Chip ‘Er Deep Thoughts on the 2012-13 Minnesota Wild

Posted on September 19, 2012 by

Minnesota Wild Press Conference introducing Zach Parise & Ryan Suter!

The Minnesota Wild’s roster for the 2012-13 season took a turn in the right direction in a matter of days if not hours.
The State of Hockey’s professional team went from stuck in the middle contending for the playoffs with some promising prospects to a team that should definitely make the playoffs and possibly contend for the Stanley Cup and can bring those promising prospects along slowly instead of having to push them into spots they aren’t ready for in the National Hockey League.

Do you have any Prospects?
The Minnesota Wild finally have some talent coming from the NHL Draft! The previous General Manager, Doug Risebrough, and his talent evaluator, Tommy Thompson, did pretty well with their early round picks in the beginning of the franchise with Marian Gaborik, Nick Schultz, Mikko Koivu, Pierre-Marc Bouchard, Josh Harding and Brent Burns. It’s what happened after those first three seasons that doomed this franchise for the last 4+ seasons.

From 2004 to 2008, there’s not really any draft pick that has had a big impact on the Wild unless you count Cal Clutterbuck* and Marco Scandella. Cal has definitely made a name for himself and Scandella is looking like he will have an impact for years to come with the Wild but that’s 2 players out of 35 picks. I suppose you can count Ryan Jones (4th round in 2004) and maybe Benoit Pouliot (1st round in 2005) and mention guys like Clayton Stoner and Justin Falk but to not have a player from 5 drafts that is a star player points to why the Minnesota Wild are where they are, four straight seasons of missing the playoffs and being in the middle of the NHL.

*How can you not count Cal Clutterbuck as an impact player? Impact actually describes him very well since he’s led the league in hits 3 times since he made it to the NHL in 2007! Also, if there’s no Clutterbuck, there’s no ClutterPuck and I might not be writing this right now!

When a team continually misses on their 1st round picks (A.J. Thelen, Pouliot, James Sheppard, Colton Gillies and Tyler Cuma), they will not have success. The draft is the best way to get better because it’s the cheapest way to get better and really the only way a team has any control over their success. Free agency can’t be counted on and trades can’t happen if you don’t have any prospects that other teams want.

In January of 2008, the Minnesota Wild changed ownership to former Nashville Predators owner Craig Leipold. The new owner took one season to evaluate the team and at the end of the 2008-9 season, he cleaned house and it started at the top. Gone were the only head coach the franchise ever had in Jacques Lemaire and the only General Manager as well! Bye, Doug Risebrough! In came Chuck Fletcher as the new general manager. Although it was his first gig as general manager*, he helped Anaheim win a Stanley Cup in 2007 and who would watch the Pittsburgh Penguins, the team he left to join the Wild, win the Stanley Cup in 2009.

*First time general manager? Sure, but it doesn’t hurt to grow up around the game of professional hockey and learn how to run an NHL team from your father, Cliff Fletcher, who was a general manager in the NHL for 27 years and still works as an executive for the Toronto Maple Leafs. The Silver Fox or Trader Cliff helped Calgary win the Stanley Cup in 1989 so why can’t the Brown Fox or Trader Chuck win one with the Minnesota Wild? FLETCH LIVES!!!

The “New Regime” started in 2009 with the drafting of Nick Leddy, which looks like a great draft pick except for the fact that he plays for the Chicago Blackhawks now, since he was traded for what now seems like nothing. Cam Barker was pretty much nothing. He had 2 goals and 10 assists in 71 games played over two seasons with the Wild. Unfortunately, that trade will probably go down as the worst trade in franchise history.

The GM may have made up for it last year at the NHL Draft with the Brent Burns trade. We won’t know until we see how good Charlie Coyle & Zack Phillips turn out to be and if we see Devin Setoguchi reach his potential as a goal-scorer. We saw glimpses of what ‘Guchi can provide last season but never on a consistent basis. That could be for many different reasons (injuries, inconsistent line-mates, confidence, etc…) It was such an up and down season that its hard to know what to expect but the talent is there. He should or at least could be a perennial 30-goal scorer!

Josh Harding Signs 3-Year Deal
Josh Harding was drafted in 2002 in the 2nd round and has played for the Minnesota Wild for the last seven seasons. He’s been the primary back-up for the last five season. In the last few seasons, he’s struggled to stay healthy.

