With match ups in place, it seems like as good a time as any to truly get to know our opponent. I don’t want to be accused of jinxing us later, so I won’t make any predictions on whether or not we wipe the floor with the Wild, but here are some things to look out for during the games.
1. Watch out, they spit.
Zach Parise, center piece of the Wild’s offense, doesn’t always take his surroundings into consideration. Everyone spits, but does everyone spit ON someone? The answer, my friends, is blowing in the wind carrying Parise’s saliva. Just make sure it doesn’t land on you or someone you love.
2. That’s . . . tripping, right?
I actually don’t know that any call was made on this, I’m pretty sure it was deemed a happy accident. (Happy because it certainly made me laugh.) Still, pretty ingenious method to steal a players stick and make him completely ineffectual on the ice. I mean, yes, you have to sacrifice one of your own players, but you train a couple of fourth liners in this method and put them out against Seguin and Benn, and you’ve really got something. Maybe.
3. Easily distractable
I will admit, this was incredibly adorable when it happened. Charlie Coyle responded to this young fan beating on the glass during warm ups. I’m pretty sure he also threw him a puck and sat down with him after the game. So here’s the strategy: seed the front row with, like, fifty tiny children in Coyle jerseys, all beating on the glass with big doe eyes and a hopeful grin. (Bonus points if they’re also missing some teeth.) He’ll take a bunch of delay of game penalties making sure they all have pucks.
4. You tried.
Not every team enjoys the blistering perfection of the Dallas Stars scoreboard. I was reminded of this chestnut while searching for funny moments with the Minnesota Wild. (Which later prompted this list when the Jets came back to Dallas.)
The Wild scoreboard game leaves something to be desired, as with this chirp of Jordie Benn’s beard. Look, Minnesota, we call Jordie Benn Yukon Cornelius literally all the time. To add injury to this attempted insult, he scored on the shift immediately after this and said in the post game scrum that it was really hard not to laugh at this.
These are the tips I was able to find. Do you guys have anything saved that could help our guys out?