"Wild" Game or Just Plain Turkey?

Hey Wild fans!

In this installlent of "The 5-Hole" we'll be celebrating the spirit of Thanksgiving with a list of things to be grateful for about your Wenatchee Wild.

First off, we all know the not so great news of recent. That being Wenatchee has now equaled a franchise record by going winless in their last five games. The skid comes off a recently finished road trip to Alaska on which the Wild went 1-3-2, including two one-goal losses in regulation and one in overtime, plus a shootout loss.

During the five game streak of bleak, Wenatchee's penalty kill allowed 10 goals on 24 opposition chances (58.4%) and the club was swept for the first time in their history by both the Alaska Avalanche and Kenai River Brown Bears, who as I write this blog, are each part of a four-way tie for first place in the Western Division standings with Wenatchee and Fairbanks.

OK, now we're up to d, ate and can turn to the purposeful cheer that was to be the original intent of this offering.

Even though there doesn't seem to be much to celebrate right now, I think this week of Thanksgiving would be an opportune occasion for us all to take a moment and show our appreciation for a whole litany of items connected to the Wenatchee Wild.

So, here's my list...hopefully it will inspire you to think of (or look up) a few more of your own!

I.        The Wild are still in first place in the Western Division (at least until Wednesday night when Alaska plays in Fresno)

II.       Wenatchee has the third best home winning percentage in the league at .700 (not counting the Showcase Tournament)

III.      The Wild are 7-1 against expansion teams this season

IV.     Wenatchee's next series is on home ice at Town Toyota Center this Friday & Saturday, November 26th & 27th

V.      The Wild will play the Chicago Hitmen, who are an expansion team and have the third worst record in the league (6-16-2)

VI.     Chicago has the third worst road winning percentage in the league at .200 (not counting the Showcase Tournament)

VII.    Wenatchee has the #1 ranked powerplay in the NAHL at 23.0%

VIII.   Chicago has the #25 ranked (that's next to last) penalty kill in the NAHL at 75.2%

IX.    The Wild have two players on their roster who are from Chicago, Illinois (Michael DiPuma & John Mejia), which gives us a mental edge, right?

X.     The Chicago Hitmen have no players on their roster who are from Wenatchee, Washington (phew!)

XI.    Wenatchee is 2-0 all time in their first game following Thanksgiving

XII.   The Wild are 62-13-5 in 80 regular season games after Thanksgiving all time

XIII.  There are still 34 games left in the 2010-2011 regular season and all of them are after Thanksgiving

XIV. Wenatchee has a squad of tremendously talented players who have far from reached their potential as a team

XV.  Top to bottom the Wild are, without a doubt, the premiere organization in the NAHL

XVI. You are all a part of the greatest fan base in the league

XVII.  We have Junior hockey in North Central Washington! What in the world did we do for eight months of the year before 2008-2009?

XVIII. When Chicago visits the Wolf's Den and the Wild score 6 goals or more, those in attendance not only get free pizza but also free

          pie! (don't get too excited, it's the same thing twice;-)

XIX.  The Wild's logo doesn't have feathers. Current non-expansion franchises of the NAHL who have feature a bird as their team

         mascot are 1-6 all time in their first game after Thanksgiving (seems only fitting I know, and yes, I had to look that one up!)

XX.  With all due respect, we aren't the Port Huron Fighting Falcons, and not just because they are named after a bird this close to

        Thanksgiving! (hang in there Falcon fans :-)

Happy Thanksgiving from me and all of us at the Wenatchee Wild!

Get stuffed on Thursday, and we'll hope you all help to stuff the Town Toyota Center this weekend for the two-game series with the Chicago Hitmen.

Please share your thoughts with me on this installment of "The 5-Hole"!

Chris Hansen is the play-by-play voice of the Wenatchee Wild and can be heard on gamedays with Pat Norlin and Rich Haney at AM 560 KPQ on radio in North Central Washington and online at FastHockey.com…his web site blog, “The 5-Hole”, will be updated regularly every few days here at WenatcheeWild.com

Well, Isn't That Special?

