Sutter high on Wild; another Sutter in the NHL

The Minnesota Wild, quietly emerging as one of the Western Conference’s premier teams, play with an excellent structure and have supplanted their high profile signings of Zach Parise and Ryan Suter from two years ago with an excellent crop of emerging young players.

There were questions raised over the summer about their goaltending, though former Ontario Reign goalie and 2011 CHL Goaltender of the Year Darcy Kuemper tabled any October concerns with a franchise record 163 minutes and 46 seconds of shutout hockey to open the season. Kuemper went eight consecutive periods without allowing a goal before Anaheim scored twice in the third period last night en route to a 2-1 Ducks win. Veteran Niklas Backstrom is also available, and could face the Kings tomorrow afternoon. UPDATE: Via Michael Russo, Backstrom will start.

Of course, this isn’t exactly a surprise to those who have followed the team’s rise from the offensively challenged group from earlier this decade into a well-balanced squad under Head Coach Mike Yeo. Darryl Sutter called the Wild “very impressive last year,” and considering Minnesota was tied with Chicago at two games apiece in the second round of the playoffs last season before dropping a pair of one-goal games (the second in overtime), the club will again be among the Western Conference’s most competitive.

“There’s not a big change in their roster other than Vanek, but Vanek was Moulson. So two pretty good players. So just flip one for the other and they have pretty much the same lineup,” Sutter said.

“They have star power. They didn’t always have star power; in fact, they never did. Gabby was probably the only true guy that was looked on as that. Now they’re pretty deep in that. I mean, I’m sure everybody would like to have Suter and Brodin and Koivu and Parise and Vanek and Granlund and Coyle and Niederreiter, so they didn’t always have that, did they? They are an elite team in the league because of that now. They handled Colorado quite easily last year in the playoffs in the first round, and we were well informed that they could’ve beat Chicago, too.”

Sutter’s son, Brett, who has played in the NHL for Calgary and Carolina, is now playing for Minnesota’s AHL team in Des Moines, Iowa. There’s a nice story by Bryce Miller of the Des Moines Register here about Brett’s relationship with his brother, Chris, and off-season life in Viking, Alberta.

Sutter’s nephew Brody – son of Duane – made his NHL debut for Carolina at Madison Square Garden on Thursday. When noted by Lisa Dillman of the LA Times that Brody was the ninth Sutter to play in the NHL, Darryl Sutter deadpanned a prediction.

“There’ll be more,” he said.

Rules for Blog Commenting

  • No profanity, slurs or other offensive language. Replacing letters with symbols does not turn expletives into non-expletives.
  • Personal attacks against other blog commenters, and/or blatant attempts to antagonize other comments, are not tolerated. Respectful disagreement is encouraged. Posts that continually express the same singular opinion will be deleted.
  • Comments that incite political, religious or similar debates will be deleted.
  • Please do not discuss, or post links to websites that illegally stream NHL games.
  • Posting under multiple user names is not allowed. Do not type in all caps. All violations are subject to comment deletion and/or banning of commenters, per the discretion of the blog administrator.

Repeated violations of the blog rules will result in site bans, commensurate with the nature and number of offenses.

Please flag any comments that violate the site rules for moderation. For immediate problems regarding problematic posts, please email zdooley@lakings.com.