In March of the 2009-10 season, Josh had to have season-ending hip surgery. Then to start the 2010-11 season, Josh was playing goal in a preseason game in St. Louis when Brad Boyes fell on him after he made a save, tearing the ACL and MCL in his right knee, ending his 2010-11 season. Not the best thing to happen to a player about to become a free agent.

Josh worked his way back from one of the worst injuries any athlete can suffer to sign a one-year deal with the Wild for the 2011-12 season. He played in the 34 games last season, the most of his NHL career while still having a couple injury problems but nothing that kept him out for an extended amount of time.

He says he wants to be the #1 goalie for the Wild and the 3-year deal worth $5.7 million kind of says that too. A cap hit of $1.9 million a year puts him in the top 30 goaltenders (#28 to be exact) in the NHL just above Jonathan Quick and James Reimer

What Happens With Backstrom?
Nicklas Backstrom is in the last year of his contract that pays him $6 million a year. He has a ridiculous no-trade clause that will force management to get his permission for any trade. The Wild say they have no interest in trading their current starting goalie but you’d think they’d want to get something for him if they weren’t planning on re-signing him after next season.

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The Frenzy of Free Agency – Waiting on Zach Parise and Ryan Suter

Posted on July 2, 2012 by

IMG_6387.jpg

Bridget Samuels via Compfight

Zach Parise and Ryan Suter will change the fate of many NHL franchises when they decide what outrageous contract offer they accept in the next day or so. It could be a matter of hours now. The Minnesota Wild remain in the fight for both players which says a lot when the other teams on the “short” lists are teams like Pittsburgh, Detroit, Philadelphia and New Jersey.

It will change the fate of the Minnesota Wild more than any of those other teams. All of those other teams have won multiple Stanley Cups. The Minnesota Wild haven’t come close to winning a Stanley Cup. Say what you will about the remarkable run in 2003 that ended badly with a sweep by the Anaheim Ducks. Nobody saw that coming and it actually might’ve hurt the Wild in their development. After that run, expectations changed and since then, the Wild have either lost in the 1st round of the playoffs or missed the playoffs.

The Minnesota Wild have been in the middle of the NHL for years now and that’s the worst place to be. If you’re the 15th or so best team in the NHL, you are either barely making the playoffs facing a top seed or missing the playoffs and either way, there’s no chance at the top talent in the draft so you never get out of the middle of the league. They kept trying to tweak their roster while drafting badly and it got them nowhere.

It took new ownership and a new general manager to change the philosophy of the franchise from try to win now to draft well and develop talent until that talent arrives and then pounce on NHL ready talent in free agency. That drafted talent is on the verge of making the NHL roster and there might not be a better time to go “ALL IN” on free agency.

It will say a ton about Chuck Fletcher and Craig Leipold if they get either Zach Parise or Ryan Suter, Fletcher for the sales job to get them and Leipold for putting up the money to sign the two best free agents available. Chuck Fletcher has a couple Stanley Cup rings from Anaheim in 2007 and Pittsburgh in 2009 so he has an idea of what it takes to win.

Anatomy Of A Free Agent
Players hit free agency after their contract expires and they are at least 27 years old or they have at least 7 years of service as an NHL player, depending on the Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA). The age a player can become a free agent went from 31 to 27 in the last CBA between 2005 and 2008.

How crazy is it to be the best player available when “the Frenzy” hits? The clock goes from 10:59am to 11:00am and your agent’s phone explodes, a call from every team in a matter of seconds and the fax machine (or email?) is pumping out contract offers for 10 minutes straight!

How do they make the decision of where to go? Is it all money? Money is great but when we’re talking $100 million, is that a big difference between $90 million? What can you do with $100 million that you can’t do with $90 million? Is anyone worth that kind of money? How does that change a player? Will they still play the same way or will they play as if they’ve made it and relax because they’ve almost literally won the lottery?

What is it like to get offers of employment from all 30 teams or at least most of the teams in the best league in the world for playing hockey and all or most of them exceed $100 million over 10 years or so. How many times would you pinch yourself to make sure this is really happening? How many of them would take a regular salary to play a game for a living?

What about family and location? Players have to uproot their whole family, move the kids to a different area and a different school. That has to be a part of the decision, right? Location? Do they know the area? Like the area? Is it a good place to live? Or does it even matter? Maybe they aren’t there that much during the season and they just have another home in their hometown?

