Last night, the Minnesota Wild visited Nationwide Arena for a practice game against the Blue Jackets. These teams are brothers of sorts as the last of the NHL expansion teams. Heading into their 10th seasons, they share much in common.
The Jackets will begin the regular season next week in Sweden, the Wild in Finland, and both will bring an up-tempo, pressure game on their Scandinavian sojourn. Whether they will be successful remains to be seen. All we know for now is, it has been a tough go for the Wild.
In Richards' first season, the Wild scored 219 goals, allowed 246 and missed the playoffs by 11 points. The previous season under Lemaire, the Wild scored 219 goals, allowed 200 and missed the playoffs by two points.
Goal differential can be misleading. Furthermore, there is much that goes into making and missing the playoffs, including injuries, goaltending and esprit de corps. But the point here is this: Last season, the Wild shucked Lemaire's trap and increased the tempo, yet generated no more offense, left itself noticeably naked - hello, three-on-ones - and slid in the standings.
Last season, Jackets general manager Scott Howson shucked his inherited coach, Ken Hitchcock, whose idea of transition is to douse it in gas and light a match. Over the summer, Howson passed on hiring Kevin Dineen - whose style has Hitch-ian aspects of confrontation and grit - and instead chose Scott Arniel to be the new coach. Arniel came in preaching an up-tempo style, one which is supposed to suit the Jackets' personnel.
It is not advanced calculus. One of the Jackets defensemen will join rushes when the opportunity presents itself. Both defensemen have more freedom to pinch in from the blue line. The aim is to apply more pressure, which creates more passing opportunities, which might lead to more offense.
This is the way the NHL is going. The lockout wrought new rules that sped up the game and reintroduced the stretch pass. Stanley Cup winners - Carolina, Pittsburgh and Chicago, pointedly - got faster and more offensive. The game changed.
"You still have to be strong defensively, but the less time you spend in your own zone, the better," Howson said. "We played more of an up-tempo style at the end of last season (under interim coach Claude Noel), and we had some success. I really believe that's the right way to play going forward. I think the teams playing that way are having more success. And the players like playing that way."
Howson concedes that there will be an adjustment period. "We expect it," he said.
When there is a breakdown - a defenseman stops deep in the offensive zone, a center gets caught flat-footed, a winger runs out of gas - the result is an odd-man rush the other way. The Wild saw plenty of those last season. Is Jackets goaltender Steve Mason, still in confidence-building mode, about to get assaulted?
Both Howson and Arniel refute the notion that the Jackets' gaggle of slower, shut-down defensemen will not fit an up-tempo style. The players just have to keep their feet moving, Arniel said. Everyone has to keep their feet moving.
"That's probably the biggest thing, keep the feet moving," Arniel said. "With the puck, it's about making smart, percentage decisions. And it's about making plays, too."
Lemaire and Hitchcock helped define the 1990s by programming their players to suffocate offense, robotically. Lemaire brought his style to St. Paul, for 10 years. Hitchcock had a much briefer interlude in Columbus. A reprogramming is going on in both cities. And it hasn't been easy for the Wild.
Maybe Arniel and his Jackets get everything figured out sooner rather than later. Maybe they don't. Soon we shall see.