Avs/Wild: How They Match Up

We won’t waste your time talking about how the Avs are finally in the playoffs again and what a magical season this has been. You’re busy, we get it. Unless you’re a 60 year old woman with many cats, or a 45 year old tech wizard that has a pet snake named Gus. Then you probably have all the time in the world. But for the sake of our normal readers, we’ll keep it short and sweet. Here is our expert analysis of the Avs/Wild series:

Positional Matchups:

Center:

The key here is depth in relation to skill. Hey, that sounds like a new advanced stat. Let’s call it Skepth. Down the middle, the Wild have Koivu, Charlie Coyle, Kyle Brodziak, Cody McCormick, Jake Dowell, and Mikael Granlund. Now, obviously not all of those guys are going to play every game, but other than Koivu, they have no scoring. The majority of these players are grit players. No variety.

The Avs on the other hand have MacKinnon, Stastny, O’Reilly, Malone, and Paul Carey for the time being. Already the top 3 trump the entire Wild roster of centers. A healthy Matt Duchene and John Mitchell sometime down the road, possibly in the series, will give it even more of a boost.

Winner: Avs

Right Wing:

Avs have Parenteau, Cliche, Talbot, and right now Ryan Wilson. Not the strongest group, but line juggling by Roy has given the Avs a pretty solid top 2 lines offensively and a skilled group on the checking lines.

The Wild have Dany Heatley, Jason Pomminville, Nino Niederreiter, and Justin Fontaine. If this was 2009, the Wild would win this one hands down. It isn’t 2009, but you still have to give the Wild the edge here. Solid scoring, some young legs, and a random guy no one has ever heard of until this article.

Winner: Wild

Left Wing:

Landeskog, McGinn, McLeod, Bordeleau, and O’Reilly when needed.

Zucker, Parise, Moulson, Haula, Cooke.

The big story here: Parise. Multimillionaire extraordinaire who will never play up to his contract, and Moulson who was only ever good while playing with Tavares versus a talented Swede, 2 tough guys with some offense and energy, and McGinn who has stepped up rather nicely. Need we say more?

Winner: Avs

Defense:

On D, the Wild boast the inconsistent Keith Ballard, the vaguely familiar Marco Scandella, and Jon Blum, How I Met Your Mother’s Barney Stinson All Name Team Jonas Brodin (Bro-din), and not quite developed but they haven’t given up on him yet for whatever reason Jared Spurgeon. The 5’9 168 pound push over. Oh and then there is Ryan Suter who needs to play 30 minutes a night. Suter is better than any Avs dman, but those 30 minutes a night are going to wear him down against this fast Avs team. The Skepth statistics are not in the Wild’s favour.

Barrie will most likely be back for the Avs, but we’re still waiting on word about Jan Hejda. The Avs don’t have a lot of depth at this position either. After Hejda and Johnson, the experience of our defense is lacking, especially with Corey Sarich out with back spasms. But Benoit, Barrie, EJ, and Holden have proved they can add a great deal of offense, and Hejda is a great shutdown guy. Guenin (actually had to Google search his name to spell it right, why is it so hard?) can be good on the back end but he can be bad as well. Skepth wins this one for the Avs

Winner: Avs

Goaltending:

Ok so the Wild goaltending is a mess. We went to their website and looked at the roster just to see who was on it after Kuemper and Bryzgalov, and it shows Backstrom, Curry, and Harding as well. A mess. But hey, the Avs get to play Bryz who was just dynamite against the Pens those many moons ago. High scoring games? Yea, for us.

Battle of the Russians! The Avs boast Varlamov who is awesome and Jiggy who is getting old and won’t play unless he has too. Oh and there is Reto Berra as well and of we have to play him for whatever reason, we’re already screwed as it is.

Winner: Avs

Series prediction:

Game 1: Avs

Game 2: Avs

Game 3: Wild

Game 4: Avs

Game 5: Avs.

Avs in 5. You heard it here first folks! But your predictions in the comments section if you so desire. We’d love to see what you fellow Avs fans think.

Oh and Skepth is ours. Patent pending, copyright 2014.