Wait, a Minnesota Wild blue line that is overperforming and has a problem of being too good no matter the personnel? Well, I never.
When Jared Spurgeon went down with an unfortunate injury eight games ago, I am sure I am not alone in worrying about Jordie Benn coming in and newcomer Alex Goligoski being forced to run his own pairing on this team with Jon Merrill — and without the anchor of Jared Spurgeon to bail out the albeit infrequent overextensions into the zone. No one was sure how it would pan out, but we should have all known that Dean Evason’s system would allow some discrepancy on individual talent and how much that matters in such a straight-ahead system that allows free rein for blueliners to move around the ice.