Day 2 is in the books, and it was a fun day down at the rink.
Thousands of fans flocked down for the Wild's Breakaway 10K/5K/1Mile runs and the three open practices and one scrimmage.
Coach Mike Yeo wasn't too thrilled with the first half of the scrimmage. He felt there wasn't enough intensity and it was too easy to "free-wheel" on the ice.
There were seven goals scored in the first half, including five on Darcy Kuemper, who was making his camp debut without even a practice.
Jason Zucker and Justin Fontaine set up an awesome goalmouth tap-in for Brett Sutter (Darryl's kid) to open the scrimmage, but then Kuemper gave up three goals in about 90 seconds to Cody Almond, Brady Brassart and Ryan Suter. Zucker set up Marco Scandella to make it 3-2, but then Stephane Veilleux and Mikko Koivu scored twice more against Kuemper. Koivu used and abused a defenseman as he drove to the net.
"If I could do it over again, I would have put him in the first group. I would have given him a practice before putting him in the scrimmage, because he had a real short warmup before getting right into a game situation," Yeo said of Kuemper's debut. "I thought Backy (Niklas Backstrom) was better again today compared to even where he was yesterday. He looked more comfortable in there. That's normal for a goalie. We don't rush to conclusions too quickly here. What we're looking for is the right compete, the right battle, the conditioning level of the guys. I want to see us from day to day, I want to see improvement and I want to see the details of our game starting to come into play."
Kuemper said, laughing, "the scrimmage was a little rusty. Conditioning-wise really good. The longer I was out there in practice, I felt better. It's just a matter of time before everything comes back."
Kuemper skated daily in Saskatoon, but he said a few weeks ago as NHLers began heading off to camp, there were fewer and fewer players and less tempo. But he kept his conditioning up in the gym, which "is probably the most important thing because the rest will come back quick."
By the way, on all those KHL rumors, Kuemper said, "That's obviously not where I wanted to be. That was never my intention."
Yeo liked the Zucker-Tyler Graover-Justin Fontaine line. Graovac slid into Kyle Brodziak's position today because the veteran center tweaked his back, Yeo said. Just precautionary to keep him off.
"I thought that line did a great job," said Yeo, who liked Zucker better in the first half of the scrimmage than the second. "Fontaine's looked excellent for me in both scrimmages and you've got to give Grao a lot of credit today. I thought he did a really good job jumping into that line. He continues to look better every day. So I thought that line did a good job. Tough matchups, but they really held their own and made some plays. That's a good start."
Like I've said the past few weeks, Graovac looks like a player. As for the tough matchup Yeo referred to, that Graovac line mostly went head-to-head vs. Thomas Vanek-Koivu-Charlie Coyle.
Yeo is obviously mostly concentrating on the NHL guys, but he's definitely trying to "teach the things we want to do" to the minor-leaguers and prospects. A number of those guys keep standing out, like Zack Mitchell (had a hat trick in the last Traverse City game), Pavel Jenys, a Czech seventh-rounder heading to Sudbury, and Dylan Labbe.
I'll write about Nino Niederreiter probably in Tuesday's paper, but Yeo has been bigtime impressed with him through the first two days of camp. With Niederreiter and Fontaine, he wants both to bite off more ice time and power-play time this year, to not accept being a third- or fourth-liner. Obviously, if healthy, the Wild's top-6 are pretty much set. But he wants them to challenge to move up, saying teams get better when players internally challenge guys in front of them.
Erik Haula has also looked awesome.
"He still has speed," Yeo said chuckling. "Still has great speed and it comes into play every time he's on the ice. Real pleased with his camp so far."
Yeo and his staff were to meet after practice to start really hammering out the exhibition lineup Monday in Winnipeg. Originally, Kuemper was to start that game. I would think that's a longshot now. I'd think Backstrom and John Curry or Johan Gustafsson go up there – Backstrom especially because he's the only one of the three big names (Ilya Bryzgalov and Kuemper) that has been here since Day One.
We shall see. Yeo plans to bring a young lineup up to Winnipeg. After that, the regulars will play four or five of the final five exhibition games.
As Yeo said Friday, he hasn't been happy with the "so-so" starts to the Wild season in his tenure, so he has revamped camp to get more reps and conditioning in practice and wants his regulars playing more games so this team gets off to a fast start this season.