Playing for your hometown team is usually a dream for almost every player. Their family and friends are there and it’s the team they grew up watching. They might not get another chance to play for their hometown team since elite players don’t hit free agency that often. If Zach Parise signs with a team other than the Minnesota Wild and it’s a 10-year deal, what are the chances the Wild would be interested when he’s 37-years old? It could be now or never. A trade could happen but the elite players usually get some type of no-trade clause that lets them have more control of where they can go and if a team can trade them or not.

Competitiveness? Would they rather join a team that has already had success or be the guy who makes a team a success by being the first guy to go there and change a team from pretender to contender? Would they rather join a team that already has great players or be the great player that entices other great players to join their team? Lebron James took a lot of…uhh…heat…for “taking his talents to South Beach.” He just won the NBA championship. Could he have done that in Cleveland?

Playing with greatness? How many players would’ve loved to have played with Wayne Gretzky and be a part of the Oiler dynasty? We might never see a dynasty like that again! Does playing with Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, James Neal and the rest of the Pittsburgh Penguins have that same feel to it? Or any other team in the NHL?

I have to believe Zach Parise and/or Ryan Suter have an idea of where they want to play. I’m sure they’ve gone over every team’s depth chart to see how they fit in the lineup and what their future looks like. They are familiar with at least one team and familiarity is nice but who doesn’t want to play for their hometown team or play for a team that always has a chance at winning it all?

Has some team jumped in and surprised both Zach Parise and Ryan Suter with an offer they didn’t expect? Hearing rumors of Chicago in on Parise that we haven’t heard before and Chicago wasn’t listed on the supposed “short” lists we’ve seen.

The biggest problem is getting all of these “reports” from so-called “sources” about what they’ve “heard.” How would anyone know about anything? Why would the agents or the player tell anyone what they are thinking? The only thing that would make any sense is if they were trying to increase the offers from one team to another but is that really happening? It’s hard to believe any team is trying to save money by not offering everything they can right out of the box.

We’ve heard it’s between Pittsburgh & Minnesota, then we hear Chicago has jumped into the mix and we hear the Wild is out then we hear from a more reliable source that there’s no decision yet. Meanwhile, the rest of the free agents don’t want to sign until the big dogs do to see what they can get from the teams that lose out.

So still we watch and we wait!

Whatever happens, it’s been a day where the Wild have competed with the best teams in the league for the best free agents and that’s something Wild fans haven’t seen before and that’s exciting! If they get neither player, how will Wild fans react?

So…ClutterPuckers, what do you think will happen? Do the Wild get Zach Parise or Ryan Suter? or both? or neither and have to go to a “plan B”? How will that affect your feelings about your Minnesota Wild?

Let us know what you think!!! GO WILD!

Other Links to the Free Agent Frenzy:
NHL should be weary of Justin Schultz loophole – NationalPost.com – Ken Warren – 6/27/2012
Everything You Need To Know About NHL Free Agency – Grantland.com – Sean McIndoe – 6/29/2012
2012 Sortable Free Agent Tracker – TSN.ca
@Russostrib – Michael Russo on Twitter
Russo’s Rants – StarTribune.com – Michael Russo – Minnesota Wild Beat Writer

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Chip ‘er Deep Thoughts on Conference Finals and Wild Draft Picks

Posted on May 14, 2012 by

Martin Brodeur autographed jersey

johncatral via Compfight

The Conference Finals Are Set
After New York beat Washington in Game 7 last night, the final four teams left in the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs are set. The #1 seed New York Rangers will face the #6 seed New Jersey Devils in the Eastern Conference and the #3 seed Phoenix Coyotes will face the #8 seed Los Angeles Kings in the Western Conference. You can get the whole schedule here. The Western Conference Finals start on Sunday with a game in Phoenix at 8pm EST on NBCSports so celebrate with your Mom and watch some hockey later or watch it with your Hockey Mom!

The greatest thing about the Conference Finals is there’s a game every night. Starting tonight, the games go through May 27th, if each series goes seven games, and they alternate between the Western and Eastern Conferences with Friday, May 18th being the only day when there’s not a game in either conference. The National Hockey League even gave you Friday night off! WOW! That NHL, they’re pretty nice huh?

