The All-Star break is officially over. Back to life, back to reality for the Wild, which looks to get back into the top-8 in the West starting with a three-game road trip that opens tonight in Brooklyn against Nick Leddy, Kyle Okposo, Brock Nelson, Anders Lee and the Islanders.
Devan Dubnyk vs. Jean-Francois Berube tonight.
Interesting decision by the Isles starting Berube over Jaroslav Halak.
Berube, 24, a 2009 Kings' fourth-rounder, has started one NHL game -- Oct. 10 against Chicago. He stopped 30 of 34 shots in a loss.
In his last four starts with AHL Bridgeport, Berube is 4-0 with a 0.97 goals-against average and .967 save percentage.
Maybe Isles coach Jack Capuano has seen what the Wild has done against backups or young goalies with little experience lately: Arizona's Louis Domingue, 34 saves on 35 shots in a win; Nashville's Carter Hutton, 29 saves on 29 shots in a shutout; Winnipeg's Connor Hellebuyck, 24 saves on 24 shots in a shutout; Buffalo's Linus Ullmark, 28 saves on 30 shots in a win; Florida's Al Montoya, 38 saves on 39 shots in a win; Tampa Bay's Andrei Vasilevskiy, 30 saves on 32 shots in a win; Pittsburgh's Matt Murray, 25 saves on 26 shots in a win.
I asked coach Mike Yeo about the lack of scoring today in general the past month, and he said, "Over the break you take some time to analyze things. Statistically, a lot of the areas of our game are very, very similar to what they were earlier in the year when we were scoring goals. Before Christmas, we were eighth in the league in goal scoring. Since that time, obviously we've plummeted. Yet shots haven't gone down – we're shooting pucks even at a little higher rate than we were. Shot attempts are right at the same range. I would say that one thing that has been a significant difference, the main difference is shooting percentage. It was a lot higher earlier in the year. Some of that could be a little misfortune, but I don't like to refer to that. Certainly confidence, not pulling the trigger as quickly, but I would say net front has been a big issue as well."
So, after all that, then it was very clear to me there was some kind of meeting during the break that Yeo had with the Wild's recently-named fulltime analytics gurus.