The Minnesota Wild this season are a tale of two teams thus far. At home they appear to be among the NHL’s elite with a 9-3-1 record, while on the road they fall below the break even mark at 6-8-0. How does a team play so different at home than they do on the road and can they correct this? The Wild currently sit outside a playoff spot at tenth in the Western Conference and occupy the ninth spot in our NHL Analytics Power Rankings. They will need to find solutions to these issues if they want to have a shot at making the post season this year.
What are the issues?
There are a few key issues that we can find when looking into the numbers behind it all. Overall a lower quality of possession play on the road, special teams are much better at home, more defensive zone starts and a much lower face-off winning percentage.
Possession play lacking away from home
There are a few numbers that lead me to this conclusion. The simplest ones are Fenwick and Corsi (shot attempts) and they are both considerably lower on the road. Along with that the Wild’s number of blocked shots and hits increase dramatically when playing on the road. Traditionally these have been looked upon as toughness statistics and as a positive sign. However the more time you spend blocking shots and having to hit people the less time you actually have the puck on your stick.
As well at home the Wild have 18 more takeaways than giveaways, while on the road they swing they other way with 23 more giveaways than takeaways. This tells me that even when they have the puck on the road they are not managing it nearly as well as they do at home.
Special teams circle the drain on the road
At home the Wild have an elite power play at a 20% success rate and their penalty killing is no slouch either at 93%. Once again on the road the Wild are bottom feeders in the NHL with 2.3% success on the power play and killing nearly 83% of their penalties against. Even when they are getting chances on the road they are not able to capitalize currently.
Spending too much time in the defensive zone on the road
The difference is clear based on the zone start statistics that Minnesota spends more time starting in their defensive zone on the road than at home. Now three percent more defensive zone starts may not seem like that big of an issue, however when you couple this with an eight percent drop in face-off winning percentage that is a recipe for disaster.
A recent article by Joshua Weissbock regarding re-evaluating open corsi also sheds more light on the perils that defensive zone face-offs cause. Essentially face-offs have an effect for a given number of seconds on the shot attempts for percentage of a team. This relationship is amplified in the defensive zone due to the proximity to the goaltender of the face-offs.
The key number from Joshua’s article to note is that the league average shot attempts for within the 25 seconds following a defensive zone face-off loss is a measly 17%. With the Wild’s road face-off winning percentage drop and increase defensive zone starts it is not a wonder that they are allowing 29 shots against per game on the road as opposed to 22 shots against per game at home. This of course leads to more goals against.
How can Mike Yeo and the Minnesota Wild fix this problem?
Traditionally a good road game has been to simplify your game and increase the amount of hitting on your opponent. Based on the increase in the Wild’s hit totals on the road is seems clear that there is an element of this in their road game. As well the issue with face-offs could stem partially from not receiving the last change on the road. Therefore the home team would have the advantage of getting the better match ups.
There is not much the Wild can do besides some creative bench management and line changes to affect the face-off situation. However the Wild need to play the same on the road as they do at home. Intuitively, if a style of play results in more wins than losses than why change it based on the sheet of ice you are playing on. All NHL rinks have standard dimensions and while some have poorer ice quality than others there is not much difference out there.
This is definitely a correctable problem for Head Coach Mike Yeo, however if he cannot find a solution sooner rather than later the Minnesota Wild may need to consider a coaching change.