So, who’s moving on to battle for the Cup?
Well, let’s see how far the contenders have come. The Phoenix Coyotes are having their most successful season in franchise history. Even when they were the Winnipeg Jets, the franchise never made it past the 2nd round of the playoffs, at least as a member of the NHL. That’s what happens when you’re in the same division as the Oiler dynasty and Wayne Gretzky.* The Coyotes seem to have found something that’s working this season. They have never won the Cup and have never made it to the Stanley Cup Finals.

*Isn’t it ironic that Wayne Gretzky ended up coaching the Phoenix Coyotes for four seasons and they missed the playoffs in every one of those seasons? It’s like he was still keeping them from the playoffs. A little too ironic, don’t you think? I bet that’s what Alanis thinks. The greatest hockey player ever to play the game and he couldn’t make the playoffs once as a coach in four seasons. There’s a big difference between playing and coaching. A coach can only control so much. He’s still the Great One no matter what!

The Los Angeles Kings haven’t been past the 2nd round since all the way back to the 1992-93 season when Wayne Gretzky (there’s that Gretzky guy again! Geez!) led them to the Stanley Cup Finals only to lose to the Montreal Canadiens in 5 games. As the #8 seed, I’m sure nobody was expecting them to make it to the Western Conference Finals or at least nobody outside of Los Angeles. They defeated the #1 seed Vancouver Canucks in 5 games and took care of the #2 seed St. Louis Blues with a broom, sweeping the series in 4 games. The Los Angeles Kings have lost only one game in the playoffs (8-1 overall), haven’t lost on the road and obviously could care less if they’re playing a higher seed. That’s a good mindset to have as the lowest seed still in the playoffs. They’ve never won a Stanley Cup! They’ve made the Stanley Cup Finals once in the aforementioned ’92-’93 season.

The New York Rangers are the highest seed left in the playoffs as the #1 seed in the East and the #1 overall seed as the President’s Trophy winner with the best overall record in the regular season. I’m not sure if that means anything in the playoffs. They’ve been pushed to 7 games in both rounds. A bounce here or a turnover there and we could be looking at Ottawa or Washington in the Eastern Conference Finals! The Rangers still got it done and are the team with home ice throughout the playoffs. It only gets more difficult as the team(s) they will face now should be better than the teams they faced in the first two rounds. Can they continue to get it done?

The New York Rangers haven’t won or played for the Stanley Cup since 1993-94 when they beat Pavel Bure and the Vancouver Canucks for their 4th Stanley Cup! The Rangers have been in the Stanley Cup Finals 10 times in their history, winning 4 times and losing 6! 9 of those appearances were between 1927 & 1979. The last time they did win the Cup, they were also the President’s Trophy winner and also faced the New Jersey Devils in the Conference Finals so there’s that to hang your hat on if you’re a Ranger fan.

The New Jersey Devils round out the final four teams vying for the Cup of Lord Stanley in 2012! The New Jersey Devils have rebounded from last season’s below .500 finish to be the 6th seed in the Eastern Conference. 2010-11 was the first season since 1995-96 that the Devils had less than 40 wins in the regular season. 1995-96 was also the year after the New Jersey Devils won their first Stanley Cup (1994-95), when they took advantage of the NHL regular season being shortened to 48 games due to a lockout by the owners. They would go on to win 2 more Stanley Cups in 2000 and 2003 and also lost in the 2001 Stanley Cup Finals to the Colorado Avalanche. Is this season a return of the Devils? Did they even go anywhere to begin with?

We have a #1 seed, a #3 seed, a #6 seed and a #8 seed and the #8 seed has the least amount of losses with one and the #1 seed has the most losses with six! How on earth are we supposed to predict the winner out of that? Be honest, how many people picked any of these teams (other than the Rangers) to be here? I picked the Penguins and the Predators for the Finals. I’m sure after the Penguins were manhandled by the Flyers, nobody picked the Devils to beat them in 5 games and how many expected a #8 seeded team to plow through a #1 and #2 seed like the Kings have. It’s probably not a huge surprise that the Coyotes are here since they had home ice but they probably weren’t a trendy pick to get to the conference finals either.

With all that being said, I’m going with the Los Angeles Kings just because they’ve been playing playoff hockey basically since the end of February and they have not changed how they’ve played since then. They have the stud goalie and plenty of star players to score big goals to get them the Cup! I’ll go with the New Jersey Devils in the East with the Los Angeles Kings coming out on top with the Stanley Cup! Martin Brodeur will pass the torch over to Jonathan Quick.

