What is The Daily Clutter?
It’s pretty simple. We’re going to send out a daily post to update our fans, The ClutterPuckers, on anything Minnesota Hockey or hockey in general and we might sprinkle in some other fun things, too.
If you didn’t see the SPOILER ALERT for the 2024 IIHF World Junior Championships above, we will be covering who won today’s two Semifinal games between Sweden 🇸🇪 & Czechia 🇨🇿 and USA 🇺🇸 & Finland 🇫🇮 but we’ll put it at the bottom because we feel like we’ve seen every possible way to find out a score before watching the game and we know how much that sucks!
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Minnesota Wild
The Record: 16-16-4 (W-L-OTL); 36 points, 7th in NHL’s Central Division
2023-24 Minnesota Wild Schedule and Results
5 Points out of the final playoff spot since Arizona would win the Tiebreakers
NHL Hockey Standings
(Tiebreaker Rules at the Bottom of the Page)
And… there are 4 other teams the Wild have to pass to get to Arizona anyway so, bottom line, they just need to worry about their game right now and not even look at the standings Winning cures everything!
Tonight’s opponent is the Tampa Bay Lightning and, for the most part, they are in the same spot as the Wild. They are also a few points out of a playoff spot after a pretty rocky start to the season. They were 10-9-5 through November but they had a better month of December when they went 8-6-0 and now they are 1 point behind the New Jersey Devils for the final playoff spot.
Team Minnesota of the PWHL
With over 7,000 tickets sold already, will PWHL Minnesota set a new women’s hockey attendance record in their home opener on Saturday?
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SPOILER ALERT!
It’s World Junior TIME!!!
Alright. This is it! We’re discussing the SEMIFINALS of the 2024 IIHF World Junior Championships so if, for some reason, you still haven’t watched the games from today, you should stop reading and watch NOW!
Also, if you haven’t watched them, what are you waiting for and why are you reading this right now? Oh, and THANK YOU for reading The Daily Clutter! The digital paper boy needs to save up for a new bike!!!
We were writing so we missed most of the Sweden vs Czechia game:
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Then we had to start watching the USA vs Finland Semifinal late then fast-forward when we could to catch up.
Maybe the preliminary round didn’t prove too to be much of a challenge and Latvia wasn’t too much of a tough game in the quarterfinals where they won 7-2 but Team USA wasn’t great in the 1st period and ended up down 2-0 to Finland. T he two goals were not on the goalie. The first goal was a bad turnover in front of the USA net on a play that should’ve been easy to avoid.
USA & Minnesota Gopher D Sam Rinzel played a puck on his backhand by just tapping the puck in front of him to start breaking out of the zone but Finland F Tommi Mannisto poke-checked the puck away from & through the legs of Rinzel & towards the net then took a shot that Team USA G Trey Augustine saved but the puck still got through and behind him but it hit the post and just laid in the crease, “just lying there” and Finland F Oiva Keskinen got to it first to tap it into the empty net for an early 1-0 lead! Wow!
Sam Rinzel had a lot of options to play this differently and the one he chose was the worst one. First of all, he’s the last man back & as a defender closest to his goalie, he should know that. Second of all, you usually want to get the puck to your forehand as soon as possible because you can make a stronger play on your forehand than your backhand. He could’ve & probably should’ve turned to protect the puck with his body or moved his feet before the puck got to him so he would be on his forehand so he could’ve sent the puck around the weak side corner, passed the puck to his teammate at the weak side far boards, chipped the puck off the glass to get it out of the zone, flipped it out into the neutral zone.
The worst option was to carelessly tap the puck with his backhand so the puck was no longer on his stick and skate in the direction of the oncoming forechecking Finnish player. It’s a learning moment in a huge game. Will it be a moment he looks back on as a terrible memory that caused a big loss in a World Junior Championship Semifinal or will it just be a bad play in a big game that he will learn from in a film session as Team USA prepares to play Sweden in the Gold Medal game tomorrow? Time will tell. These are young players who are still learning the game at a higher level. Failure is a great teacher but it’s not always your favorite teacher.
Come Back… See Here?
A little less than 11 minutes later, Team Finland struck again when Minnesota Wild prospect F Rasmus Kumpaleinen tipped in a shot from the right point from Arttu Karki to make it 2-0 Finland. It was another goal the US goalie could do very little to stop. Tips are really difficult to judge let alone not knowing if a shot is going to get tipped to begin with then add that there was a mass of humanity in front of him… DON’T BE A GOALIE, kids! 😬
Team USA obviously knew they were going to have to make some adjustments to get back in the game. Adjust they did & they got to their game quickly in the 2nd period and didn’t really let up for the rest of the game. Broadcast analyst Dave Starman said it well, “Sometimes having an intermission when your team is on a roll is the worst thing that can happen. It looks like Finland left their game in the locker room.”
Even though Team USA got back to their game, Finland G Niklas Kokko was playing very well as he had stopped 18 shots up until about the 8-minute mark of the 2nd period. Team USA took the shutout away when F Jimmy Snuggerud scored off a one-timer from the top of the left faceoff circle to cut the deficit in half and make it a game again with 27:50 remaining in regulation to tie the game &/or take a lead! Oh yeah, that Snuggerud guy, he’s a Minnesota Gopher & one of us, too!
4 minutes later in the offensive zone, USA F Ryan Leonard (#9) came out of the left corner with the puck but lost control of the puck and it went back to USA D Ryan Chesley (#71) just to the right of the middle of the blue line and he just sent it wide right off the back boards. USA F Gabe Perrault (#34) got to it first while USA F Will Smith (#6) was battling for position in front of the net and went to go around the net. Finland D Joona Vaisanen was covering him but Smith skated so close to the net that Vaisanen couldn’t follow him. Smith continued around the net to get open for a backdoor pass. Vaisanen looked back at Perrault and realized he better get to Smith but he had to skate in front of his goalie who had gone down thinking a shot was coming but it was a pass instead of a shot. Vaisan appeared to get a piece of the pass but Smith was still able to catch it and shoot it into a gaping net and…
THIS… GAME… WAS… TIED!!!
The teams traded chances through the rest of the 2nd and 3/4ths of the 3rd period then we had to work at 3 pm. That meant I had to leave the house around 2:40 pm and we don’t get the NHL Network at work so… I had to watch my DVR recording of it about an hour later to watch the last 8 minutes of regulation.
Controversy entered the game when Finland D Kasper Kilonummi put his stick in a USA F Frank Nazur’s (#91) midsection and got part of his stick (& leg) to slow him down & make him trip just enough for the official to call him for hooking. It looks like a terrible call and you can “call it what you want” but the easy way to stop getting called for hooking is to not put your stick up in a player’s midsection or on their hands. It’s really that simple. When will the players realize that and do it? Who knows because they just keep doing it at all levels of the game.
That call loomed large because Team USA scored the go-ahead goal when USA F Cutter Gauthier (#19) took a shot from just above the right faceoff dot with USA captain F Rutger McGroarty screening the goaltender and he beat him on the short side in the upper right corner.
Team USA took a hooking penalty 40 seconds later to put Finland on the power play but the US penalty kill took care of business and they’ll get to play for gold tomorrow at 12:30 pm on the NHL Network.
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Highlights HERE:
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