Hey Wild fans! In this installment of "The 5-Hole" we'll be looking through the electron microscope at the 22 game's worth of special teams for this season's Wenatchee Wild.

As I write this, the Wild are still in the state of Alaska and getting ready to play the final two games of their six scheduled there against the Kenai River Brown Bears, who will trail Wenatchee by only 2 points in the race for first place in the Western Division standings when the puck drops for game one of the series on Friday, November 19th.

Wenatchee is also on a three game losing skid at the moment, having dropped the second game of two with the Fairbanks Ice Dogs on November 13th and being swept by the Alaska Avalanche in a pair of games on November 16th and 17th, which became the first time the Av's have ever swept the Wild in their history, and only the sixth time in 31 games head-to-head Alaska had ever won in regulation time over Wenatchee!

The rut also marks the first time all season that the Wild have dropped three games in a row, and only the fourth time in club history that they have lost three or more consecutive games (the longest losing streak in the team record books is five, and occurred within the first seven games during their inaugural season in 2008...let's hope they don't tie or break that one any time soon;-).

One of the biggest statistical reasons Wenatchee has had both success and failure during the 2010-2011 season to date is special teams. It's a large part of the game and, if you observe very closely, tends to typically represent a conspectus of all those "little things" we talk about so often in allocated specimens of two minutes or less (and sometimes four minutes or less and yes, even five minutes or less).

Since we've already hammered home a bit of the ugly that's been going on of late, let's begin with some of the "happy" surrounding the club's special teams numbers.

The Wild currently have the second best powerplay in the NAHL at 21.9% (30-for-137), and prior to November 17th's game against Alaska, they had laid claim to the league's number one ranking in that category for over a month.

Exactly 40% of Wenatchee's 75 team goals on the season have come with the man advanatge, and 48% are on special teams in general, when you toss in the Wild's half-dozen shorthanded markers. Those six shorties also place the team second in the league on that leaderboard for the season (the Motor City Metal Jackets are tops on the powerplay at 22.7% and have 7 shorties to lead the league in both categories).

Wenatchee has registered at least one powerplay goal in 12 of their 13 wins on the season and have two or more man advantage goals in six of those games (including a team record six against Fresno on October 16th). They have also posted five game winning powerplay goals on the season, plus two game winning shorthanded redlighters as well.

Over 63% of the Wild's powerplay goals have been scored at home, where they are humming along at a 28.7% clip for the season (19-for-66).

Individually, Wenatchee's Michael DiPuma is in the top five in the league among powerplay goal scorers with six and defensemen Chris Rumble and Zach Frye are in the top ten of the league's powerplay assist leaders with nine a piece. Rumble is also third in the entire league in overall powerplay points with 13, which is tops among defensemen in that category to boot.

And on the shorthanded front, Eliot Grauer and Evan Schmidbauer are among nine players in the league who have tallied two goals with their team down a man, which ties them both for number one in the league in that stat. As a team the Wild are also one of only three teams in the league that have not yielded a shorthanded goal this season (Motor City and Kenai River are the other two).

So all of that is great! Right? Well, there's also an unsightly underbelly to this dissection that we must also analyize before we turn in our final report from the hockey laboratory.

Wenatchee's penalty kill is 17th in the NAHL at 82.7% (115-for-139) and they are the eighth most penalized team in the league, averaging 6.31 times shorthanded per game (Port Huron is worst in the league in case you were curious at 8.76 average times shorthanded per game!).

The Wild have racked up the fourth most penalty minutes in the league as a team this season with 614 in 22 games (albeit that's a far cry from Corpus Christi's league leading 913 in 21 games!) and of the 57 goals against they have allowed as a team this season, 42.1% of them have been scored on the powerplay.

In the team's nine losses, the Wild have allowed a powerplay goal in seven of them and have scored a powerplay goal in only two. Even worse, 66.7% of the game winning goals scored by their opposition this season have been while Wenatchee is shorthanded.

