Stuck in the muck

Inspired Muckalt gets off the schneid, but lands on IR

By Daniel G. Habib, Sports Illustrated

Think your luck is lousy? Meet Bill Muckalt.

During the season's first two weeks, Muckalt, a 28-year-old wing for the Minnesota Wild, was the league's most inspiring reclamation project. Muckalt went doughnut-for 2001-02, playing 70 games without scoring a goal for the Ottawa Senators; after he was twice held off the scoresheet to open this season with Minnesota, Muckalt's goose egg streak spanned 75 games and three seasons. Yet with the best burst of his four-year NHL career (five goals, two assists, plus-7 in four games between Oct. 15-22), Muckalt shook the jinx.

In the first period of that Oct. 22 game against Calgary, however, Muckalt took a low hit from Flames defenseman Denis Gauthier and went cartwheeling into the boards, suffering a dislocated right shoulder, the third such injury of his career. Initially, Muckalt was slated to miss two to three weeks, but said last Friday that he still wasn't able to move the shoulder, and would consult with a specialist to see whether surgery will be necessary. "I got that gorilla off my back; everything was going really well for the team and for me personally," Muckalt says. "I came in with a fresh start, believing in myself and my abilities. No question, it's a hard pill to swallow."

Stationed on the right wing of a speedy line with left wing Antti Laaksonen and center Wes Walz (the line often matched up against the opposition's top unit), Muckalt had rediscovered the scoring touch that allowed him to average 24 goals a year at the University of Michigan, and 12 per season during his first three NHL seasons. Wild management showed confidence in Muckalt by pairing him with its fifth- and sixth-leading scorers of a year ago, and that confidence rubbed off on him. "We felt we were getting him at a down time in his career," said Wild assistant G.M. Tom Thompson during the preseason. "We liked him at Michigan; he was a prolific scorer there. We felt he should have had 12 by Christmas with Ottawa. He's big, he can skate, he's physical and kills penalties."

After watching replays of Gauthier's check, Muckalt is convinced it was a cheap shot. "That's the kind of hit the league should be trying to eliminate," he says. "I've got no problem with running a guy into the boards with a shoulder, but when you send a guy tumbling, when there's hip-to-knee contact, there's a good chance there'll be an injury. I don't agree with that type of hit." (Gauthier said later that he intended no injury.)

Even without Muckalt, who was the team's leading scorer at the time of his injury, the surprising Wild (6-1-2-0, 14 points) remain perched atop the Northwest Division, tied with equally shocking Tampa Bay for the league's best record. Over the last three games, Minnesota has gone 2-0-1, thanks to stepped-up production from emerging superstar Marian Gaborik (2 goals, 4 assists and last week's Player of the Week award), and veterans Andrew Brunette (4 goals, 1 assist) and Cliff Ronning (5 assists), the latter, like Muckalt, an offseason acquisition. What's more, coach Jacques Lemaire, the man perhaps most responsible for popularizing the neutral-zone trap in latter-day hockey by employing it to win the '95 Stanley Cup with the New Jersey Devils, has abandoned his slow-down ways and opened up the Wild's offense, which now averages 3.7 goals per game, third-best in the league.

"[The system's] not as defensive as everyone thinks," Ronning says. "It's (about) being on the right side of the puck, defending your goal. This is a positional team, but we have some major team speed." Indeed, the additions of the slippery Ronning (acquired in a draft-day trade with the Los Angeles Kings) and Muckalt juiced up the forward group, and obstruction enforcement has allowed the Wild to skate more freely. "A clutch-and-grab team?" Muckalt says. "Nothing could be further from the truth. We do have a system, but our team speed is underrated." The Wild's toughest test of the young season comes this week, with home games against Colorado, San Jose and Vancouver, all likely Western Conference playoff teams. Minnesota's success will be a good barometer of its potential come springtime.

Power outage

Speaking of Vancouver, what's up with the Canucks' power play? Last season, the freewheeling Canucks, who led the league in goals scored, converted 18.5 percent of their man-up chances, fourth-highest in the league, behind an imposing forward group of Markus Naslund, Brendan Morrison and Todd Bertuzzi. Yet this season, even as the prevalence of power plays has increased (11.7 per game, compared with 8.3 a year ago), Vancouver's success ratio has plummeted to 12.0 percent, including two for its last 34.

Canucks coach Marc Crawford has liberally juggled his personnel, especially on the points, where he has sought in vain for a reliable top-unit partner for Ed Jovanovski (a lefthanded shot who's equally capable of working the right or left sides). Crawford has cycled through defensemen Mattias Ohlund, Brent Sopel and Sami Salo, but midway through Saturday's 3-1 loss to Dallas, he stuck Morrison on the blue line with Jovo, a combination that resulted in Bertuzzi's man-up marker. A four-forward setup allows Vancouver to use a bigger body like Trent Klatt (6-foot-1, 210 pounds) to crash the net up front, providing a nice complement to the 6-3, 235-pound Bertuzzi.

That Vancouver (3-3-3-0, third in the Northwest) is still playing .500 hockey is a credit to its penalty killers, who've allowed just four goals in 46 chances, a 91.3-percent success rate that ties it with L.A. for the league lead. Like many teams, Vancouver has employed three forward units to avoid fatigue, a good strategy especially considering the Canucks' tendency to swarm the blue line and aggressively contest the passing lanes up top. Puck-hawking forwards like Trevor Letowski, Matt Cooke, Trevor Linden and Artem Chubarov are keeping the PK humming.

Sports Illustrated writer-reporter Daniel G. Habib covers the NHL for the magazine and will contribute a regular hockey column for CNNSI.com.

 

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