Wild Draft Picks!
When the New Jersey Devils clinched their berth into the Eastern Conference Finals, the Minnesota Wild received a 2013 3rd round draft pick as conditional part of the Marek Zidlicky trade! That trade ends up reading:

The Minnesota Wild traded D Marek Zidlicky to New Jersey for D Kurtis Foster, F Nick Palmieri, F Stephane Veilleux, a 2nd Round Pick (2012) and a 3rd Round Pick (2013) – WOW! You could argue that Foster and Veilleux were throw-ins because their contracts expired after the regular season and they probably won’t be brought back although I definitely wouldn’t mind seeing the Wild bring back Veilleux. Even if you take both those players out, you still get Palmieri and 2 draft picks! That’s quite the haul for a player that kind of forced his way out of Minnesota with bad play and a bad attitude! Chuck Fletcher RULES!

Will that draft pick help in a future trade? Extra draft picks are like cash to General Managers and they use them to move up in the draft or as a little extra to get a trade done. Maybe that draft pick will turn out to be another Cal Clutterbuck, who was drafted in the 3rd round in the 2006 NHL Entry Draft. I’d be okay with that. The site is called ClutterPuck after all!

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2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs – 2nd Round – MN Players and Connections

Posted on April 30, 2012 by

Stanley Cup
Photo Credit: Mack Male via Compfight

The 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs 2nd Round has begun and they should be as interesting as the 1st round and hopefully even better but that might be asking a little too much. Since the Minnesota Wild missed the playoffs (for the 4th straight season), I thought I’d put together a list of Minnesota hockey players and players with Minnesota connections to let everyone know there’s still a reason to watch the games and cheer for some former Wild players and players from Minnesota.

I made it into a PDF so anyone can download it and look at it whenever they want or print it out for easy access when you’re watching the games. Click the link below to download your PDF!

2012StanleyCupPlayoffs2ndRound-MNPlayersandMNConnections

If you would like the list of players from or connected to Minnesota from the entire 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs, you can get it here!

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Chip ‘er Deep Thoughts with ClutterPuck – April 28th, 2012

Posted on April 28, 2012 by

Welcome to Chip ‘Er Deep Thoughts with…ClutterPuck! This will be our weekly post on all things hockey. Why chip ‘er deep thoughts you ask? Or maybe you don’t ask? Chip ‘er deep is a hockey phrase that means get the puck deep in the opponent’s zone so the team can make a line change or establish the forecheck.

Deep Thoughts was a short from Saturday Night Live that lasted about 30 seconds each time it was on the show. It would just have stupid thoughts about life. One of my favorites was,

“What if Hardware Hank’s real name…was Dave? Then it would be Hardware Dave’s!”

So basically this weekly post will be short blurbs about the latest news in hockey. I hope you like it. Let us know what you think in the comments!

Raffi Torres Suspension – Was 25 Games Too Many?
I started writing about this and ended up writing a whole separate article about it. You can check it out here!

I think the National Hockey League and Brendan Shanahan had to do something big with this suspension to make Raffi Torres and the rest of the league know that these kinds of hits can’t happen anymore! They can’t afford to have the best players in the league going down to injuries because of stupid hits like this. No player should go down because of this kind of check! It’s avoidable and the Department of Player Safety has been working on this for a long time now. Sooner or later, the players will realize that they have to change the way they play the game for these kinds of big hits out of the game.

Getting the blow ‘em up hits out of the game will go a long way towards a healthier National Hockey League and that will trickle down into every other level of hockey. The kids won’t see them as often so they won’t attempt them as often.

If we want the culture of hockey to change, it has to come from the top and the bottom of hockey. Better instruction on how to throw a check, take a check, avoid a check and keeping your head up at the lower levels of hockey and less of the big hits at the higher levels is a good start.

Has Nicklas Lidstrom played his last game in the NHL?
When the Detroit Red Wings were eliminated from the playoffs in 5 games by the Nashville Predators, it could’ve been the last game for Nicklas Lidstrom. I think most fans would like to see him continue playing especially if he can play at the level he played at this season. He ended the season with 11 goals and 23 assists and he was a plus 21 in 70 games. He did not register a point in any of the 5 playoff games against Nashville.

