While they picked up their first win of the season yesterday in an afternoon 2-0 win against the Senators, Minnesota’s results and underlying numbers have been all over the place to start the year. Offensively, they’ve struggled to finish again this season. Though their shot generation hasn’t been awful thus far — they’re 11th in CF/60 and 13th in xGF/60 — they’ve only scored 12 goals in five games while giving up 21. That’s despite only one power-play goal against and limiting the opposition to just 1.7 xGA/60 at 5-on-5 — good for third-best league-wide.
Goaltending has been the biggest contributing factor to the gap between the Wild’s goals against and chances against.