And when we plunge the statistical scalpel even deeper into this penalty box frog we discover this rather disturbing affliction; in 14 games this season, subsequent to when the Wild have taken a two goal advantage over an opponent, they have been tagged for 82 minor penalties for a total of 164 minutes shorthanded and have allowed 16 powerplay goals, including two game winning tallies on two occasions when their opposition registered three consecutive powerplay markers to come from behind and prevail. Yikes!

Wenatchee also appears to be letting their man advantage Bunsen burner cool down of recent times too! In their first 11 games of the season the Wild went 28.9% (20-for-69) on the powerplay, but in their last 11 contests they are only 14.7% (10-for-68). In their last five games they are a mere 2-for-26 (7.6%) with the man advantage, including 1-for-19 (5.2%) on the current road trip and are 0 for their last 15 chances (..."Mr. Blutoski, that's 0.0%!").

So what's our final analogy?

That timing isn't everything, but it appears to have the most to do with special teams. At least for this season's Wenatchee Wild squad through 22 games anyway.

It goes without saying that if you are only going to be so opportunistic as to score one powerplay goal in a dozen chances, you'd hope that it would be with half a minute to go in regulation time to win the game. Yes?

Just the same, if you are going to sit in the box an average of more than six times per contest, it had better be after the rout is on in your favor. You savvy?

Given the season numbers and their struggles on the current road trip and last five games, it's obvious that the Wild are shooting themselves in the collective foot time and time again this season, while managing to dodge some other trajectiles that would further deepen the wounds of this club if not for their own enormous ability as a team...especially on special teams!

Which brings us back around once again to all of those "little things". Things like skating, being hard to and on the puck in all zones of the ice, taking the body and blocking shots. These as it turns out are not "little" components to the game at all. Instead they are in fact, the fundamental cornerstones for every successful hockey team and will not only defy any stat line you can dig up about a flashy powerplay, but also magnify the efforts of such a hard working squad when they are up or down a man.

Just play hard Wenatchee! And let the laws that govern hockey's chaotic science of special teams sort out themselves.

No testing was done on any animals during the manufacturing of, or scientific studies related to this blog...

Please share your thoughts with me on this installment of "The 5-Hole"!

Dirty Hockey

Hey Wild Fans!

In this installment of "The 5-Hole" I thought we'd discuss the virtues of playing "dirty" hockey, and then segue into a few words about imports (don't worry, I'll explain in case you're already confused :-).

Currently the Wild are in the state of Alaska on a six game road trip that will see them play a pair of games against each of their Western Division rivals who are based in Seward's Folly.

Wenatchee's first two-gamer is now in the books, and their most recent contest as I write this blog was a 3-to-1 loss to the Fairbanks Ice Dogs on Saturday, November 13th (which for you real stat fanatics, was the first time the Wild had ever lost when playing on the 13th day of any month! - previously 3-0-0), which saw the team drop the backend of that series.

The problem in that game for the Wild seemed to be team speed and the continuing spell that Ice Dog goaltender Joe Phillipi has cast over Wenatchee. Fairbanks outskated the Wild in every zone on the ice and really sparkled in creating transition all evening long, while Phillipi improved to 4-0-0 with a GAA of 1.25 and a save percentage of .962 in his last four starts against Wenatchee going back to game two at last season's Robertson Cup Tournament.

Wenatchee had their chances, but unlike the first game of that series when the Wild won 2-to-1, they failed to get much traffic around the net and didn't linger in those "dirty" areas down low in the offensive zone to create opportunities.

Conversely, it was Wenatchee's ability to play "dirty" in the first game of that series against Fairbanks that most helped them en route to victory. In my opinion, that was the Wild's guttiest effort of the season and in the purest hockey terms, their most beautiful win of 2010-2011 as well.

No, it wasn't a glamorous victory filled with breakaway goals or lots of dazzling offensive plays. No one scored a hat trick or received a long pass to light the lamp while shorthanded, nor did anyone net a puck on a wraparound or crazily bounce one in from a hundred feet away.