Looking at his stats, I noticed that Mr. Lidstrom had a positive plus/minus in all but one of his 20 seasons in the National Hockey League. That was last season when he was a minus 2 for the 2010-11 season. That’s pretty amazing and says a lot about how good a defenseman he has been over his career. It will be an interesting off-season for Nicklas Lidstrom and the Detroit Red Wings.

New Voice of the Wild
Dan Terhaar, play-by-play announcer for the Minnesota Wild, was told his contract won’t be renewed with the Minnesota Wild so there will be a new voice for the Wild when the games begin next season. Terhaar was the play-by-play announcer for the last seven seasons so it will be quite a change to hear someone else call Wild games next season.

Mike Greenlay will return as analyst and the radio team of Bob Kurtz and Tom Reid will return as well. Isn’t it strange to just replace the play-by-play announcer while having the color analyst stay? Why wouldn’t they just get two new guys? Either way, there’s going to be a new voice calling Wild games!

I haven’t a clue who they are interested in but I hope they go with somebody new to the position in Minnesota. The only name I can think of that I would like is Clay Matvick. Clay worked at Fox Sports Net before, from 2001-2005, and he’s done play-by-play at the Minnesota State High School Hockey Tournament for the last 9 years while also working various sports for ESPN. Seems like an obvious candidate for the job so we’ll see.

Add play-by-play announcer to the list of jobs to fill with the Minnesota Wild. I really think they have to get the right guy for this position or fans might turn away! Noooo…I can’t back that up. I don’t think fans would stop watching because of the play-by-play guy simply because of a simple thing called…the MUTE button! If only we could watch the game and just mute out the announcers sometimes while still getting the glorious sounds of the game of hockey! Is there an app for that?

1st Round of the 2012 Stanley Cup Playoffs is over!
Top seeds were dropping like flies in the first round of the playoffs. Only the #1 seeded New York Rangers survived the first round in the Eastern Conference albeit barely, surviving a Game 7 against the #8 seed Ottawa Senators. In the other Eastern Conference matchups, the #7 seed Washington Capitals beat the #2 seed Boston Bruins in Game 7 in Boston on a controversial goal. The #6 seed New Jersey Devils beat the #3 seed Florida Panthers in Overtime of Game 7 and the #5 seed Philadelphia Flyers beat the #4 seed Pittsburgh Penguins in 6 games.

In the Western Conference, it was a little different although the President’s Trophy winning, best record in the regular season having, #1 seed Vancouver Canucks lost in 5 games to the #8 seed Los Angeles Kings. They were the only top seed to lose though. The #2 seed St. Louis Blues beat the #7 seed San Jose Sharks in 5 games, the #3 seed Phoenix Coyotes beat the #6 seed Chicago Blackhawks in 6 games and the #4 seed Nashville Predators beat the #5 seed Detroit Red Wings in 5 games.

That means the 2nd round match-ups are set! In the West we’ll see #2 St. Louis take on #8 Los Angeles, #3 Phoenix take on #4 Nashville Predators and in the East, we will see #1 New York take on #7 Washington and #5 Philadelphia take on #6 New Jersey.

The 2nd round starts on Friday:
Predators in Phoenix for Game 1 of the Western Conference Semifinals at 8pm CST on NBCSports.

2 games on Saturday
WSH @ NYR Game 1 at 2pm CST on NBC
LA @ STL Game 1 at 6:30pm on NBCSports

2 games on Sunday
NJ @ PHI Game 1 at 2pm CST on NBC
NSH @ PHO Game 2 at 7pm CST on NBCSports

Let’s hope the 2nd round is as good or better than the exciting 1st round! The complete 2nd round schedule is up on NHL.com.

Outdoor Hockey at Soldier Field & the MN Gophers?
The other day, a couple outdoor hockey games at Soldier Field in Chicago were apparently finalized and will take place on Sunday, February 17th at Soldier Field, the home of the Chicago Bears. The Match-ups will be Minnesota vs Wisconsin and Notre Dame vs Miami of Ohio.

So here’s my big question, why Chicago? None of those teams are from Chicago or Illinois so why would there be a game for them at Soldier Field? Soldier Field holds over 61,000 and is one of the most storied stadiums in America.

I’m sure it will be done right and maybe it is an attempt to show the NHL that Soldier Field would be a good place to hold the 2014 NHL Winter Classic.

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