, the Wild have won five of the last seven meetings (they took two of three in 2019-20).
The Wild are one of the oldest teams in the NHL, and they certainly lack the overall skill and speed that most teams try to build around these teams. But they have enough seasoned veterans — Eric Staal, Zach Parise, Ryan Suter and Mats Zuccarello — to seriously push and challenge the inexperienced Canucks.
And again, this is merely a best-of-five series. It may just take one or two bad outings from Jacob Markstrom — or a couple of grade-A performance from Devan Dubnyk — for the Wild to best the Canucks.
Vancouver has the younger, faster and better overall team, no doubt. But take a quick look at recent history, and you’ll see why the Wild are a difficult matchup for Elias Pettersson‘s squad.
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Needless to say, these young Canucks better remember to not take the more experienced and stingy Wild lightly.