Nope! Instead it was good old fashioned grit and elbow grease that got it done. Blocking shots, winning battles for loose pucks, timely teamwork on special teams and getting muddied in those "dirty" spots on the pond all earned the Wild a big win over their archrivals and served to bolster the collective fortitude of this still developing young team (albeit the follow up performance was lacking in the same moxie!).

Speaking of "dirty" play in antonymic terms, it appears that an undeniably deliberate attempt to cause injury has in fact relegated Wenatchee forward Carl-Johan Sjogren to watch from afar until at least the end of November with a knee problem.

Sjogren was contacted by the lunging leg of Dawson Creek forward Derek Johnston late in the final period of Wenatchee's 8-to-nothing blowout victory over the Rage on November 4th at Town Toyota Center and hasn't played in four games since then. Johnston received a kneeing major and game ejection for his belligerant act and, although he was allowed to skate in the following game, was eventually suspended by the league after their review of his decidedly malicious conduct.

Meanwhile, C.J. has been on crutches to aide in the process of his recovery and has taken an impressively mature high road on the matter. When I asked him on radio if he thought Johnston kneed him with the intent to cause harm, C.J. unassumingly responded "I don't know, if he did mean to do it then that's too bad, there's no place for that in the game".

I've been increasingly delighted when watching the 6'2" 215 pounder from Tumba, Sweden, who recently turned 20 years of age, interact with his teammates and also have thoroughly enjoyed chatting with him myself. He is uncharacteristically mature for his age and, in spite of his inability to speak perfectly fluent English (although he communicates quite while nonetheless) and his frequent curiosity towards some of the unfamiliar customs of daily life here in the United States, C.J. leads by quiet example with every stride he takes both on and off the ice.

C.J. will no doubt be a huge difference maker for the Wild during the back half of the season, and since joining the team on October 1st, has already amassed points in six of his eight games played and is averaging a point per game (1g, 7a for 8pt in 8gm).

Sjogren always reminds me so much of bigger forwards at the NHL level like Russia's Alexei Kovalev and the Slovakian born Marian Hossa. C.J. is Swedish of course and is Wenatchee's third ever import player from outside of North America (not counting Armand Deswardt of course, who was born in South Africa but played all of his hockey in the United States...nice try Wild archivists!). Ironically the Wild's other two imports in team history are both from where Kovalev and Hossa hail from.

Going back to the club's inaugural season, you might remember Russian born forward Andrey Smirnov, who played in Wenatchee's second, third and fourth ever games in team history at the Showcase Tournament in Blaine, Minnesota in 2008. Smirnov had no points in that trio of tilts and didn't make the trip back to Wenatchee, thus ending his very short stint with the team, but still becoming their first ever player from foreign shores to step on the ice for the Wenatchee Wild.

Fans also might recall the name of Slovakian born winger Martin Dubec, who played with the Wild back in 2008 as well. Dubec saw action in only two games for Wenatchee and suffered a seriously broken leg in period three of his second contest. The injury kept Dubec out for the remainder of that season, however he has fully recovered and began the 2010-2011 season with the NAHL's St. Louis Bandits where he put up 1 goal and 4 assists in 10 games before being cut loose by St. Louis last Friday (November 12th).

Might "Dubie" return to Wenatchee and help fill the void left by the now injured Carl-Johan Sjogren? Seems almost too ridiculous to suggest I suppose, and even though C.J. will heal up and rejoin the team soon (we hope!), perhaps the Wild should center their attention strictly on players from North America in the future? We all love those flashy imports, but it seems that the ones arriving to Wenatchee are cursed to require maintenance all too soon after their arrival!

Get well soon C.J.! And all the best to Martin Dubec and Andrey Smirnov, in wherever hockey and life take you both!

Please share your thoughts with me on this installment of "The 5-Hole"!

Welcome to The 5 Hole with Chris Hansen

Hey Wild fans (and to those who arrived here by mistake or the otherwise morbidly curious)...Welcome to my new blog!

As the play-by-play voice of your Wenatchee Wild and a huge fan of everything connected with the pucks, this will be the new spot on WenatcheeWild.com for me to share my thoughts and insights with all of you about the team, hockey and just life in general, and for you to answer back and sound off your own.

Before we face off on our first ever subject, I feel it important to reveal a bit of my antiquity and let everyone know that "blogging" is, in it's most technical state, a relatively new concept for me.

During the portion of my life when there was no internet (which is a few more years than when there has been;-), this sort of thing would have been more familiar to me as an "editorial" and you would have needed a good friend in the newspaper biz to get the chance to gain an audience with such a forum.

So I consider it a real privilege to be given the opportunity to communicate with this many of you at once, and to so swiftly add such a large measure of much needed tech-savvy credibility to my otherwise hopelessly outdated nature and just plain lameness when it comes to the younger crowd too.

Who knows? Maybe this will actually lead to my purchasing a real cell phone and a way to hopefully text message in cursive.

I thought the most logical topic to start off this whole endeavor would be the current state of the team, with a bit of history to help us gain an accurate perspective, along with some conjecture about where they might be headed.

This is the Wenatchee Wild's third season of existence in the NAHL, and they currently have a record of 12-6-0 in 18 games for a total of 24 out of a possible 36 points. The club has the sixth best winning percentage in the league and are on top of the standings in the Western Division.

Still, despite all of these literal and theoretical positives, there seems to be a growing state of restlessness surrounding the team in many ways.

The expectations are high as always for this franchise that captured the hearts of fans everywhere with their Cinderella run to the Robertson Cup's final day in their inaugural season, and last year set the standard by which every team in the league was measured.

But the message I’d like to resound is “give it time”.

This is a group that is still learning the eccentricities of one another on and away from the ice, and I believe this is much of the reason why we have all seen such a roller coaster of efforts and variety of final scores to this point in the season.

It’s one thing to know that as a player, you are going 110%, but an entirely different feeling to trust that all of your teammates are as well.

Also, in order to start winning in every way, sometimes you have to learn how to lose in a lot of them too and Wenatchee certainly appears to be seasoning themselves to a wealth of different game situations thus far…and that’s a good thing!

Yes, the team has only two wins in their last five games, but in only two of those was the group’s collective effort called into question by the coaching staff. Plus, let’s not forget that the Wild ran into two of the best goaltenders in the entire league in four of those five games and lit one of them up like a Broadway Christmas tree (Andrew Walsh on November 4^th, allowed 4 goals on 40 shots in an 8-0 final).

Just the same, this very goaltender came back to stymie the Wild two nights later with 41 saves on 43 shots on goal while in front of him getting five more goals in support, several of which came courtesy of some poor netminding in the Wenatchee end.

So the lesson in this three-game microcosm of the schedule for this fledgling pack is if you live by the sword (or the goalie stick in this case), you’re going to lose by it sometimes as well.

We’ve seen what this bunch is capable of in 60 minutes of their best hockey, and the results should truly be scaring the daylights out of the other teams in the league who are taking note.

Think of this season’s installment of the Wenatchee Wild on the ice like a fine wine if you will.

Season one’s team was like an off brand cola that was actually better than the giants of the industry…a real surprise!

Last season’s was like an expensive bottle of champagne that someone left open for just a little too long before the party could get started and disappointingly went flat.

The 2010-2011 crop is still in the process of maturing in the barrel, but given time will undoubtedly be tasting more like the fruits of victory than ever before at season’s end. (by the way, this was a difficult analogy for me to pursue, as I’m not a big fan of wine! Sorry Jan ;-)

Before closing, I want to say thank you to all of the Wenatchee Wild fans out there for your continuing support of the team in so many ways.

I hope you enjoyed our first blog time together. I promise they will get better (and shorter!). To be a broadcaster you do need to write a little, but I am much more adept at running my mouth than clamoring the keyboard.

Let me know your thoughts on your 2010-2011 Wenatchee Wild so far and we’ll chat about something new in the next few days. I am anxious to see what you all have to say!

Chris Hansen